Our Time PressThe Local Paper with the Global View

Last fall, the incomparable Jamaica-born artist Shaggy came home to Bed-Stuy to talk to Our Time Press about his appearance in the much-anticipated December 12 Barclays Sounds of Reggae concert along with other great stars. Those neighborhood residents who caught him live and in person on Tompkins Avenue at Rowe’s Restaurant back in October are still swooning from the close encounter, and “Time Press” publishers are still impressed with his humor, generosity of time, philanthropy, messages and great humor.

As our readers know, we like referring to well-rounded artists as “renaissance” people, and with Shaggy the title is a perfect fit; whether he’s sharing his thoughts on a Jamaican dish (which he did with chef Dwight in Rowe’s kitchen) or giving time to admirers too numb to ask for his autograph, the five-time Grammy nominee (who won the honor in 1995 for his “Boombastic” album) is the epitome of “the cool factor” (a term he used to describe Bed-Stuy).

The reggae dancehall artist/songwriter made “It Wasn’t Me” a worldwide excuse of a phrase, “Angel” a devil of a hit, and left behind other artists in the wake of a slew of other platinum-selling charttoppers since his 1993 debut on the recording industry scene.

He is the epitome of paradox, and charmingly so. He is the loving father of two-year old twins and a seven year old; he is an artist (and was accepted at Pratt). He is a former U.S. Marine, Field Artillery Cannon Crewman with “I” Battery, 3rd battalion, a Gulf War hero. His foundation raised millions for the 2010 victims of the earthquake in Haiti and his consistent personal advice to young people shatters some of the messages his on-stage moves telegraphs. But all of this can be found on-line at his www.shaggyonline.com. So, without further ado, here’s Shaggy, in his own words:

My music is from the streets of Jamaica and Brooklyn. Music was my favorite pasttime as a kid, all kinds: r&b, rock and ska to rock steady, rock steady to dance hall. It was an eclectic mix and included country music, and artists like Willie Nelson. And it was the same when I came to New York (late teens). I attended Erasmus H.S., where I had a Jamaican clique, and we would spit rhymes as a way of impressing the ladies. Sitting in the lunch room, we would get attention, as we traded lyrics back and forth in friendly competition. At home we didn’t have much;we were not privileged, I lived in a small apartment; you could smell the urine in the elevator. But we had sound systems and we kept it going. And no matter how you look at it, the rawness, the roughness was part of my life. I hung out in Flatbush with dance hall artists, my peers were reggae people, driven by music. You were on the street, you run up on a friend and you let your imagination soar. We listened to music and it got inside of us. My first major influence — my idol — was Yellow Man..
When we started putting records out with Sting International, we started getting into clubs free and getting drinks free. That sort of catapulted me, but it wasn’t paying the bills. With my association with other artists that changed.

Messages to Youth
On Work and Focus
Having 90% talent and 10 percent drive doesn’t cut it. You’ve got to do the work, persevere, go at it, wake up every morning and go to sleep at night thinking, “This is what I’m going to do.” Some of the biggest superstars in the industry have 90% drive and 10% talent. And there are many different aspects of talent: people who are good at what they do, people who are mediocre.

Know Yourself
I’m a good musician and I write good songs but I’m horrible at everything else. You don’t want to see me kick a ball. I was not the greatest academic kid in school. I was artistic, creative and got a scholarship to Pratt which I didn’t take (opting to go into the military). I painted, I was great in drama. But back then if you gave me numbers, it’s a wrap. I have no problem staying in my lane.

Your Team
You must be with people who are good at what they do. It takes a while to build those friendships and those connections to make a team. It’s about making sure the energy connects. You need people who will scream at you and who will stand up for you. If you’re a nice guy, easygoing, inviting, there are some who will take advantage. That’s when you need a pit bull to say, “Hey, that’s not happening. Not here.” If I’m the head of the food chain, they’re going to make sure I’m okay; they’re protecting their interests. It’s a trickle-down effect.

Role of the Artist
As an artist your job is to make people not feel threatened. For instance, if there are five restaurants, you want to walk into one like here (Rowe’s): the colors are great, the food is great, the presentation is great, the service is friendly, the music is good. So the whole store, the whole package is attractive. Well, I’m the store. I’m the package. And that’s my job as an artist, that’s what I’m supposed to be about.

