40 at-risk students challenged to dream big dreams

Teresa Hinds

Tuesday, Nov. 26, 1996 | 11:59 a.m.

Nine-year-old Robert Cofer wants to be a lawyer.

Before Monday, sending Robert and his 6-year-old brother Marion II to college would have been a hardship on Pam Cofer.

"It would have been a struggle for us," the boys' mother said. "My husband is retired, and I'm not working right now, so it would have been hard."

But all Robert, Marion and 38 other children who attend Bracken Elementary School and live in the Weeks Plaza housing project have to do is graduate from high school and their college educations are free.

The 40 at-risk Bracken students were the first group of "dreamers" inducted into the Las Vegas chapter of the national I Have a Dream Foundation during a ceremony at UNLV.

The national organization's founder, 77-year-old Eugene Lang, was on hand for Monday's ceremony, welcoming the children into his "family" of 15,000 "dreamers," 2,500 of whom are enrolled in 273 colleges and universities across the country.

"On the big day that you graduate from high school, a college education is yours if you want it," Lang told the students. "School money is already sitting in a trust fund."

Lang, a New York businessman, philanthropist, educator and civic leader, first made the offer of a free college education to underprivileged grade school students in 1981.

Addressing sixth-grade graduates at Public School 121 in East Harlem, N.Y., Lang faced a crowd of largely underprivileged minority students, 75 percent of whom were projected high school dropouts.

"I realized the normal comments of commencement were completely inappropriate," Lang said. "I found myself in the very unusual state of being uncertain of myself. I didn't know what I was going to say."

Then, Lang said, Martin Luther King Jr.'s "I Have a Dream" speech came to him and he told the students, "Graduation day is a day to dream about your future. The only way to do it is to get an education."

As he told the East Harlem students they had "climbed the first significant rung of the educational ladder" and encouraged them to continue with middle school, high school and college, he said, "It occurred to me the height of hypocrisy was to talk about college in this stream of consciousness to these children whose expectation of college was zero."

It was then that Lang made the first of many promises of a free college education for underprivileged children who finish high school.

Over the next 15 years, Lange worked with scores of people to refine the program into what it is today: an organization that works with housing authorities and school districts to identify, by the fourth grade, at-risk students to promise a free college education in exchange for graduating from high school.

As Lang made that same promise to the 40 at-risk students from Bracken, he rattled off the names of prominent black Americans.

"All of these people have become great leaders, and each one of you can, too," he said. "I know as I look out at you, I may be looking at a future Jessie Jackson, Colin Powell, Rosa Parks, Martin Luther King or even a Bill Cosby. I hope you believe that, too."

"The remarkable thing about this program is that it is built on love and dignity of all students," said Superintendent Brian Cram.

"In the next few years, they will realize what a significant thing this is in their lives."

Bracken Principal Wendy Roselinski agreed with Cram.

"I don't think they understand this just yet, but they're going to understand as time goes on. This gives them a goal, their progress will fill in the pieces."

She has high hopes for the students and acknowledges that it will take parental support, in addition to the commitment from community leaders who are sponsors of the Las Vegas foundation, to make the dream a reality.

She noted that "50 percent of the parents didn't show today."

"It will be a challenge," she said. "But on the other hand, the other 50 percent did show and they've been wonderful."

One of those parents was Donald Brown. His three children, 9-year-old Jason, 7-year-old Doris and 6-year-old Shimarcus, now have the opportunity to get a college education, something that Brown, a graduate of Chaparral High School, didn't have.

"I don't have to worry now about having enough money to send them all off to college," Brown said. Going to college will allow them to "make something out of their lives.

He hopes the I Have a Dream program teaches his children discipline.

"Going to school should be the most important thing in their lives, more important than going outside and playing," he said.

Pam Cofer, who has an associate degree in business, also has dreamed of a college education for her two children.

"Ever since I carried those little boys, I've wanted them to play professional football and go to college," she said.

Eugene Lang