News-Record.com

Tuesday's No. 2 editorial.

It’s as hard now as it was a year ago to understand why Greensboro College and the Warnersville community can’t come to terms over the college’s planned sports complex on the old Price School campus.

This ought to be a winning proposition all around: a new facility for the college, some kind of tangible, lasting tribute to historic Price School, and productive partnerships between the college and the community.

But, judging from the comments of protesters, who picketed the college last week, it won’t come easily. The roots of distrust run deep.

So does the proud history of Warnersville, which was settled by ex-slaves, and Price School, which was founded in 1922.
Some residents not only question the plans of Greensboro College, which bought the Price campus in 2005, they seem to want no part of them. “I still feel that everything that Greensboro College is doing is wrong,” Otis Hairston Jr. told the News & Record’s J. Brian Ewing.

But which is the better future for the site: sports practices and games? Or the silence and darkness of an abandoned lot, which could breed crime?

Meanwhile, not everyone in Warnersville speaks with the same voice. “I think it has a lot of good possibilities, for helping the youth, for helping to preserve the history,” James Griffin, president of the Warnersville Historical and Beautification Society, said of the college’s plans. Unfortunately, a two-hour meeting last week between the protesters and Greensboro College President Craven Williams failed to break the impasse.

Williams’ efforts appear sincere. But more concrete ideas on how Price School might be honored as part of the sports complex’s design would help his cause.

For their part, the protesters shouldn’t accuse the college of racism while sneering that “a white school” shouldn’t be part of their neighborhood.

Finally, even as they continue to disagree, at least the parties keep talking. And that’s reason still to be hopeful.