Discipline
I did four years in the marines, seven months in the Gulf War. It didn’t do much for my creative side, but it created a real balance in my life. It definitely had an effect on my attitude. It disciplined me, and kept me organized when I had to go out and make it. But the hardest job I ever did was in music, not the military. But it was the military that prepared me for working my passion.

Advice to Girls and Young Women
I’ve got daughters, I’ve got kids, I’ve got mothers. In the days when I started out in the business, I was young and I was raw. But now I realize it is an artist’s duty to be a role model. To my young fans, I say, less is more, meaning less in the sense that sometimes when you give too much of yourself, you relinquish your power. The more someone gets, the more they take you for granted. When you have some reserve, people are interested and not for the obvious reasons.

There’s a solid rule that works: some men are threatened by a powerful woman. I find them attractive. Some people think sex appeal is going around half-naked; that’s not interesting. More appealing is the confidence, and the more confidence you find in a woman, the more interesting she is.

Also if a young lady cannot hold her own, and has no passion about anything other than how she looks, how can she have a real interest in anyone else? Before she cares about anyone else, she must care for herself.
Shaggy performs with Reggae icons Beres Hammond, Britain’s Ali Campbell’s UB40 and Maxi Priest at the Barclays Center’s Sounds of Reggae Concert, on December 12, 7:30pm. For ticket information, visit:
www.barclayscenter.com/events/detail/sounds-of-reggae

Why has it taken the City University of New York (CUNY) so long to act before the present Pollard administration at Medgar Evers College endangered its once stellar accreditation status? According to the Warning status issued by the Middle States Commission on Higher Education (MSCHE) on November 15, 2012, the jeopardy status of Medgar’s accreditation has now become an indefensible reality. There is no reasonable answer that can satisfy faculty, students, staff and community stakeholders for CUNY’s allowing the potential failure of this Central Brooklyn’s anchor institution.

While the accreditation of Medgar Evers College remains intact, the College has been placed on alert status. The Warning issued specifically relates to Standards 2, 7, and 14 (Planning, Resource Allocation, Institutional Assessment, and Assessment of Student Learning) and Institutional Renewal. This Warning is an unprecedented action taken against the College. In its 40-year history, Medgar Evers College has always received a superlative evaluation from the MSCHE. This Warning represents a State of Emergency for the College, one that must be addressed immediately by CUNY and its Chancellery.

In effect, this emergency situation is only further proof of the incompetence of the current administration, which has already been brought to the attention of the CUNY Chancellery on any number of occasions. By the first 2010 Vote of No Confidence suffered by President William L. Pollard and his administration, faculty and staff of Medgar Evers College rendered a decisive judgment that this administration was proceeding along a precarious path of disenfranchising our core constituency— students—and was demonstrating a strident incompetence in handling the administrative affairs of the College.

At press conferences, in interviews, at Board of Trustees’ hearings, at an oversight hearing of the New York Commissions of Education and Civil Rights, in numerous letters and even at a meeting with the Vice-Chancellery, faculty, staff and community stakeholders of Medgar Evers College drew to the attention of the Chancellery the mismanagement of resources by the Pollard administration, the excessive hiring of consultants and administrators, the reduction, if not collapse, of student service infrastructure, as well as the declining student performance rates. Throughout the College’s history, past administrations at Medgar have been ousted for much less. Why has CUNY allowed this administration to stay and endanger the hard-won accreditation of the College?

The administrative cronyism at the College has reached an unacceptable level under Dr. Pollard, to the point that the appointments of his cohort administrators chronically underserve the needs of the College, as reflected in the MSCHE accreditation Warning. In addition, the reshuffling of these administrators into different positions, without regard to a best match between individual qualifications and position requirements, gives further credence to the fact that Dr. Pollard’s loyalty is not allied with the academic advancement of students and the mission of this civil rights institution. From all indication, his first pledge of allegiance has always been to keep his cohorts employed at all cost, even to the detriment of the institution.

Pollard’s favoritism was also apparent in the hiring of a Syracuse-based consultant firm for a scandalous sum of public money to create a Strategic Plan for the College—a plan of little use because it does not meet MSCHE standards, much like the bridge to nowhere. It was this very kind of unfettered cronyism that also allegedly had Dr. Pollard ousted from the University of District of Columbia. Moreover, CUNY’s own Performance Management Plan (PMP), employed to evaluate Dr. Pollard, provides further objective evidence that the Pollard administration failed in its charge to improve student success rates. By citing Standard 14, Assessment of Student Learning as not meeting standards, the MSCHE confirmed what faculty and staff already knew about the Pollard administration’s ineffectiveness.

