By Freeman Hrabowski, Special to CNN

(CNN) - Fifty years ago this month, I chanced to hear the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. I was a mild-mannered kid with a speech impediment and a love of math. That day, I was focused on solving math problems, not issues of justice and equal rights. But King broke through to me when he said this: If the children of Birmingham march, Americans will see that what they are asking for is a better education. They will see that even the very young know the difference between right and wrong.

I chose to march, and found myself among hundreds of children jailed for five terrifying days. Mind you, I was not a brave child. But even at 12 years old, I believed and hoped that my participation could make a difference.

Twenty-five years later, I had made my way to the University of Maryland, Baltimore County. My colleagues and I had an outrageous dream: Perhaps a young research university - just 20 years old - could alter the course of minority performance in higher education, particularly in the sciences. Baltimore philanthropists Robert and Jane Meyerhoff shared our vision.

And now people ask: What magic have we hit upon that has enabled us to become a national model for educating students of all races in a wide range of disciplines? How did we - as a predominantly white university with a strong liberal arts curriculum - become one of the top producers of minority scientists in the country?

Read Hrabowski's full column

Atlanta (CNN) - Past, present and future came together on a thunderstorm-filled Sunday, as President Barack Obama received an honorary doctorate and gave the commencement speech at historically black, all-male Morehouse College, where the Rev. Martin Luther King and many other prominent African-Americans spent their formative years.

After opening with several one-liners, and more smiles than we've seen from him in the damage-control-filled recent weeks, Obama delivered a serious message to the class of 2013.

Photos: 2013's big-name college commencement speakers

During a speech rife with both personal and historical references, the president invoked a past full of challenges, often resulting from racism, but noted that African-Americans need to break free from that past to succeed in a globally competitive economy.

"I understand that there's a common fraternity creed here at Morehouse: 'Excuses are tools of the incompetent, used to build bridges to nowhere and monuments of nothingness,'" Obama said.

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New York (CNN) - Columbia University is seeking to alter the 1920 charter of one of its graduate school fellowships which is still limited "to persons of the Caucasian race," though the fellowship has not been granted in years.

The Lydia C. Roberts Graduate Fellowship is, at least on paper, available to white students "of either sex, born in the state of Iowa," according to a Columbia University charter from 1920.

The university filed an affidavit in Manhattan Supreme Court last week to support a petition from JPMorgan Chase, the fellowship's designated trustee, to change the whites-only provision, according to Robert Hornsby, assistant vice president for media relations at Columbia.

Other restrictions for the fellowship stipulate that a recipient may not concentrate their studies in "law, medicine, dentistry, veterinary medicine, or theology." Recipients must also agree to return to Iowa for two years after completing their studies at Columbia.

The fellowship was established in 1920 by Lydia C. Roberts, an Iowa native, with a $500,000 donation to the university upon her death. However, the school stopped awarding the fellowship in 1997 for several reasons.

It's not clear when the university stopped adhering "to the race-related terms of the gift," Hornsby explained.

"The university administers gifts in accordance with applicable law and (anti-discrimination) policies, and it has long been the university's practice to disregard donor restrictions that violate either the law or our policies," he added.

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All the passengers had non-life-threatening injuries, and the students - some with blood on their dresses - said they had a great time at prom.

By Dantel Hood, CNN

(CNN) - For more than a century, Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science and Art in New York provided free education to all admitted students. But the school isn’t immune to the money crunch forcing tuition increases at colleges across the country.

In April, Cooper Union announced that it will start charging tuition for undergraduate students matriculating in fall 2014. Citing a $12 million annual budget deficit, the Cooper Union Board of Trustees will scale back the full scholarship it has traditionally awarded.

At least 50 of Cooper Union's nearly 1,000 students have been occupying President Jamshed Bharucha's office on the seventh floor of the school's Foundation Building. The students organized a sit-in to protest the decision to charge future undergraduate students half the cost of tuition, up to $19,000 a year.

This week, they painted the office’s lobby black as a symbol of their protest. Cooper Union junior Troy Kreiner said it was an extension of a demonstration by architecture students, who painted another lobby black to protest tuition.

Cooper Union has provided free education to its students since 1859. Various investments, such as real estate in the Chrysler Building and elsewhere in Manhattan, have provided the funding in the past. Those investments, however, have since fallen short of covering the school’s long-term costs.

“The Board thoroughly analyzed a wide range of options, mindful of how the full tuition scholarships have been central to our identity,” said an April 23 statement from the Board of Trustees. “In the final analysis, however, we found no viable solutions that would enable us to maintain the excellence of our programs without an alteration of our scholarship policy.”

