Tonight was the first Bless the Mic on the road, if you will. We went down the street one mille to the historical Little Rock Central High School for tonight's program.

As this series has grown, I have identified people that would draw capacity plus crowds. We can handle about 650 or so standing room on campus. We did a remote location for Cornel West in 2006 at Wesley Chapel UMC next door and handled about 800. Last January, we had about 1,000 when Rev. Al came, but we turned people away as Wesley Chapel was filled (including putting chairs down).

So we thought about going to Central, where the main floor of the auditorium seats about 1,500, and the entire auditorium about 2,000. When I was able to book Kirk Franklin last year, I knew he would have a chance of breaking the Bless the Mic record.

Tonight, about 1,400 people, most of the middle and high school, as well as college students! I think the older crowd wasn't as interested when people heard he was not performing, but he presented a substantive message that entertained and enthralled those young people. In fact, he drew a bigger crowd that rapper David Banner and Fonzworth Bentley- combined! Both of those brothers were great too, but I just wish people could see young people flocking to a Gospel artist.

My 2 freshmen on the program were great. Adrienne, from Indianapolis, was SCARED and tried to back out several times, plus she had a bad cold yesterday. But today she was on point. Before the dinner, Kirk called her grandmother for her.

Brandon is a graduate of Central so he had the home field advantage and he was good as always. So Kirk talked for maybe 45 minutes (it went by FAST), answered a few questions, got a key to the city of Little Rock, and then took pictures and signed autographs for 90 minutes. As we tried to get him out, the wannabe gospel artists had to bend his ear (uggghh!)

He had a late night dinner downtown and I joined him. He has been doing college speaking engagements for about 3 years, and he thinks this is the second HBCU speech (he didn't remember the first but I told him he will never forget Bless the Mic). But he and his assistant did say this was the first time he hung out with a president. (I just got home too- 11:30 p.m.)

Y'all know how I do!

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Tonight we hosted Kevin Powell for our Black Male Initiative program. Kevin and I go back 10 years, when he came to Old Dominion University to speak for Black History Month. I clearly remember this because my former student Nakia told him during a Q&A that she didn't have time to read, and he went on to tell her she'll have more time to read now than any other time in her life. Her feelings got hurt a little, but she did become an avid reader.

Tonight, Kevin spoke as a part of our Black male initiative. His new book, The Black Male Handbook, has 8 chapters that address issues for men. Interestingly, four of the chapters were authored by people who have been to our campus (Jeff Johnson, William Jelani Cobb, Byron Hurt, and Kevin). So tonight he really offered some good, useful tips for the men in the audience to help them navigate life.

Kevin is a good brother and has always done a great job here. This was his second visit to PSC in the past 2 years.

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Benjamin, 11 weeks

Lydia, 2 years, 11 months

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A couple of weeks ago, we held a "Swagger Like Us" contest for the men. Sponsored by our Black Male Initiative, this was a fun and creative activity to have the men dress with their own sense of style, and then be judged by how they pull it off.

Our 3 celebrity judges included a bank Vice President, Miss Philander Smith College, and Miss Arkansas Baptist College. The judges mingled with the contestants and then determined the winner.

So this was something different and fun. We'll keep looking for more opportunities like this.

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Last week, we hosted Dr. Julia Hare for Bless the Mic. Over the past few years, she has really blown up through her participation in several of the Tavis Smiley "State of the Black Union" events. But she and her husband have been writing about the Black family for over 2 decades. I wanted her to come because of her work in this area. She recently (November 08) wrote a piece in for Ebony magazine, which is from her new book- "The Political and Sexual Anorexia of the Black Woman."

So in her frank and fast style, she covered a number of issues facing the Black community. While generating lots of laughs, she made some key points as well. We really didn't have enough time for her to cover everything in one session, but she didn't leave town until that Friday. So I invited her to our special chapel that my wife and I were hosting to have frank conversations about relationships. Dr. Hare graciously agreed to spend another hour with our students, and we had a lively conversation. One of the main things we learned is that our students really want to have these kinds of discussions as they are interested in developing healthy relationships. Many have not seen these kinds of relationships, and this plays out in their daily lives.

Dr. Hare commented to me afterwards that the session was as valuable as anything that occurs in the classroom because we were teaching life. I shared that students can't do well in the class if their out of class life is messed up. Hopefully this is a step in helping more students become whole.

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We had two large rooms filled with students, faculty and staff yesterday to watch the inauguration. Students clapped as if they were right there, clearly proud of that moment. They all chuckled too at the fiesty prayer by Dr. Lowery (who spoke on our campus in August of 2007 as we launched our social justice initiative). But it was truly a great day for our community.

About 10 members of our community were actually in DC for the inauguration, albeit 2.5 miles away on the mall with the millions there. Soon I will be able to share some of their pictures and thoughts via this blog. But you can see a clip from the 10 p.m. news from 1/20:

http://arkansasmatters.com/media_player.php?media_id=215221#

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This past Saturday we held a retreat for our Greek organizations. Each semester we make sure we cover the basics, but this year we wanted to have further conversation about the direction of the groups. The first part had the students talk about why they joined their groups, and then to look at the values of their organizations.

We then looked at the Dateline NBC special done after the death of Michael Davis in 1994. The students then discussed the disconnect between the espoused values of Greek Life, and their reality. We ended with a values continuum, where students physically stood along a line based on their level of support for a statement (i.e. it is harder to be a member than a pledge/aspirant).

So we spent 3 hours together and had some good conversation. Hopefully it will promote better action as well.

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Thursday, I went down to Arkadelphia to watch the women play Henderson State University. Henderson is a Division II school, but last year we lost by one point to them. That would have been a massive upset. So we were hopefully we could take them out this year.

They didn't take us lightly. In fact, they had someone scout the team TWICE before this game. That's a great compliment in and of itself. So they were well prepared, and when you get ALL of the calls from the refs, you can guess what happened. But this was a good experience so the women learn not to worry about the calls and simply play their game. This will definitely help at tournament time.

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