By: William Ashanti Hobbs, III, Ph.D.
Changing Our Narrative
Once upon a time (2005 actually), a young professor with shoulder-length locks sought to bless the masses with his brand of book knowledge, street sense, and personality. He longed to inspire young scholars and most importantly, save scores of young Black men and women from self-destructive paths. His vision of it all seemed so clear the day he walked across the stage for his diploma. He wanted students to sing his praises and mention him in the same breath as Geoffrey Canada, Dr. Stephen Perry, and all the other great educators and social activists. He wanted some witty aphorism of his to leave some young soul no choice but to copy it onto their cell phone for dark days ahead. He wanted to be to others what others had been to him. That was his vision when two young men came into his world. Amazing, how quickly it all went wrong from there.
Rodney*
Rodney leaned his short frame over my desk to show pictures of sturgeon and pike fish in a National Geographic magazine article about the Caspian Sea. As I fought off a contact high (Rodney never met a joint or blunt he didn’t like), I noticed how he turned the pages with such care. It was the kind of tenderness that hinted at other editions being stashed away in his dorm room. Rodney rested his chin in the palm of his hand. “Man, the library here got stacks of these! Ain’t nobody even checking these jawns out.” After being reminded that the word jawn was his native Baltimore slang for not only magazines but virtually any noun on the planet, I couldn’t help but ask, what was up with him and marine life. After all, he was at Virginia State University, an HBCU (Historically Black College and University) that had no program for marine biology. Rodney did not even look up from the pages. “It’s just so blue and quiet.” He ran a fingertip across a page as if he could caress a dolphin as it swam by. “You hit the right blunt, you can get that feeling. Just like this, just be floatin’…”
Rodney grinned and scratched at his low-cut hair. “VSU was the only school that would take me, plus it’s outta state. I had to get far as I could from North Ave, know what’m sayin’?” I did. Being that I was a Miami boy with half of my childhood spent in Atlanata, I longed to move outside of the Florida/Georgia reach of my family and carve a new existence for myself and my family. Something away from the specter of personal haunts and implied limitations. And I did, finally. I assured Rodney that the best way for him to make the most of his career at VSU was to refrain from being so “smoked out” in his dorm room that he was missing classes, my college writing class in particular.
DeSean*
DeSean, a corn-rowed, lanky kid blew the potential of a solid southpaw jab at the neighborhood boxing gym. He did so to stack shoe boxes of cash from moving heroin and pills by his grandmother’s row house. The tipping point was concussing a 13-year-old girl from a pistol-whipping for holding back on money earned for moving his product. “You s’posed to shoot hoppers (incredibly young street drug dealers) for that. They know it, too. That’s the rule. You come weak like that and won’t nobody pay up.” He always leaned in heavy on the fact that he did not shoot her, as if flooring an unresponsive brake pedal. “I just wanna see about this college shit.” He weaved in talk of rules so much in class discussions that kids thought he had dreams of being a police officer, ironically.
I stayed on DeSean regarding his future at VSU as well, promising him that he would get nowhere fast in college if he kept showing his underwear from refusing to pull up his tattered sagging jeans. Several professors complained to me about it. I assured them I would get him to pull up his pants. After all, I was the new, young professor on campus and I bragged that this was exactly what my talent was, above all else. I had my work cut out for me. DeSean damn near showed the boxers from hip to mid-buttock day in and out without fail. No one, for lack of a better term, showed their ass as much as DeSean. With a wide black leather belt cinched at the top of his thighs, he took the sagging fashion style to an extreme. Cafeteria workers argued with him about it as soon as he showed up standing wide-legged, holding a tray with one hand and the waist of his pants with the other. We went back and forth about it, especially when he pulled his layered polos over his pants as if that would satisfy me. I promised him the trend would die in a few years and he would cringe when he looked back at photos of himself.
DeSean and Rodney were from two different classes of mine. Rodney was from my 11 o’clock class, when he got himself up and together enough to attend. DeSean was in my three o’clock class in the afternoon. I arranged for them to meet in my office. Having already heard of each other from other mutual acquaintances, they got along well enough. I suppose that would be an understatement; they both came to me later that Spring semester with questions of places “to chill” for Spring Break. I felt like not only a professor to them but the cool, respected uncle that was too old for them to hang out with. I told him about Freaknik in ATL and highly-filtered accounts of my past participation in such festivities. They chuckled and elbowed each other: Hobbs be wildin’. My department chair walked by my office’s open door, eyed DeSean and Rodney and then nodded at me over her reading glasses. Yes, those two need a good talkin’ to. And that was that, as far as I was concerned. I was officially that go-to kind of professor who could reach students others couldn’t. I had the touch. Not only were DeSean and Rodney two of the first students to officially visit me during my office hours that first year there, but they were, in my eyes, the perfect candidates for my mentorship. Their other instructors began to email me to tell them to do work. Their advisor even asked to meet with me to discuss the best way to connect with them. I grinned so hard at those emails, even rocked back forth while re-reading them. I eventually forwarded them to my private email. I still have them.