As the public disclosure statement of Middle States shows, many of the infractions brought before the Chancellery by faculty and staff of Medgar Evers College were vindicated by the Middle States Accreditation Commission. Indeed, its public disclosure statement has certainly given further credibility to the faculty’s Vote of No Confidence. What the Chancellery has refused to acknowledge is that, unlike any other constituency, the tenured faculty of an academic institution are very much invested in the accreditation viability of an institution and in student success. While administrators like Dr. Pollard come and go, tenured faculty stay.

Finally, the CUNY Chancellery surely knows that the Pollard administration has squandered its moral capital and cannot be trusted to fix the institution which its incompetence has jeopardized. Indeed, the two Votes of No Confidence say that the faculty and staff of the College have found this administration wanting. The Chancellery must act to save Medgar Evers College from further accreditation erosion and to secure the College’s historic mission for the sons and daughters of sugar cane and cotton field workers who protested in the streets of Central Brooklyn for the founding of this community anchor institution—because they believed that an equitable education was both a civil and a human right.
Submitted by Mr. Raymond Brown on behalf of the Concerned Faculty at Medgar Evers College

President Pollard Statement on Medgar Evers College Notification

Medgar Evers College has been and remains accredited by the Middle States Commission on Higher Education (Middle States).  Further, Middle States is confident that Medgar Evers College “has the capacity both to make appropriate improvements within a reasonable period and to sustain itself in the long term”.

In 2007, Medgar Evers College underwent the process for reaffirmation of accreditation by Middle States, a process that takes place every 10 years. The standard process required by Middle States was followed by the College. This process included the preparation of an institutional self-study in which the college examined itself based on Middle States 14 Standards for accreditation.  The Self-Study was submitted to Middle States followed by a site visit by an external evaluation team of college administrators and senior faculty.  The eight-person visiting evaluation team submitted a report based on its on-site review and the College’s Self-Study.  The summary report by the chair of the team, the Self-Study, and an analysis by Middle States resulted in the positive reaffirmation of accreditation of Medgar Evers College.

In the letter reaffirming accreditation, the College was requested to submit a five-year Periodic Review Report (PRR, which is essentially an interim progress/status report).  The submission of a five-year PRR is the standard practice for campuses that have been accredited without any major concerns.

In the reaffirmation letter, however, the Commission also informed the College that the evaluation of the Middle States standards related to assessment and planning would become more stringent in the next accreditation cycle.

In June 2012, five years after reaffirmation of accreditation, in accordance with standard Middle States procedure, the follow-up PRR was prepared and submitted to Middle States.  On September 17th, 2012, the College responded to Commission queries about the PRR.  All of the aforementioned documents were then reviewed by the Commission.  At its October 2012 meeting, the Commission concluded that the College’s submission did not provide adequate documentation of  the progress that we have made on Standards 2, 7, and 14  (3 out of 14 Standards), which are related to assessment and planning.   This conclusion was conveyed to the College and, as is the practice, based on the Commission’s full disclosure policy, it was posted on their web site.

The College now has an opportunity to explicitly respond to Middle States regarding how we have made progress regarding compliance with the aforementioned Standards 2, 7, and 14.  Our five-year comprehensive and inclusive institutional strategic plan was completed in May 2012, action planning by units/areas is currently in progress, and we have identified areas for improvement over the next five years, including areas directly relevant to these specific Middle States Standards.

We are confident that as we move forward, work together, and positively address areas of needed improvement, as well as undertake new initiatives, the vision for Medgar Evers College will be achieved.  In five years, our reaccreditation will once again be reaffirmed.

In a move that was not unexpected given its severe financial situation, Interfaith Medical Center has followed the path well-worn by other hospitals in New York and filed for bankruptcy, threatening to leave Bedford-Stuyvesant without a full-service medical facility. The hope is that this action will give them time to restructure their financial obligations and emerge as a stronger institution.

In the press announcement of the Chapter 11 filing, Mr. Luis A. Hernandez, President and Chief Executive Officer of Interfaith Medical Center said, “Unfortunately, our hospital was a victim of New York State’s drastic Medicaid reductions in 2010. Because the people we serve are predominantly poor and fully 65% are dependent on Medicaid or Medicaid-managed care, we have had a unique deleterious financial challenge of being dependent on the state’s Medicaid reimbursements.”

