Thursday, Jan. 2, 1997 | 11:59 a.m.
Opinions are mixed on the role black colleges should play in today's society.
Some call them outdated and likely to promote further separation of the races.
Others call them ideal to motivate and educate young blacks.
Still others, such as Kelcey West of Las Vegas, say the most important thing to remember about black colleges is that they are open to all races and have long histories of producing productive graduates.
"I am not trying to promote black colleges, but I am trying to promote black four-year college graduates," said West, who has organized his third annual "Unity Through Knowledge" black college tour.
The tour of historically black colleges in the South -- Alcorn State, Dillard, Grambling, Jackson State, Mississippi Valley State, Southerm and Xavier -- is set for March 24-28 during the Clark County School District's spring break.
The cost of the five-day, four-night tour is $500 and includes roundtrip air fare, hotel accommodations, daily continental breakfasts, guided campus tours and questionnaire sessions, college preparatory seminars, New Orleans lunch steamboat cruise and evening tours of each city's tourist attractions. There is room for 47 students and all but five are taken.
"This tour is more than a spring break trip," West said. "It is an opportunity to explore."
He noted that many of the students who take part in his tour have never ventured out of Las Vegas before. Some have never even been across town.
"I asked one student, 'Have you ever been to Summerlin?' and they said, 'Nope, what for?'" West recalled.
Alex Dixon, a sophomore at Durango, is an exception.
He went to last year's tour of Georgia colleges as a freshman and has now signed up for this year's tour to Louisiana and Mississippi.
"It's a great investment to go and see if you like it," Dixon said. "You can see if you don't like it. I got a chance to see the atmosphere of the college and the city."
He said a predominantly black college appeals to him because of his upbringing.
"I have always lived in a predominantly white neighborhood. I didn't even have another black person in my class until I was in fifth or sixth grade."
He has heard the criticism that black colleges don't reflect the real world, but responds that he has already experienced the opposite extreme and that "doesn't reflect the real world either."
Dixon noted that by visiting black colleges, some students found that they were looking for something different, but were able to pinpoint what they wanted and didn't want to help them ask the right questions of other institutions.
Dixon, who hopes to attend college on a football scholarship, has also attended tours of California schools, including Berkeley and Stanford. He said there was a clear difference in culture and atmosphere.
West said students of all races must be encouraged to explore outside their neighborhoods and encounter other ways of living.
"I didn't go to a black college, because there was no one in my community really pushing it," said West, a May 1996 graduate of UNLV. "But after I first visited one I gained a tremendous respect for them."
He recounted seeing "black people going to class at 8 a.m. every morning with suit and ties on and professors whose theme was to graduate students in four years, not five or six or eight. It's almost like they cared more and had a genuine interest in you as a student and a person. It's kind of like they had pride in you."
But West said he also promotes attendance at UNLV and the Community College of Southern Nevada, because he attended both.
Before leaving on the tour, West has coordinated three seminars to enlighten students on the things campus administrators tend to shy away from, such as date rape and excess credit.
By the time West was 18 years old, he had 13 credit cards simply because, "They kept coming and I really didn't even have a bank account yet. These kids need to know that they become a target when they start college and to be careful."
West launched the tour as a fund-raiser for the 32nd Street Theater, his nonprofit theater company and community group, but now says he considers it a necessity. So far, West has produced four plays with a fifth on the way in April. His last production was a tribute to Marvin Gaye, "If This World Were Mine."
Anyone interested in sponsoring a student or attending the college tour can call West at 656-0275.
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