To Be A Blessing
Rodney and DeSean’s grades improved in my class. I figured they improved in their other classes as well when I got a call from DeSean’s grandmother thanking me for “stayin’ on him ‘bout his books.” This is where I got more of the story of his hustling days back in Baltimore, of his leaving town owing people money because of it. Grandma had seen him through juvenile detention, school suspensions, chain-smoking, pants-sagging, hard-faced young men casting shadows on her stoop in the middle of the night demanding they had “bidness” with him. Her voice tickled the ear with a guarded Southern twang I couldn’t place, but that exhaustion in it was unmistakable. She was a frustrated grandmother who had been blindsided with the strain of parenting in the middle of a war zone, parenting meant for the younger mother and father neither she or DeSean ever discussed.
“You a blessing to him, Dr. Hobbs. Sure would be nice for DeSean to hang out with you some. Ain’t nothin’ here like that for him, no safe place to speak of. He talk about you a lot.” I felt like I was floating in that way Rodney described. People who had never met or seen me were counting on me to do my thing and redirect lives. I assured her I would do what I could within the constraints of my own time with my then-wife and two boys, who had just moved from Florida months before to a house less than twenty minutes from campus.
Rodney and DeSean went out of their way to connect with me more often, particularly about the upcoming spring break. “Is it true that everybody gotta leave campus for the break?” asked Rodney as he looked out of my office window toward Foster Hall. I imagined he did not care to part too long from his National Geographic magazines. “I guess,” I answered, having just been on board the prior fall semester.
DeSean nodded to my computer playing Snoop Dogg’s “Drop It Like It’s Hot” at low volume. He then checked his phone. “You don’t know no local shawty I can lay low with?”
I pulled away from faculty emails to clarify. “You mean, a girl I presume?”
They both laughed. DeSean almost fell over in his chair. “Uh yeah, nigga.” Forever traversing between my familiarity and my being an authority figure, he straightened up, jokingly. “Yes, Dr. Hobbs, a female of a local variety, a thick one that can cook.”
“I thought your game was tight, as much as I see you trying to get phone numbers in class. It’s almost 7 to 3 out here females to males.”
“We can find us a Motel 8 and take over some block in this Bama town…” Rodney looked over at me, waiting for my full authority figure mode to kick in. It did. I raised an eyebrow. Rodney chuckled. “Dang Hobbs, I’m just playin’.” Of course, he was. I could see by then that he was an odd kid from a very tough neighborhood, one who had more than enough close calls yet still would get eaten alive if left in the wrong place for too long.
“Your house big like The Cosby Show ain’t it?” He said it as if smelling bacon cooking to round out a plate of scrambled eggs and pancakes.
My back stiffened. Where was he going with this? “Not really.”
And then, they both got quiet. I just looked back over to Rodney, staring out of the window. He had this way of studying passersby like they were ants. “I ain’t trying to go back home.” He shook his head. “That’s a wrap fuh sho’.”
“Spring Break’s for college kids most of all,” I offered. “Make some plans, seriously. Y’all running out of time now.”
DeSean sucked his teeth and closed his eyes. “Money tight.”
Rodney laid an overhead forearm onto the window. “Me, too.”
I went back to my emails. “Y’all figure something out. Do it, soon.” For some reason, I had the feeling that they both looked over at each other for a moment after I said it. Some sort of knowing that went right over my head. The things we miss.
Later on, I heard talk of some sort of a mandatory date for all students to leave the dorms for Spring Break, most likely that Sunday of the break. Things were being cleaned, fire alarms were given a run-through, something of that sort. At any rate, I was more than surprised when I got a call around 1:30 am on Tuesday of Spring Break, with Rodney slurring and coughing on the other end asking where I lived.
“Rodney, man… where are you?” I sat up in the bed, annoyed. He coughed again and chuckled. I rubbed my eyes. “What’s going on?”
“We good. We just riding around.”
My back stiffened again. I looked over to make sure my wife was still asleep and then focused on the voices in the background. They were definitely in a car. There were more than three. All guys.
“I just thought we could see you tomorrow, me DeSean and uhhh.”
