“We just don’t have that level of prestige,” says Charles Preston, a CSU student and Black Youth Project 100 organizer who has been working actively along with other students to raise awareness of the impending crisis and put public pressure on the governor to negotiate a budget. Preston, who is majoring in education and African-American studies, has a unique vantage point on this issue—he formerly attended Mizzou, which was rocked by widely-discussed racial justice protests in November. He started at Mizzou, but struggled as a student to cope with the culture; after being pulled over by police on his first night on campus, he went on to have “a horrible experience” in his words. But then “[I] paid off my debt, and came to Chicago State, where I found myself and my passion and really what I wanted to,” says Preston.

“I realize that that moment [at Mizzou] was important, and how difficult it is to organize at a PWI,” says Preston. “But that doesn’t mean that that moment was more important…There’s an immediate urgency. This is one of the biggest issues in Chicago right now and I don’t see that urgency from a lot of people for different reasons. Even the clergy in our community. It’s heartbreaking for me.”

Kelly Harris, a professor of African-American studies, says that CSU’s closing “would really leave the far South Side with basically nothing,” not only institutionally, but in the individual lives of its students. “We serve a population that’s at risk and comes from Chicago Public Schools. A lot of our students are single mothers, parents, and working people who are struggling to keep their head above water.” Chicago State is also a critical resource to its staff, many of whom Harris says are “ex-felons, people coming back from the military, single parents,” and others who would struggle to find other employment.

Harris shares Preston’s perspective on the relative lack of attention to the university’s plight. “[It’s] because Chicago State is in a poor community,” he says. “We don’t have the name of Yale or Mizzou or those other schools. In America, people aren’t concerned about things that happen in distressed areas until after the calamity. New Orleans, Flint….” Harris is worried that the broader public will ignore a poor black community’s calls for assistance until it is too late, allow a preventable disaster to materialize, and then mourn the damage after the fact. And CSU’s predominantly-but-not-historically-black status puts its students in a double bind: they don’t get the attention afforded to black students protesting at elite predominantly-white institutions, nor do they get the rallying cry of history, heritage, and brotherhood/sisterhood they might garner at an HBCU. “People who are from poor areas really are ignored or marginalized by the larger public,” Harris says. “We have to tell our story, let people know what we’re doing.”

Paris Griffin, the president of the university’s student government, is one of the students trying to do just that. Griffin, like Preston, is a transfer student. She began her college career at Southern Illinois University, but once she was expecting a child, she came home to Chicago to be closer to a network of support. The “very family-like atmosphere” at CSU allows her to be successful as a student while being successful as a mother, she says. “I’ve had access to opportunities that I didn’t have anywhere else.” Griffin received a scholarship to attend CSU, and this summer has an internship with Apple. “My experience has been really crazy,” she says. “It’s really flexible… if there are days I need to bring my daughter to campus, there are people that I trust. I don’t think I would have been able to thrive with my current situation anywhere else.” Affordable tuition, childcare, and flexible class times have made it easier for her to pursue her degree, while also participating in campus activities and living a full life as a student.

If the university closes, or if students are unable to continue attending because they are not receiving state aid, Griffin says “it’s going to take a lot of opportunities away from people who are trying to become independent of the systems that are holding us.”