Students ‘Overwhelmed’ by Tuck’s Black History Month Celebrations

HANOVER, NH – As we all know, March is Black History month, and Tuck’s celebration has been, as usual, impressive. Tuck students report feeling ‘excited’ and ‘overwhelmed’ by the school’s ubiquitous and pervasive Black History Month celebrations, according to dozens of interviews carried out by the Profit over the past two weeks.

“Any other school might have matched Tuck’s decision to feature African-American guest speakers in every class,” explained Diversity Conference co-chair and diversity postergal Sarah Duggan.  “But what other MBA program would replace all the portraits in its residence halls with photos of the most prominent African American professors in our school’s history?”

The school administration went so far as to paint a mural on the new dorm illustrating seminal moments in Tuck’s African-American culture.  The artwork includes depictions of dozens of epic moments that sent shockwaves through the Tuck MBA program and down Tuck Mall, including:

• In 1909, Professor Jay McGintry assigned students a case study that included reference to a Dutch financier who historians later discovered might have been 1/8^th South African.

• In 1927, an African-American man named William stopped in Hanover on the way to visit a friend in Canada.

• In 1941, the Admissions department accepted a student with an African-American sounding name (but was later relieved to learn he was just from the south).

• In 1957, a progressive Tuck student played a John Coltrane record in the Buchanan dorm (which at the time was scheduled for replacement “next year”).  The student’s expulsion was ceremoniously overturned in 1994, to demonstrate Tuck’s solidarity with the civil rights movement.

• In 1962, Tuck admitted its first African American, by mistake.

Tuck’s recent focus on embracing diversity has brought the school to a leadership position among other top MBA programs nationwide, and recently representatives from HBS, Sloan, Chicago, Kellogg, and Wharton trekked to Hanover to study the school’s deep history of diversity, in hopes they could emulate its success. 

To mark this month’s celebration, Tuck Dean Paul Danos vowed to boost Tuck’s African-American student population to a level “10% higher than ever before.”  The additional student’s name is Kyle.