“And uhh” meant more kids. No one had given me much of a primer on establishing the boundary between home and the campus. With it being that late at night, nobody had to, because I was asleep. “You rolling with a crew of people and… this is my time with my kids, Rodney.” The more lucid I became, the more I could hear the edge coming up in my voice, the one that sounded like my father’s.
“Yeah, Dr. Hobbs but –”
“I’m sleep and y’all called me for all this?” My wife stirred and now was awake. She lifted her head from her pillow. Who is that? I shook my head and motioned her to go back to sleep.
“Help us out though.”
I sat up and put my feet on the floor. “Help?!” Amiri, our little one, gurgled from the baby monitor. I tempered my voice to a yell of a whisper. “Y’all need to take your asses home, now! This is getting old. Have your work for me when you get back. Tell DeSean the same.”
Rodney mumbled something and hung up.
Amiri began to cry. I trudged into the kitchen for a bottle. Who the hell doesn’t know calls at almost two in the damn morning are strictly for emergencies?!
I stood over the bassinet feeding Amiri his bottle. My brain went hot as I watched the beaming headlights of a passing car cross over the room through the blinds. Now, before I could get back to sleep, I would be explaining to my wife that it was students calling me this late. Some unwanted conversation would follow on whether students should have my number at all.
I received another call later on during Spring Break from DeSean while I was in a movie theater. I was standing at the concession stand to get popcorn and soda for the family to watch Mission Impossible III when my phone rang. I pounded the counter with a fist so hard when I saw DeSean’s name on the screen the popcorn shifted across the counter. We had finally found a sitter to watch Amiri so we could get out for a while for a movie. Ashanti, our oldest son began to question me as to who was calling. I stammered, trying to reach for my wallet. “It’s just kids at school?” I rang again.
“Who, daddy?”
“It’s… Just grab the sodas.”
I had to go to the bathroom. People were behind me in the line. And this kid is calling me on the phone for what?!
These intrusions! And so unnecessary! Why can’t these damn boys enjoy their lives before they get jobs and families and wish they had free time?! I looked back at the phone. DeSean hung up before I answered. I remembered sighing with relief about it and hurrying the family into the theater with the popcorn and drinks. This was of course before I learned more about the context of the call.
Throughout Spring Break, 5 students were found in the dorms days after the mandate that all students were to leave. Three were from Baltimore. DeSean and Rodney were two of them. They all were fined and sent home upon being discovered. Both DeSean, Rodney and another boy of the five were killed over Spring Break it turned out, each in separate incidents. All three were shot to death in their neighborhoods. DeSean had called me, apparently, barely half an hour before being chased down and shot to death at a gas station by his grandmother’s rowhouse. His grandmother left two messages on my phone. I missed the first and did not have the heart to answer the second. The way she howled that he had been wanting to talk to me, perhaps for advice to avoid the situation that cost him his life, made my blood run cold. My shame from being so thankful for not bothering to talk to DeSean kept me from ever calling his grandmother back.
Rodney was shot twice while getting something to eat at a Checker’s fast-food spot. Two factions of guys got into it. The bullet wasn’t even meant for him. He wasn’t even in either group. One of his friends told me about it. I never connected with his family. The fallout with DeSean’s grandmother was enough for me. I can only surmise that DeSean and Rodney knew the possibilities in Baltimore, possibilities they must have felt that I was aware of it but didn’t deem important enough for my time. Faculty came to me for further details when class resumed as if I knew and attended the funerals. I asked other students who lived close to any rowhouse areas for further information. One confirmed that DeSean did owe someone heavy money as the date to leave the dorm drew closer. It reminded me of his grandmother saying something about him owing somebody money.
The other Baltimore students gave me a deeper understanding of the rules of certain neighborhoods in that area. Many came to VSU knowing it was best to stay indoors when home during any break, be it they were “in the game” or not. Only fools post up on stoops and sides of buildings as they used to back in the day to prove they had not “changed.” The rule was that the neighborhood sensed when you had options, some resource the rest couldn’t get to, or some other place to be. The neighborhood can smell it when someone (especially boys) suddenly had something to lose. DeSean and Rodney had their pride and did not want to force their situations on me. College life had been strange enough fit for them already. No wait, they did try to get through to me. They tried to and I just didn’t get it. Guess I wasn’t as cool and street-savvy as I thought.
