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Spring Gala Featured in Chicago Tribune

Historic Fraternity Will Hold A College Signing Day For Students

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When accomplished athletes decide what professional team they will play for, there is a grand announcement with applause and cheers.

Although recent high school graduates involved in the Kappa League aren’t touting their athletic accomplishments, they still deserve a ritual where they can share their good news, said Rodney Gore, the director of the Kappa Leadership Institute.

So on Saturday, the 28 graduates in the program will gather at a formal gala to formally announce what colleges they have decided to attend. The teens will stand in front of a table and declare in front of the 250 people gathered where they intend to spend the next four years studying, Gore said.

“We hear news about young men that do all the wrong things,” he said. “This ceremony encourages our young men and gives them some momentum to push forward for another four years. We’ve worked to help get them here, but they will face even more obstacles and challenges as they go forward.”

The Kappa League is a national mentoring program sponsored by Kappa Alpha Psi, a historically black fraternity.

The program targets at-risk African-American boys entering high school and offers them intense tutoring, counseling and mentoring to ensure the boys are able to finish high school and get accepted to college. The boys receive college prep exam tutoring, writing coaching, are taken on trips to visit campuses and absorbed into a network of professional, college-educated black men who relate to their circumstances, Gore said.

The “Achievement At Its Best” gala will be held at the Legacy Chicago at 11901 S. Loomis Street in West Pullman from 6 p.m. until midnight.

The main purpose of the event is to acknowledge the teenagers for overcoming incredible obstacles so they could finish high school at the top of their class and make it to college. The event gives the students’ parents, friends, mentors and their community of support a chance to applaud the teens in a big way.

“We have a 100 percent high school graduation rate and 100 percent of them go off to tier-one colleges,” Gore said. “We’re extremely proud.”

The teens in the rigorous mentoring program all come from low-income families that sometimes face devastating challenges and troubles, Gore said. For example, one of the graduates has had to overcome the deaths of both of his parents. Another had to work part-time to help support his mother, who is the single parent of five children.

Each year, the group mentors about 120 at-risk African-American males from the Chicago region.

Local and national statistics show that African-American males are disproportionately at risk of falling behind in school, dropping out and ending up in the criminal justice system.

According to a 2010 Bureau of Justice Statistics report, 4,347 of every 100,000 black men were in prison or jail. A 2011 study found that black men are also six times more likely to be a victim of murder throughout the country.
Meanwhile, the national high school graduation rate for black males in 2009-10 was only 52 percent, statistics show.

Because the men in the Kappa League have avoided becoming negative statistics, they deserve to be applauded, Gore said.

“It is so important for us to encourage and create options for young men from disadvantaged environments,” he said. “We see young men on the corners and mock them. But sometimes they don’t’ have many other options. We believe the more options they have to choose from, the more likely they are to chose to live a productive, successful life.”

lbowean@tribune.com
Twitter: @lolllybowean

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