A new ad campaign for a local college featuring a picture of a black man holding a basketball sparked controversy as well as a response from the school.
The advertisement for Harcum College, a two-year independent residential college located in Brwyn Mawr, Pennsylvania, shows a black man in a business suit holding a basketball while standing under a hoop. It also shows a woman with a stethoscope dressed in scrubs.
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The ad is featured on 23 SEPTA buses throughout the city. After seeing one of the ads, Nyasha Junior, an assistant Hebrew Bible/Old Testament professor at the Howard University School of Divinity, questioned the marketing campaign on Twitter. Other Twitter users accused the campaign of perpetuating stereotypes about black men.
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Junior asked for a response from Harcum College. A spokesperson for Harcum eventually responded and offered to speak with her on the phone. Junior demanded a public statement however. The school then tweeted a response from Urick T. Lewis, the Interim Dean of Harcum.
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“Harcum College is extremely proud of our diverse student body, where 42% of our students are African American,” Lewis wrote. “We're also proud of our Sports Management program, which is popular and growing quickly. Finally, we often seek to promote our basketball team, which reached the final four last year in the NJCAA National Tournament.The bus ad that some people have discussed on Twitter highlights many of these achievements.”
A spokeswoman for Harcum also released a statement to NBC10 regarding the controversy:
As a diverse campus community, we are sensitive to and aware of the problems that arise from racial stereotypes in advertising. Our advertising regularly portrays a variety of male and female students in different majors and with different ethnic backgrounds. The one image of a student with a basketball is a tribute to and a promotion of our sports management major and our basketball team that went to the NJCAA Final Four championships last year. At Harcum, we believe students like the one depicted in this ad can succeed at both athletics and academics.
We're even engaging with our student leaders on this matter, as the review of the differing opinions expressed on social media is a valuable opportunity for them to learn and present their own views on how different people view the same ad and reach different conclusions.
Mustafa Rashed, the president of the Bellevue Media Group, which created the campaign for Harcum, also released a response.
“For Harcum’s campaign, the imagery speaks to whom the program promotes and who we’re trying to recruit – college bound students who want to pursue a career in the business of athletics,” Rashed wrote. “I imagine if it was the business of Aeronautical Space Design Management the imagery would have been of a rocket ship. Or if it were in the business of retail management the imagery would have shown a retail store manager. What a scandal that would have been. But it is not rocket science is it? Right? It is Sports Management, the business of sports. And showing a young (seemingly prosperous) man as an executive makes perfect sense. It is thoughtful, connecting and appropriate. And it takes a huge leap to turn this into any kind of negative stereotype as has been suggested.”
You can read his full response here.
