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December 07, 2004
Campus responds to minority representation
It only takes a glance at the university’s website to see that Hamline has an interest in promoting itself as a diverse institution. But is the admissions office attracting students of color in the right way? And is the campus doing enough to retain them once they’re here?
One of Hamline’s main institutional goals is to recruit and retain students of color, and a crucial step toward this goal is representing diversity in promotional materials. Some students believe that even over-representation shouldn’t be faulted.
“I don’t think [over-representation] is a bad thing,” said senior John Aurentz, whose picture appears on the front page of Hamline’s website. “I think it’s more about just targeting than over-representing. It’s a positive, progressive move, like a lot things at Hamline.”
Carlos Sneed, assistant dean of students for diversity and community, agrees.
Unlike white people, who usually have the “white privilege” of going almost anywhere in America and feeling comfortable, he said, people of color have no such assurance.
If prospective students of color don’t see people like them in the university’s promotional material, he said, they may shy away from campus.
Sneed also believes, however, that if only one student of color is included in a group photograph, the message is sent that a such a student will be isolated in a predominantly white environment.
Senior Krystal Klein believes that there are dangers inherent in over-representing minorities, because it gives students a false impression of campus life.
“If you are one student of color in a class, then your classmates look at you to answer questions about what it’s like to be student of color, or what’s ‘the black perspective’ on this, what’s ‘the Asian perspective’ on this,” said Klein. “That’s what happens when you come to a university that is predominantly white. But if you come to a university that has 10 students of color in a class, then you don’t have to answer those questions. That’s why it’s important that we accurately represent students of color in our promotional material.”
Although Klein recognizes that the admissions department works hard to recruit students of color, she fears that over-representation may be as harmful as under-representation.
“There’s being ignored and then there’s tokenizing, and when we’re over-representing, we’re tokenizing.”
Said Klein, “The questions I would pose to admissions and Hamline are: Why do we want Hamline to be a diverse place? Is it because it benefits white students? Does it benefit students of color to come to an institution that is a lot whiter than they thought?”
Sneed said that while a lot of attention is paid to recruiting students of color, not enough time is spent on preparing the university for the realities of a diverse campus.
He said that he receives many complaints from students of color who feel mistreated by their peers.
“It’s unethical and unprofessional to bring more students of color in if the community isn’t ready,” Sneed said. “We don’t go to that next step to ask white students if they’re ready.”
Colin Smith, a student-of-color representative to the student congress, also questions the kind of environment that entering students of color face.
“I want to see the diversity that the school says we have,” he said. “The school is dedicated to diversity, but solely on paper and the website. Faculty and staff of color are virtually nonexistent here, because the school doesn’t pay or search for them enough.”
Colleen Bell, a professor in the conflict studies and women’s studies department, fears that students are being short-changed if campus life doesn’t reflect the diverse world they will work in.
“The whole idea that Hamline should support diversity because it makes us look good is a mistake,” she said. “If you’re limited to one culture, you’re screwed. Employers say that college graduates can’t work well across cultures, that they don’t work well in teams.
“If you’re going to [recruit students of color], you have to follow through.”
To Bell and Sneed, following through includes recruiting and retaining faculty and staff of color, more diversity training for the general campus population, and more money for the development of faculty, whose education in diversity, Bell claims, is woefully out of date.
“The faculty is old farts,” said Bell. “They haven’t been educated the way students need to be educated.
Everybody needs to be able to articulate what it means to them to be in a place that has diversity of people, faculty, staff, and students.”
Posted by msveum at December 7, 2004 10:57 AM