A Break for Lonely Losers

Upward Bound is the federal antipoverty program's teen-age counterpart of the preschool Head Start program. Now two years old, it has taken 20,000 high school students whose grades failed to match their ability, sent them to 220 college campuses for summertime remedial work in an attempt to prepare more children from low-income families for a college education. One survey of the 1965 summer group shows that 80% did enter college and only 23% failed to finish their first year--roughly the average freshman-class dropout rate. The program, says the Office of Economic Opportunity's Sargent Shriver, has been "surprisingly effective."

The success is not universal. Colleges were allowed to plan their own programs, and OEO officials concede that some bungled the job. One project in San Francisco, for example, fell apart when it took in too many Negro "black power" advocates. Moreover, even the most imaginative ventures in precollege training have had their moments of pain and anxiety for the Upward Bounders. The program's national director, Richard T. Frost, argues that such disappointments and failures were inevitable in an experiment dealing with what he calls "the losers," whose intelligence is often indicated by "how imaginative they are in getting into trouble."

Panic. One of Upward Bound's more successful programs is Western Washington State's Project Overcome, which carefully guided 50 teenagers, about one-third of them Negroes, through two pleasant summers in Bellingham before inviting them to join the 5,400 regular students on campus last fall. After the cozy summer tutoring in such basic subjects as reading, history and math, most of the 50 panicked amid the confusion of registration and the difficulty of lengthy reading assignments. An Indian girl took one look at the teeming campus, grabbed the next bus to her home in Yakima, 234 miles away, and had to be coaxed back. The group's first-quarter grade average was 1.8, and most were placed on probation. Jim Shoaf, who would like to become a jet pilot, is one of those on probation, seems more interested in his motorcycle than in his studies. A Negro girl stared at the Fs on her report card, ran to her dormitory room and attempted suicide.

Yet 36 of the 50 seem certain to finish the year, although about a dozen are still on probation, and others regard the program with ghetto-bred cynicism. One of the brightest, but most belligerent white boys, calls the project "kindergarten for grown-up kiddies--Mouseketeer meetings, all that conforming jazz." He says he wants to make it "on my own," hopes to transfer to Southern Cal. Youths from the Negro ghettos have had the roughest time adjusting, partly because nearly all-white Bellingham is strange to them. Concedes one faculty adviser: "Bellingham at night, when the time comes for recreation, is no place for a Negro."

Self-conscious about their status as "P.O." (Project Overcome) kids, the students have clung together, taken over the college's Viking Union music room as their own. "In classes I feel like I'm labeled from Project Overcome," explains Bernda Bacani. "I'm not supposed to know anything--it just hangs on me, and I can't speak out." The label also sets the students apart when they return to the ghetto. "Your old friends don't shut you out completely, but your status has changed," says Michael George. "When I talk to them and a question comes up, they say, 'Let's ask Mr. College.' They put you up there where you don't want to be--all alone."

"I Love It." Returning home, some project students have come up against a familiar and classic problem of higher education: parents who seem to resent the rising hopes of their children. One Negro boy recalled: "I couldn't seem to talk with my mother and father. It was like being on the wrong side of a looking glass. I could hear them and see them and they me, but I couldn't touch them."

Despite the pain, most of the project students consider the experience their first real break in life. A few are making top grades, and two were elected to campus office. Walter Smith, a budding sculptor, has also been inspired to start a novel. Warren Shale, a Quinault Indian, shows promise in art. "I love it, love every day of it," says Michael George, a Seattle Negro. "We'll live a better life. That's what they tell us, and we believe them--oh, we believe them." Even those who do not complete college have been lifted by the project. "They'll read things they've never read before, see things in their lives they wouldn't have seen otherwise," predicts Mrs. Antonia Shular, assistant director of Project Overcome. Agrees one of the boys: "I realize how lonely my world is--but now I can help myself."

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