Morris Brown College (MBC) is a private, Christian, and historically black liberal arts college in Atlanta, Georgia, United States. It is affiliated with the African Methodist Episcopal Church.
In 2002 it lost its accreditation and federal funding due to a financial mismanagement scandal during the 1998–2002 tenure of Dolores Cross as school president. The United Negro College Fund also terminated its support for the college. Ten years later, the college filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in an attempt to prevent foreclosure and sale of the school at auction.
The Morris Brown Colored College (its original name) was founded in 1881 by African Americans affiliated with the African Methodist Episcopal Church and named to honor the denominations second bishop, Morris Brown. The AME Church sent missionaries to the South following the American Civil War. They founded numerous new AME churches in Georgia and other states, where hundreds of thousands of freedmen joined new congregations of the first independent black denomination in the United States.
On January 5, 1881, the North Georgia Annual Conference of the AME Church passed a resolution to establish an educational institution in Atlanta for the moral, spiritual, and intellectual growth of Negro boys and girls. The school formally opened its doors on October 15, 1885, with 107 students and nine teachers. Morris Brown was the first educational institution in Georgia to be owned and operated independently by African Americans. For more than a century, the college enrolled many students from poor backgrounds, large numbers of whom returned to their hometowns as teachers, as education was a mission of high priority.
Fountain Hall, originally known as Stone Hall when occupied by Atlanta University, was completed in 1882. It is closely associated with the history of the college and has been designated a National Historic Landmark. After Atlanta University consolidated its facilities, it leased the building to Morris Brown College, which renamed it as Fountain Hall.
Eighty percent of the schools 2,500 students received financial aid from the federal government, totaling $8 million annually in the early 2000s. Under the Federal Governments grant-in-aid, college student financial aid program, accredited (by a recognized collegiate accreditation body) universities request of the Department of Education reimbursing grants in aid; for each semester/quarter hour enrolled of (financially) qualifying students; who, the universitys Registrar; and, accountable fiscal officer, jointly certify (to the grant-in-aid Administrator of the Department of Education) as being enrolled as full and/or part-time graduate or undergraduate students. The university also has further certified to its accreditation body that it is conducting an academic semester (or quarter) as approved for it, by its accreditor, as to overall semester/quarter length, and actual number of in-classroom clock-hours per semester (or quarter) hour to be awarded, in each classroom course offered.
A federal criminal case was filed against the former president, Dolores Cross, and the financial aid director (the accountable fiscal officer), Parvesh Singh, alleging that they had, on behalf of the university, submitted to the Department of Education (the grant administrator) false declarations of enrollment of students for semesters when, in the specified semesters, the students identified in the declarations had not, in fact, been enrolled. Since the grant-in-aid programs structure required the federal funds received to be applied to each individual enrolled students account, the two school officers committed their second offense of embezzlement when they unlawfully applied these funds directly to ineligible college costs, such as for paying of personal staff, instead of applying the funds to offset individual students enrollment expenses.
In 2002, the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools revoked the colleges accreditation because of its financial problems. Cross and Singh were charged in December 2004 in a 34-count indictment that accused them of defrauding the school, the U.S. Department of Education, and hundreds of students. The pair, who had first worked together at a college in Chicago, Illinois, were convicted of using the names of hundreds of students, ex-students, and people who were never enrolled to obtain financial aid for the school.
During the time Cross held the college presidency, from November 1998 through February 2002, Singh obtained about 1,800 payments from federally insured loans and Pell grants for these students, who had no idea they would be responsible for paying off the loans, the indictment said. Singh pleaded guilty to one count of embezzlement. Singh, 64, also received five years of probation but 18 months of home confinement.
At the time of the 2004 indictment, Cross was teaching at DePaul University in Chicago. On May 1, 2006, Cross pleaded guilty to fraud by embezzlement. She agreed to pay $11,000 to the Department of Education in restitution.
On January 3, 2007, Cross was sentenced to five years of probation and one year of home confinement for the fraud. Cross, 70 years old, suffers from sleep apnea and has had a series of small strokes, factors the judge took into consideration. An additional factor the judge considered for each person was that they did not use the embezzled funds for personal profit, but to prop up the schools poor finances. The initial indictment said Cross had used the funds to finance personal trips for herself, her family, and friends.
The prosecutor, U.S. Attorney David Nahmias, said at the sentencing: "When the defendants arrived at Morris Brown, the college was already in serious financial condition. Thereafter, these defendants misappropriated ... money in fairly complicated ways in what appears to have been a misguided and ultimately criminal attempt to keep Morris Brown afloat."
The school has $22 million in long-term debt and $5 million in short-term debt.[needs update] Both the alumni association and the African Methodist Episcopal Church have pledged to keep the school from closing. At its peak, the college had approximately 2,500 students enrolled.
Morris Brown College, at one point reduced to an enrollment of just 44 students, continues to operate as a scaled-down version of its former self. In 2004, Dr. Samuel D. Jolley, who had been the schools president from 1993 to 1997, agreed to return to the presidency to help the colleges attempts to recover.
The school hoped to have 107 students in fall 2006, the same number when the school opened in 1881, but failed to meet that goal. Tuition in the fall semester of 2006 was $3,500, but without accreditation, students cannot obtain federal or state financial aid for their tuition and other school expenses.
By February 2007, MBC had 54 students in two degree programs, supported by 7 faculty and staff employees. Despite this, after the sentencing of two former administrators, the chair of the colleges board of trustees, Bishop William Phillips DeVeaux, issued a press release stating the college would move forward and that "This sad chapter in the colleges history is now closed."
In addition to civil lawsuits filed by former and current students, Morris Brown faces a civil suit for defaulting on a $13 million property bond, a case that eventually could lead to foreclosure on some of the colleges most historic buildings, including its administration building, attorneys involved in the case say. The complaint asks for $10.7 million in principal owed on the loan agreement, $1.5 million in interest and a per diem of $2,100 for each day Morris Brown does not pay.
In December 2008, the City of Atlanta disconnected water service to the college because of an overdue water bill. The debt has since been paid and the service restored.
Radio personality Tom Joyner made several offers to buy the troubled college from 2002 through 2004, during the worst of the accreditation and fraud crises. In 2003, his charitable foundation gave the school $1 million to assist with its immediate needs.
The school faced foreclosure in September 2012.
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