At 4, She's Hampton's Littlest Dorm Resident

By Erin Hill
Black College Wire

Photo credit: Stephanie Johnson, Hampton Script As the child of the dorm director, Ma'at Dawson Brown is used to being on the go.

Kennedy Hall is a dorm for female freshmen on Hampton University�s campus, but one of its residents plays with dolls and likes watching the Powerpuff Girls.

Ma�atSin�Atun Dawson Brown (pronounced Ma-aht-sen-ahten) -� Ma�at for short -� is the youngest, and without competition, the shortest Kennedy resident.

Ma�at�s name means �unique one of justice,� said her mother, Amani Dawson, the dorm director. �The name was given to her in a naming ceremony and has to deal with the 42 principles of Egyptian culture. I tell Ma�at she has a lot to live up to.�

Ma�at, born Dec. 21, 1998, in Milledgeville, Ga., lives in the building with 46 first-year college women whom she calls "the girls."

�They�re like big sisters for her,� Dawson explained. �She really thinks she�s a college student.� Some nights, Ma�at is seen playing patty-cake and eating dinner with "the girls" in the lobby. And observant Ma�at takes notice of the girls� gentlemen callers.

�All these girls can fit in the lobby, but when their boyfriends come over . . . � the 4-year-old said as she shook her head and rolled her eyes with a bashful smirk. �A lot of people,� she said, sighing.

Ma�at spends a lot of time with the girls because they often volunteer to keep an eye on her.

�Students constantly help me out,� Dawson said. �I feel blessed. The girls say, �I�ll watch her. Go do what you have to do. We got her.��

When the girls go home for the holidays, Dawson said Ma�at gets cabin fever.

�She�ll say, �Mommy, it�s too quiet. There�s nobody here.'�

In the Dawson apartment, a quiet moment is a rare thing.

Ma�at is used to being on the go and doesn�t get to bed each night until about 11 p.m., her mother said, recognizing that most children Ma�at�s age are in bed way before then.

But Ma�at�s schedule has been like that far longer than the child can probably remember. Her mother was a graduate assistant in Virginia Cleveland Hall, another campus dorm, when Ma�at was just a little more than a year old. Dawson has been Kennedy�s director since 2000.

Ma�at is a student in Delle Abramson�s pre-kindergarten class at Hampton University�s Child Development Center. Everyone calls the teacher �Ms. A.�

Ms. A sees Ma�at for about eight hours a day and said the child is no more talkative than she is quiet.

�She�s a little bit of both,� Ms. A said. �But children know when they are being observed,� hinting that Ma�at slightly altered her behavior because she knew she was being watched.

Ma�at wore jeans, a white, button-down shirt and small hoop earrings. Her three-inch braids, with neon-green-and- purple ponytail holders and barrettes at the tops and bottoms, swayed from side to side as she lined up for one of her favorite parts of the day, lunch. The meal: Corn dogs, salad and corn. And to drink, water. Ma�at can�t have milk like the other students because she�s lactose intolerant.

Conversation topic: Favorite songs and colors. Ma�at said hers are pink and blue. �I like Sean Paul and Little Bow Wow. �We playin� bas-ket-balllll,�� she sang, trying to snap her fingers.

Ma�at caught all her classmates� attention when she changed the subject to talk about her two-month stay in Bangladesh last summer.

�I went to Bangladesh to see my grandma and my grandpa,� she said. �I have two grandmas and one grandpa. And the one grandpa lives with my grandma. Not the one here (in Virginia), the one in Bangladesh,� she said through a mouthful of soggy corn dog bread.

�It was a long time to get there. Like this long,� she said, stretching her arms wide so that her body resembled the letter "T."

�I saw poor people that don�t have any money,� Ma�at recalled. �And my mommy gave them money, and that was their money. And this lady came back two times, and my mommy didn�t give her any more money.�

�Hold on,� a stunned Ma�at said when she saw a teacher passing out more corn dogs. �Ms. Perry, I didn�t get a corn dog!�

After Ms. Perry pointed to the corn dog still on Ma�at�s plate, a sly smile came across the youngster�s face.

�Oh,� she said as she continued talking with the other kids.

Ma�at and her mother catch up on Saturdays, since that is the only day the two are able to spend quality time together.

�Saturdays are her day � Ma�at Day,� Dawson said. �Anything she wants to do, we do.�

�She spends more time with other people than she spends with me,� Dawson said. �I feel guilty when I have to drop her off at school in the morning, then she might see me for 15 minutes if I have class, and not see me again until 10 o�clock at night.�

Ma�at�s teacher, also a single mother earning a degree, is supportive of the �good job� Ma�at�s mother has done with her thus far.

�By her being a dorm director, having a child on her own, working on her master�s . . . that�s not easy,� Ms. A said. Dawson said Ma�at probably knows more students around campus than she does.

�They say, �Oh, you�re Ma�at�s mom. You look like her,�� she said. �What happened to her looking like me?�

Because Ma�at sometimes hands out meal tickets to students, she knows a lot of the cafeteria workers. She also knows all the Hampton students who volunteer in the Child Development Center. All "the girls" who have lived in Kennedy since fall 2000 know Ma�at.

This may be the last school year Ma�at can regularly hang out on campus with the college students.

Her mother receives a master�s in special education from Hampton�s graduate program in May and said she wasn�t sure whether she�ll be a dorm director next year. Dawson said she told Ma�at that the two of them might be lonely without the girls.

�She says, �No we won�t, Mommy. We�ll just invite them over,� Dawson said, imitating her daughter�s petite voice.

The dorm residents are known around campus as the �Kennedy Queens.� Dawson said she hopes Ma�at will one day be a Kennedy Queen herself. But for now, among a house full of queens, Ma�at said she is happy with her title, "Princess Ma�at."

Erin Hill, a student at Hampton University, is copy editor of The Hampton Script.

Posted Nov. 21, 2003