Senator wants deep discounts on student loans

Although tuition increases won’t affect current students, protesters say they're motivated by a lack of transparency in the administration and their hopes for future students. They insist that the change in cost undermines a tradition of meritocracy that sets Cooper Union apart from other private institutions.

Saar Shemesh, a 21-year-old transfer student, said from inside Bharucha’s office, “The way I see it, these students that will be coming in 2014 … they don’t have a voice yet. They’re still 16-year-olds in high school right now, and if we don’t fight for them, nobody will. … We’re already here. We don’t have to fight to be here, but we need to fight for the people that aren’t here yet and that have dreamt of coming to this school for their entire lives, like we had.”

While students initially entered the building to present a letter to the president citing a vote of “no confidence” on behalf of the School of Art, Bharucha exited the building before being confronted by the protesters. Upon arriving at the empty office, students changed course and organized a sit-in, stating that they would remain until receiving a response from the administration. The response they got was not what they were looking for: a threat of expulsion for all students involved in the protest. This threat is currently being reassessed.

“First and foremost, we want him to resign,” Shemesh said of the issues with Bharucha and the administration. “We don’t feel that he’s fit to run the school. We want tuition to be revoked. We want more transparency with the Board of Trustees, potentially a new Board of Trustees. We want mostly transparency and fairness. We want representation of student voices in administrative policies and processes for decision-making. We want a more open institution.”

Accepted to college? Time to negotiate financial aid

Kerry Carnahan, a spokeswoman for the advocacy group Friends of Cooper Union, shared a statement announcing the group’s solidarity with student protesters: “We have come to realize that the President and board have their own financial, ideological priorities that don’t add up with what the majority of us understand Cooper Union to be – ideas that don’t align with the ideals the school was founded on.”

(CNN) - Spring may be graduation season, but the most coveted rite of passage for many teenage girls is the prom.

From the latest craze of "promposals" to the minute-by-minute social media broadcast of it all, the rituals of prom form a throwback cultural primer called "How to be a young woman." Teen girls are competing relentlessly to be queen.

The queens of prom are the conventionally beautiful, the wealthy and the heterosexual - always passively waiting to be asked.

Isn't prom just a fun dance that hardworking students deserve? Sure, but it's also an event where girls internalize damaging cultural messages. Those who are exalted on this "once in a lifetime" night offer an object lesson in how modern girls are expected to look and act.Prom is a cultural report card of sorts on how well, or not, young women are doing.

Here's what a bright 17-year-old girl learns as her lace gown drags behind her into the school gymnasium:

She learns that she must have money to attend the prom

Prom was modeled after the debutante ball of the old days, where elite girls formally announced they were ready to date, while a hand-picked bevy of suitors watched. Today, prom is still a rich girl's party.

In 2013, prom spending will rise on the shoulders of a more robust economy. Families who plan to spend money on the big night are expected to drop an average of $1,139. All that cash might be good for business, but it disadvantages the poor and working class girls who can't keep up. Meanwhile, boys can get away with renting a tux for less than $100.

Read Simmons' full column

Who was your graduation speaker? Do you remember what he or she said? Share your memories in the comments, tweet us @CNNschools or find us on Facebook!

(CNN) - To erase some of the emotional scars left behind from the December shooting massacre at the Sandy Hook Elementary School, an advisory board wants the building torn down and replaced.

The Sandy Hook Task Force voted unanimously late Friday to recommend to the Newtown, Connecticut, board of education to build a new school on the site of the existing building.

Adam Lanza burst into the Sandy Hook Elementary School on December 14, 2012 armed with a semiautomatic Bushmaster .223 caliber rifle and two handguns. He opened fire killing 26 people, 20 of them children, before taking his own life.

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(Bleacher Report) - There has been plenty of negative publicity surrounding quarterback Tim Tebow since being waived by the New York Jets last week, but his success playing in high school is now being used in an effort to gain expanded rights for homeschooled athletes in Texas.

According to Matt Wixon of the Dallas Morning News, the Tim Tebow Bill has been passed by the Texas Senate. Provided it is passed by the Texas House of Representatives and then signed into law, it will allow homeschooled athletes to compete for local high schools in Texas.

The bill is named after Tebow because the polarizing quarterback was homeschooled in Florida. Despite that, Tebow was allowed to play for Nease High School in Ponte Vedra, Florida, according to Ben Rohrbach of Yahoo! Sports. Tebow led Nease to a state title, was named Mr. Football in Florida and went on to win two national championships with the Florida Gators.

Read the full story from Bleacher Report