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Dwight Watson, education department chair, said some fault may lie with the university’s admissions office.

“Admissions offices are notorious about not misrepresenting populations, but being strategic about how they represent populations,” said Watson.

Associate Vice President of Admission Steve Bjork said his office tries to accurately represent the student body.

When asked if he thought Hamline admission material accurately reflected the student population, he said, “Yes. Anyone can go through the material and count the faces, and they’ll see that they reflect the actual diversity of campus.’’

However, an examination of the university admissions brochures “All the Difference,” “The Many Shades of Success,” and “The Road Less Traveled,” as well as the front page of the Hamline website, revealed a strong slant toward representation of nonwhite students.

Nonwhite students were represented 41 percent of the time in portrait and group shots where faces were clearly identifiable. According to 2003 university enrollment data, nonwhite students comprise only 20 percent of the university’s population.

The student models who appear in the website and admissions brochures are recruited in a variety of ways.

According to Jen Thorson, assistant vice president of marketing and communications, the photos that appear on the Hamline website were taken from a 2003 photo shoot after a campus-wide call for student models.

The five photos that appear on the front web page were recommended by Larson Design, Inc., the company that designed the website.

Bjork said professional photographers will take unstaged photographs of students on campus and will often line up classrooms with faculty for “staged” photographs.

Mann, prominently featured on the front page of the “Many Shades of Success” brochure, said she participated in the photo shoot “specifically because it was a diversity brochure to get students of color to come here.”

“To get students of color to come, you need some pictures of students of color,” she said.
Watson agreed.

“All people of color who operate in predominantly white spaces know how to navigate. If [appearing in a brochure] is going to generate more people like them, they will help.”

He added that the admissions office’s material still needs to be more clear.

“The viewbook and website might give the impression that there might be more students of color than there actually are,” Watson said. “The admissions office needs to be up-front with the numbers.”

He suggested that more unstaged group shots would help, in order to show what the population would look like at any given event.

“It’s best to get people in their natural element,” he said.

Mann suggested that the admission office needs to be sure to separate “diversity” material from general material so that people aren’t surprised.

Bjork, however, said anyone can receive an accurate picture simply by visiting campus.

“Almost all students visit campus first before coming to Hamline,” he said. “Anybody who’s visited campus should be able to see and recognize what kind of diversity is on campus.”