“Prior to those rate reductions, Interfaith Medical Center operated with positive operating margins. However, the implementation of the New York State APR-DRG reimbursement methodology resulted in approximately 40% reduction in IMC’s base reimbursement rate. The result was a dramatic and immediate reduction in revenue requiring re-engineering of the organization and expense structure. Despite our hard work to reduce costs, it became impossible to continue to operate under those rate reductions without an operating loss. This filing will allow us to restructure our balance sheet, renegotiate some existing agreements and reposition the hospital for long-term viability, strength, success and growth,” Mr. Hernandez concluded.

In an often emotional and defiant meeting, several hundred past alumni, students, teachers, administrators, parents and activists packed the Boys & Girls High School auditorium on Tuesday vowing that the city will never shut the school.

The meeting came after the city’s Department of Education (DOE) recently gave the school a failing grade for the second year in a row citing low graduation and attendance rates. This “F” grade triggers off the possibility of several remedial measures including possibly closing the school and/or replacing current Principal Bernard Gassaway.

But both of these possible options were roundly criticized and booed at the meeting which the DOE organized to get local input.

“Joel Klein (former DOE Chancellor) ran and put the DOE structure in place that created this animal of failure, not our school,” said Anthony Jones, a Boys & Girls alumnus, math teacher and track coach for the past 40 years.
Jones attributed part of the low graduation rate to the DOE’s decision over the past few years to close and restructure neighboring Brooklyn high schools such as Prospect Heights, Canarsie, South Shore, Erasmus and Tilden, which led to Boys & Girls taking in about 1,800 at-risk students with 10 or less high school credits from these neighboring districts.

“Klein came in bragging about the graduation rates and now we have to bear the burden because during this process (of closing neighboring schools) we went from a ‘B’ grade to an ‘F’,” said Jones.

Jones and others noted the many success stories such as that all the track athletes who went to college, many to top Division One schools, as well as the successful debate team and the journalism club, which recently launched an excellent school newspaper, The Kangaroo Voice, featuring stories on teenage pregnancy and whether or not cell phones should be allowed in the school.

“The school that they (the media and the DOE) paint is not the school we are as evidenced by The Kangaroo Voice,” said Assistant Principal Katrina Williams.

James Holder, a parent of a sophomore at Boys & Girls, testified that his daughter was a transfer student who came to the school with an average in the 60s. Now her average is in the 80s and she’s very active in several extracurricular activities, he said.

Holder and others said they have never seen Mayor Bloomberg come to the school, and all expressed support and admiration for Gassaway.

“Mr. Gassaway takes in young people from all over Brooklyn,” said Holder.
Boys & Girls PTA President Lisa Dunn also expressed support for Gassaway, saying he has an eight-point plan to turn the school around.

“We have failing kids, but we need more resources to help them, and more time to implement the plans to move forward,” Dunn said.

Several students and alumni from years past also spoke highly of the school and Gassaway.
“Nobody understands this is our home here and I often stay in school until 9 pm,” said Diana, a senior at the school. “And Mr. Gassaway is like a father to all of us.”

Activist Joe Gonzalez agreed with everyone that the DOE and Bloomberg Administration is largely to blame, but also told those in attendance to recognize that the City Council leadership failed the community by giving Bloomberg a third term.

“We must hold the upcoming City Council candidates accountable,” he said.
Bedford-Stuyvesant City Councilman Al Vann, who supported and now is in his third term, issued a statement in favor of Gassaway and the school.

“As (the) DOE itself has recognized, Boys and Girls High School has a strong, experienced leader in Principal Gassaway,” said Vann. “I have full confidence in him and his ability to do what he was hired to do: develop and implement a plan to halt the downward spiral of Boys and Girls. He has already taken significant steps to transform the school’s culture into one that demands and supports excellence from its students and welcomes community involvement. I believe that, given time and resources, the plan he has put into place will succeed and I pledge my continued support for this effort.”

DOE spokesperson David Pena said that 24 secondary (6-12) schools, high schools and transfer schools have been identified as struggling with Boys & Girls among them, but that does not necessarily mean it will be closed.
A short list from the list of 24 schools will be made in early 2013, along with remedial plans including possibly changing leadership, closing the school or placing a charter school within the school.

The DOE’s Panel for Education Policy (PEP) will make the final decision on a vote regarding the remedial plans concerning the short list, said Pena.
The majority of the PEP is Bloomberg appointments.