KU students and faculty have mixed feelings about the University’s efforts to recruit and retain students from minorities.

At a recent University Senate meeting, many faculty members said they thought the University could be doing a better job of racially diversifying the student population.

However, the number of minority students, or “students of color” as they are called by the administration, enrolled at the University has increased in the last 10 years. The number of minority students has decreased since the 10-year highs in 2004 and 2005, however the number of students enrolled at the University has also decreased since then.

“Students of color” is the term the University uses to distinguish the difference between students who are part of minority populations and those who are part of minority races.

The number of black, first-time freshmen enrolled at the University increased overall by 23 percent between the fall of 1997 and 2007. The number of Hispanic, first-time freshmen enrolled increased by the same percentage. American Indian and Asian enrollment increased by 65 percent and 57 percent respectively. The number of first-time Asian freshmen enrolled increased the most with a jump from 119 students to 187 students.

Jason Held, Minneapolis, Minn., sophomore, said he knew that the high price of out-of-state tuition made it hard for universities to recruit students of different backgrounds, so he was pleased with the level of racial diversity on campus.

Held said he would be satisfied as long as the number of minorities on campus was representative of the population of the nation.

According to the 2000 U.S. census, 66.4 percent of the population said they were white, compared with the 77.7 percent of KU students, according to the University’s fall 2007 statistics. The U.S. census reported that 12.8 percent said black, compared with only 3.4 percent of KU students; 14.8 percent said Hispanic, compared with the 3.4 percent of KU students; 4.4 percent said Asian compared with the 4.1 percent of KU students; 1 percent said they were either American Indian or an Alaskan Native compared with 1.3 percent of KU students; 0.2 percent said they were a Native Hawaiian or other Pacific Islander, which is not a category at the University.

The next U.S. census will not be taken until 2010.

Outreach programs and student groups

Stephanie Gomez, Newton senior and president of the Hispanic American Leadership Organization, or HALO, said she thought the University’s outreach programs were effective at recruiting minority students. She said many students who joined HALO had heard about the organization through the University’s outreach programs.

Koga Moffor, Overland Park junior, vice president of KU’s NAACP chapter and a member of HALO and the Black Student Union, BSU, said the University sent representatives to her high school’s career fairs but that people who attended schools which have high minority populations like Sumner Academy of Arts and Sciences, 1610 N. 8th St, Kansas City, Kan., which was originally built for minority students, and Schlagle, 2214 N 59th St. Kansas City, Kan., had told her the University did not visit their schools.

Moffor said the comments were merely hearsay but, “If KU doesn’t make the effort, they are not going to come.”

Maurice Bryan, vice provost of equity and diversity, said he thought the University needed to examine the areas where it recruits to determine whether it was maximizing its efforts to recruit students of colors from those areas.

Several black students, who did not want to be named because of the sensitivity of the subject, said they thought the University could do a better job of recruiting Kansas City area black students. They said the University would attract a much higher number of black students if it offered in-state tuition to minority students who lived in Kansas City, Mo.

Bryan said the University did not have the authority to decide if it should provide such an incentive. He said the Board of Regents or the state legislature would have to make that decision.

He said, when a city spread across two states, it is not uncommon that people who live in one state have to pay out-of-state tuition to attend college in the other state, even if they live a block away from the state line. However he said he personally thought Kansas and Missouri could help each other by exploring some type of reciprocal tuition relationship for students who live in the greater Kansas City area.

Studie Red Corn, president of the First Nations Student Association and a former student senator, said it was not just the administration’s job to recruit minority students. He said it was KU students’ responsibility to diversify campus as well.

“Diversity only benefits the University if people are willing to get out there and experience something new, though,” Red Corn said. “You can’t make people do that. People have to motivate themselves.”

Moffor acknowledged that minority student groups could do a better job of recruiting KU students by creating facebook groups or chalking, but that it was hard for her to find the time to engage in those activities.

She said the NAACP has had problems becoming a charted chapter of the national organization because it did not have 20 members who had paid their dues. Dues range from $20 to $30.

However, she said recently the BSU invited students from Lawrence High and Freestate to attend one of the group’s meetings and that she knew the black fraternities and sororities visited Kansas high schools as well.

Bryan said one of the University’s challenges was that it is very decentralized. He said there were enough outreach programs at the University, but the University needed to do a better job increasing the interaction among them.

Bryan said he was working on strategies to increase communication. He said one of his ideas was to create a meeting where people from different departments, student organizations and academic units who do not normally meet together would work on projects and share ideas. Bryan said he thought people were open to that idea.

