Perspective: She grew up believing college was a 'scam' and a 'rip-off.' Let’s not prove her right.
By Theresa Vargas Theresa Vargas Local columnist who previously wrote for the local enterprise team about poverty, race and people with disabilities. Email Bio Follow Columnist May 18 at 5:07 PM If Astra Armstrong’s life were a play, the opening scene would show an elementary school playground in Southeast Washington in the middle of the night. There, a basketball hoop without a net would sit near a slide and a set of monkey bars.
Astra Armstrong, 21, graduated from Norfolk State University on May 4. Right now, we are in the middle of graduation season. Across the country, young people are tossing caps in the air and listening to speeches about how the future belongs to them. This happens every year, but this time, it feels different.
It doesn’t matter whether those wealthy students knew their parents were paying big bucks to up their SAT scores or fabricate their athletic abilities, college admission should not be a gift that can be bought. And if we make exceptions for any of these students, we are saying that it is. We are saying that cheating is okay, sometimes.
“A week later, she told me about an HBCU tour she wanted to go on,” Yarborough said, referring to historically black colleges. While still in high school, Armstrong took a Greyhound bus by herself to visit Norfolk State University and decided that was the place for her. In her four years there, she wrote a play and saw it performed, traveled to South Africa for a theater internship and spent time in Costa Rica, teaching literacy.
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