Retrospection
My summer and following fall classes were a bit more somber. I lost a bit of my swagger and playfulness. After some soul searching, I began opening every class with some sort of philosophical saying to discuss (of which I still use today). I changed the ringer on my phone too many times to count. Weeks later, I grew so tired of the sight of my phone that I changed to another long before any offer of an upgrade came. Telemarketers called me during that summer and fall and I would sit in my car, in my office or on my rotting sundeck and serve penance on my new phone, quietly suffering through to every pitch’s end.
I tormented myself with questions and fits of second-guessing after telemarketing calls or playful moments with my sons. What the hell else could I have done for Rodney and DeSean? Rented out a hotel for them to stay in? Allowed them and their two unknown friends to crash in my newly-arranged living room? Called someone over Room & Board at the university to make some exception to let them stay in the dorms? Maybe I could have met them someplace the day after Rodney called. How hard could that have been? Perhaps I would have caught wind of the scope of the situation and come up with something.
All I knew was DeSean and Rodney were supposed to have reached the finish line in cap and gown, getting choked up at the podium about the dreadlocked professor that saw something in them. After all, that was my vision for my career. I realized that perhaps that was the issue, it wasn’t about my simply seeing something in them, it was about the university, my family, and the world, seeing something in me ultimately for doing so. It was about my validation, due to my past. Perhaps it meant too much to me professionally to be recognized for helping them. It just should have been about being given the talent to connect with people and doing what I could with it.
I was strutting around as if I just knew the struggle of every inner-city kid’s life, that there was nothing more for me to learn or consider. No one couldn’t tell me I wasn’t Dr. Hobbs, the at-risk student whisperer in residence. I stayed current on the music, the humor, the slang, the vibe, but couldn’t even pick up on the signs of a misfit and soft-hearted block lieutenant crying out for help. This, of course, needled me even more so since my little brother had disappeared over six years ago by that time (and has never been found since). It felt as if I had some six-year-old venomous bite that had blistered up into my consciousness, only to be lanced by what happened to Rodney and DeSean. Echoes of the last conversation I had on the phone with my brother leaked into my quiet moments for the next few months. Like Rodney’s call, that too was a late-night attempt of me trying to give some well-placed tough love. I was supposed to get through to my brother to stop running with the wrong crowd. I was supposed to talk him out of selling any more weed. I was supposed to hurry and move out of grandma’s house to get an apartment so he could leave ATL and sleep on my couch or anywhere I could offer so he could get himself together. Rodney and DeSean’s deaths put me back in the fourth pew of my brother’s mock funeral again. Staring at that portrait of him with no casket on the altar to accompany it. I had failed. Again.
Office hours became unbearable. I spent a lot of my lunchtime alone for weeks behind a locked door with red eyes blazing, picking at half-eaten meals. After grading some papers, I occasionally tested my resolve by scrolling down my phone’s list of past calls and staring at the date and time DeSean tried that night to reach me.
Same Vision, Deeper Purpose
Things eventually improved. Shining moments I hoped for came when students began to demand my class and refused to take any other. Some began to acknowledge me as having made a great impact. Others came back for homecoming, years after graduating, for my advice about their careers and lives. The vision all came to fruition while I wasn’t looking for it. It all came when I was too immersed in the work itself.
The highs and lows of this job demand it be more than a job, more than grading bad papers and people straightening their posture upon hearing of your occupation. You have to be clear about your intentions though. Nothing brings that home like students you’ve taken under your wing that are suddenly killed, drop out, or take some harrowing path that makes you question whether you should spend more time writing and publishing or angling for the next administrative advancement. The concept of such a loss is just that, a concept, one that can dog the conscious when activists claim such intelligence is far too removed in ivory towers to be of any use. This where many wrestle with the gray areas of trying to guide futures, between knowing the statistics of situations and the experience of getting “into the field.” Venturing beyond the empirical invites gray areas like this one with Rodney and DeSean, where being right, being wrong, and where one may never know blend into each other.
There is little preparation for professors who work with a large population challenged with such at-risk situations. What’s worse, many in that population are first-generation college students, so even well-meaning family members may not have a firm grasp of what they deal with on a daily basis.
I have moved on to teach at Florida Memorial University since then, another HBCU and have held the position of department chair of the Arts & Humanities department for several years. I can now foresee moving further into administration or consultation to help others navigate how best to serve this population. The position must be directly connected to student success, one where I can enjoy teaching a class on occasion to keep a pulse of the unfiltered thoughts, fears, and dreams of students. In doing so, I can stay connected to faculty that can easily lose their way upon realizing losses like those with students like Rodney and DeSean await regardless of how one may play their cards. I would remind and demonstrate to such faculty that there is nothing quite as fulfilling though, as heading to campus anyway, determined to make their mark where possible, regardless.