Chancellor Robert Hemenway said he had tried to reach out to minority students by inviting the leaders of student groups to his home once a year. He said he wants “students” of color to know that campus is not the only place where they are welcome.

Moffor said she thought the Chancellor’s reception was a positive program because it allowed her to meet the Chancellor as well as other student leaders. Moffor, who has attended the reception for two years, said she enjoyed the Inspirational Gospel Voices performances at the receptions.

Moffor also said she appreciated the opportunities the minority groups received to present their organizations to student athletes.

In addition, Bryan said the University needed to increase the visibility of its programs so students and the state could see how much money and effort was being spent on the recruitment and retainment of minority students and that the efforts have been effective.

He said a recent example of increased visibility was the construction of the Multicultural Resource Center wing of the Kansas Union. He said the University needed to take on more projects like it. Moffor agreed that the MRC was an important improvement because it had more space than the old MRC.

Red Corn said students were lucky to have the MRC and that they should take advantage of it. He said he was pleased with the University’s efforts because some other schools do not have the resources that KU’s minority students have.

Lisa Kress, director of the Office of Admissions and Scholarships, said she did not know how much money the University spent on the recruitment and retainment of minority students. She said the Admissions Office’s budget was not broken down by function and that each of the University’s schools spent additional monies on those activities.

Gomez, president of HALO, said people who think the University’s outreach programs were not doing enough were not aware of the progress the programs have actually made.

“It’s really frustrating because it’s like, have you made the effort to find out what we are doing?”

Culture of the University

Gitti Salami, a professor of African art history and University Senator, said increasing the number of minority students at the University did not change the fact that the culture of the University was white. She said forcing minority students to accept white culture was not truly diversifying campus.

“We are diversified when we have let go of the entire power structure and rebuild something that is truly representative of global forces and not just the Western world,” Salami said.

Salami said the University could diversify students by forcing them to study abroad.

“We should take each student and drop them in a third world country for one semester,” Salami said. “Just place them there. Let them go through real culture shock. In order to experience diversity you have to first experience culture shock.”

Salami also said she did not understand why the University, which she said was supposedly a multicultural environment, routinely cleans up graffiti. Salami said graffiti was an expression of African identity.

Chancellor Hemenway said the University was trying to create a campus that students of any color can enjoy.

“Its kind of hard to think of having a beautiful campus when it is covered up with graffiti,” Hemenway said.

Bob Harrington, a professor in the department of psychology and research and education, said he participated in a Native American class at the University where he was the only non-Native American. Harrington said he expected there to be some Native Americans in the class, but not everyone.

“If we’re trying to teach about culture here, who else needs to learn about culture?” Harrington said. “I think these are things we need to look into. This is a good resource. Why aren’t people taking advantage of these opportunities? We have a bunch of classes on diversity, but students don’t take them. That’s not diversity.”

He said the class seemed more like a place where the Native American students could band together and express mutual conclusions about their culture and the University rather than a class where students were actually learning about the culture and from each other.

Harrington said he enjoyed the class, but it would have been nice if other students could learn about the culture as well. He said he did not understand why the separatism occurred. Harrington said he wondered if it was because others did not feel welcome, if it was about advertising or a simply a lack of student interest.

Bryan called Harrington’s experience a “small phenomenon.”

“His description of his experience is not the norm,” Bryan said. “It’s rare that we would have a class where it’s all people of color.”

Bryan said one way the University could improve the level of diversity on campus and its classes was to compare its programs to that of the other schools in the Big 12. He said if they had a program that seemed to be effective in recruiting persons of color, the University might adopt it.

Conclusions

Bryan said he did not think numbers could determine the amount of diversity on campus, but that it would be diverse enough when everyone felt like it was diverse.

“I think we all know the place feels very white, but I think we can get there,” Bryan said.

Johanna Lee, a Shawnee freshman of Asian descent, said that when she walked around campus, she heard students speaking many different languages and so she thought the University was diverse enough.

Bryan said whatever peoples’ beliefs were about the level of diversity on campus, it was important that increasing and maintaining the amount of diversity at the University stayed at the top of people’s priority lists.

“The danger is when no one talks about these things and then it just disappears from people’s consciences,” Bryan said.

Christine Kim, an Overland Park freshman of Asian descent, said she came to the University because of its pharmacy program, not for its level of diversity or because of its diversity recruitment materials.

“I don’t think about it that much,” Kim said of the amount of diversity on campus. “I don’t really care about it.”

—Edited by Jared Duncan