This article is part of a three-piece cover story examining TSU. Read the rest here.
“Go Big Blue Tigers” is a common way for a Tennessee State University alumnus to end an interview with a reporter — even if they’re telling that reporter some of their concerns about the school.
It’s also how the school’s interim president and the Tennessee Black Caucus of State Legislators ended an informational meeting earlier this month. The gathering — titled “Stand Up 4 TSU Action Meeting” — was held in the sanctuary of Pleasant Green Missionary Baptist Church in North Nashville, not far from TSU’s campus. Black Caucus members encouraged the meeting’s attendees to look forward, but a number weighed heavily on the gallery’s mind: $2.1 billion. That’s the amount that, in 2023, the federal government found the state had shorted the school over 30 years.
Interim TSU president Dwayne Tucker, a 1980 graduate, made it clear that the university would not sue the state for the money it was owed — a popular suggestion among participants.
“Really, there’s no account payable to set up for the state of Tennessee to pay us $2.1 billion,” Tucker said. “Sometimes taking the lawsuit is not the right thing to do.”
Tucker did garner applause when he promised to rectify technical issues with financial aid and upgrade Banner, the software system students use to access course information.
Current freshman Cathalene and current sophomore Ja’Lene have their eyes on private universities in town, including nearby Fisk — another historically Black university. Other schools have nicer, newer academic buildings and housing and a more reliable class software system, they say. (Students quoted in this story requested that the Scene use only their first names.)
International-heavy Tigers have led program to back-to-back men’s HBCU national titles
Counting both sides of her family, Ja’Lene is the 40th person in her family to attend TSU. She’s staying in the same dorm where her father lived in the 1980s, and she says it’s rife with wear-and-tear issues like exposed pipes.
“We do experience a lot of those things that are caused by the underfunding on a daily basis, and it definitely has caused people to leave the school,” says Cathalene. “A lot of people have transferred, and they’re still transferring [due to] issues that should have been resolved if we were funded correctly in the first place.”
James Odneal, a 1987 TSU graduate and former student-athlete, tells the Scene he wants to see his alma mater have stability. He attended the meeting to find out the status of the $2.1 billion.
“I’m not going to look at it as one-sided,” Odneal says. “We got to do our part too, so we can’t be asking for help and money when we’re not pulling our weight, so to speak.”
Sheryl Huff, president of the Middle Tennessee National Action Network, takes a different stance.
“There ain’t no mismanaging nothing — it’s underfunded,” she tells the Scene. “They just don’t fund TSU the way they should, period.”
She says former president Glenda Glover is assigned a disproportionate amount of the blame.
“This was way before Dr. Glover, and it’s going to be way after Dr. Glover,” Huff says.
“If she was so bad and messed-up, and [then they appointed] a new president — that man resigned,” says Huff in reference to Ronald Johnson, who resigned from the interim president role in December after less than six months in the position. “That was Dr. Glover’s fault too?”
Tucker said he wants to expand the school’s public relations efforts to get more positive stories about the school into the press. “We should be out there, and we should be the source of truth for what’s really going on at Tennessee State — good or challenging,” Tucker says.
Set to launch a fundraising campaign with a $100 million goal, Tucker says less than 10 percent of alumni are donating to the university. He wants to see more of them give, even if it’s a small amount of money.
“When rich people look at your alumni and they see that you have a single-digit giving rate, what do you think they conclude by that?” Tucker said. “If your own alumni are not giving to the university, why should I give you my money?”
Like the students, he points to the lush campuses of Belmont University and Lipscomb University as evidence that Nashville’s wealthy families want to support education.
“I think there’s a lot of people outside of alumni who want to support the mission of Tennessee State that have a lot of money,” said Tucker. “But those individuals don’t want to come off the sidelines and give you the money when they think you may be insolvent and bankrupt in April or May.”
Ja’Lene is determined to finish out at TSU. Being from Nashville and admiring the school so many of her family members attended from afar, she says it “doesn’t get better than that.”
“Most of my teachers are Black,” Ja’Lene says. “That’s one of the main things, because I’m an art major. My art teacher is Black. My choir teacher was Black. Both of my biology teachers are Black.”
Aisha, a 2024 graduate, attended the meeting to make sure the school would still be intact. Her main concerns are rumors she’s heard about the school selling its satellite Avon Williams Campus, and she was relieved when Tucker said there were no plans to sell.
“I come from Seattle, Wash., and where I’m from, there’s no historically Black colleges and universities, so I was glad to be accepted and come here,” Aisha told the Scene. “To see that this is happening and that this school may not have enough money until April is kind of sad, because I was thinking about going back for my master’s.”
She says her teachers felt like family, and cared about her success and well-being. She’s the first in her family to attend an HBCU.
“I came out here by myself, so it was just me, but I’ve had family that I’ve met here from the school and in the community.”
The familial sentiment is a common one among TSU students and alumni — and just as with family, students and alumni are often critical of their school, but bristle when outsiders are critical.
“We love TSU,” Cathalene says. “It’s just hard to keep loving something that’s hurting you. A lot of people don’t understand that the hurt is not from where you think it’s from. It’s from the state government underfunding. A lot of people get mad at financial aid, their teachers, the institution, the president. But it goes beyond that.”
Amid the historic local university’s financial turmoil, we examine the school’s past and future
