Senator Rogers Talks about Preserving Athletic Tradition

Senator Rogers to present the resolution. Thank you madam president and members of the senate, if I may have your undivided attention. That’s my teacher hat I’m putting on now, but I think its an extremely important resolution that I have before you today and it’s a resolution preserving Gary Roosevelt’s athletic program. I think many of you are aware of the fact that Gary Roosevelt is now a turnaround school. They have turnaround school operators that come in and *** a school, looking at the curriculum and then they come up with a plan that they present to the department of education and the state board of education in terms of how they proceed. Now during the observation year, which is this first year, the turnaround school operators will decide based up capacity, understanding of the well-established programs that benefit both students and the community; these things will be taken into consideration. So there has been at least some public statements by Edison Learning, that is the turnaround school operator, that perhaps the athletic program at Gary Roosevelt is up in the air. I think all of us are aware of the part that athletics play in a community and the part that athletics play in the life of athletes. Sometimes it’s that school competition that brings a community together, sometimes it’s the performance of an athlete that gets him to have a college scholarship that he would not be able to get and so these things are very important, especially to a school like Gary Roosevelt. I’m not too sure if you’re familiar with the history of Gary Roosevelt but Gary Roosevelt was built, opened in 1930 in Gary specifically for black students. There had been some problems in terms of their receptivity in the other schools in Gary so this school was built especially for them, and for us. Lee Calhoun, who was an Olympic hurdler who I grew up with in public housing, he eventually became extremely famous as a hurdler in fact my brother who went to the university of Iowa, was so taken with Lee Calhoun, that he started participating in athletics and in effect what happened was my brother got a scholarship to University of Iowa which allowed me to be able to go to college and so those are some of the things that happen not only in a city like Gary or a school like Gary Roosevelt but also it happens in some of the other communities around the state. I’d like to quote *** Barnett, who played 14 seasons in the NBA and won titles with both the Knicks, with the Knicks, and he said, “It is a devastating decision that could have a terrible impact,” said Barnett who has a doctorate in education from Fordham University. Of course, he was on the 1955 team at Roosevelt that won a state championship. In Education Committee, we have been studying and talking about Class Basketball and so I approached Mike, I said “You’re talking about class basketball, back home in Gary Roosevelt I’m talking about basketball period.” The community should be involved in this and when I look at community and some of the definitions of community, it said that its members often have a common cultural and historical heritage and I think all of us in Indiana, no matter what kind of a school you come to, rural, urban, black white, that is something, that is a tie that binds. So I’m wearing my black and gold today, Gary Roosevelt’s colors, not Purdue’s Senator Alting. I hope you will join me in saying yes to this resolution.