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• 1 2018-05-02T03:21:02-07:00 David Eisenman on Project 500 & BCL Ties 8 plain 2018-05-02T10:13:56-07:00 David Eisenman
  David Eisenman was the assistant dean of students during the years of Project 500 and played a huge role in education activism. He kept detailed records on Project 500 and recorded documents between school administration and activists on supporting Project 500 and proposals to make the program work. Eisenman worked with many students and interviewed them on their experiences at the school and listened to their proposals on how to improve the quality of education for African-American students. Eisenman wrote several letters to school officials detailing Project 500 and played a huge role in its success. Eisenman writes, "It is abundantly clear that this administration wasn't really serious about having a program for the poor, the black, the disadvantaged. Federal and state funding cuts are being unprotested; the admin. has for two months put us off in trying to get money from business, and as a result our program will suffer a 40% or greater cutback next fall." In another letter to the Chicago Tribune he writes about how the facts of the student protest at the Illini Union were exaggerated in order to negatively portray black students. He then put pressure on the school to give more aid to black students noting that they were more likely to come from low-income households and explained the rationale on why they needed more help from the University in attending college. The pressure he put on school officials made the school allocate more money to incoming African American students. He pointed out that these students would make more use of their college education knowing that going to college would be their only opportunity at a better future leading to higher income. This in turn would be a better economic investment for the school as they would gain more successful alumni to donate back to the school. Without David Eisenman's work African-American students would not have been able to attend the University of Illinois due to financial circumstances and would also have dealt with multiple legal issues due to the incident at the Illini Union in which he was able to defuse significantly. His work on dealing individually with students enabled Project 500 to succeed by tackling each student's problems and creating support systems to make sure African-American students succeeded in the classroom. 
  
  
  Tie to the BCL and Paul Schroeder
  Paul Schroeder supported Project 500 because of what it represented. He encouraged student mobilization on campus in order to demand improvement in education from University officials. He was a representative of the Educational Reform Committee and saw that changes needed to be made in the education system. He blamed the education system on not using enough critical thinking and the acceptance of authority. He also wanted to see student and administrative collaboration in improving the school. An example of this would be students and teachers learning together instead of learning just fro professors. This ties to Project 500 because it showed how student mobilization and education activism was able to bring change to the University of Illinois in improving education for all students. The BCL can also be related because it relied on the inspiration, concerns, and backgrounds of undergraduate students from Von Foerster's seminars. It required creativity and a student-centered education system that allowed students to question authority which Paul Schroeder urged students to do and what happened in the student movement of Project 500.