The portrait of race on college campuses is changing in America.
So much so that Capricia Camacho–the German-born daughter of an African-American mother and a Puerto Rican father–refuses to put an “X” in any box when asked to check her race.
“I’m not going to deny any part of me,” the DePaul University freshman said as she relaxed in the Lincoln Park campus cafeteria with her academic mentor, Justyna Jerzewski, a Polish-born immigrant of Ukrainian parents, and Patrick Taba, an Asian-American senior.
“Race and culture is much deeper than the label,” agreed Taba. “If I check off Asian, what does that say about me being Filipino? We are Korean, Japanese, Chinese. We are too diverse to pigeonhole.”
University officials agree the image of race is no longer painted in black and white.
Campuses in Illinois and Northwest Indiana saw lines of color expand years ago as Hispanic and Asian/Pacific Islander populations began to rise. New U.S. Bureau of the Census statistics indicate these races are among the fastest growing minorities in the nation.
By the year 2010, about 24 percent of the students through age 18 are predicted to be of color. By 2050, whites are expected to make up a slim majority in the nation.
Two major institutions, the University of Illinois at Chicago and Northeastern Illinois University, are seeing this shift, with white undergraduate enrollment under 50 percent.
Population changes have helped contribute to the diversity factor, said Salme H. Steinberg, president of Northeastern Illinois, but the multicultural metamorphosis is not solely the result of demographic swings.
“There’s been a tremendous commitment to it,” Steinberg said. “You have to create and keep an environment where diversity is celebrated and respected.”
Students picking a college are apt to consider diversity as well as class size and course selection. A reflection of the “real world” is what Lisa Griffiths of Chicago looked for three years ago when she landed at Calumet College of St. Joseph, a regional liberal arts commuter college in Hammond, Ind., with a student population that mirrors its multiracial environment.
A cultural display caught Griffiths’ eye, as did the panorama of faces the Caucasian student saw on campus. “I have a passion for people,” Griffiths said. “Because I’m going into the field of education, I want to learn as much as I can from everyone.”
Northeastern junior Tim Hill said it takes a mere five minutes to see people from almost every ethnic background on campus. “You see it in their dress, their skin color, facial features. It’s all very obviously different.”
In fact, the mix scared him a bit when he first arrived, Hill said. Now, however, he calls Northeastern “Everyone’s university” and counts individuals from Laos, Puerto Rico and Libya as friends.
“I’m white, and I come from a Christian background, but I can offer a sign of peace in Muslim, Hebrew and Spanish.”
What worries Hill, though, are observations of racial and cultural groups banding together, rather than fanning out into the college community.
“It’s definitely important to have a sense of one’s own background and culture, but unless everyone comes together as Americans to promote a culture that is mixed–and of this land, and not necessarily of the many–it could end up being a scary world,” he said.
To increase diversity on campus, North Park University offers scholarships geared specifically to people of color. Two admissions counselors are specifically assigned to recruit African-American and Latino scholars. The university also recently expanded its cultural center to include Middle Eastern, Latino, Africana, Korean and Scandinavian studies.
“What we want is a student body that is reflective of the real world, so that would mean an intentional effort to recruit people of color because they will bring a perspective to the classroom that otherwise would not be there,” said John Baworowsky, North Park vice president of admission and financial aid.
As enrollment rose 17 percent since 1994, the minority student population at DePaul increased 43 percent.
“We are growing by design: Ten years ago, the freshman class would have been 600 students. This year, we enrolled 600 students of color. We couldn’t have done that had we not intentionally been investing in our capacity to grow,” said David Kalsbeek, DePaul’s vice president of enrollment.
DePaul also gets Title IV grant money to advise and tutor first-generation, low-income undergraduates and help them move onto research-oriented graduate programs.
Northeastern’s Steinberg recognizes that diversity is easier to achieve in an urban setting than a community surrounded by cornfields.
“There is more a reflection of the city where we live and not that isolation,” she said. “Right around our campus there are some important Korean and East Asian Indian neighborhoods. It heightens one’s sense of community, rounds it out and works as an advantage for us.”
But what about colleges that are far from the urban crowd? Or public universities in states like California, where voters passed Proposition 209 in 1996 to ban affirmative action? How do these institutions achieve diversity?
They get creative, said Patricia Marin, program associate with American Council on Education’s Office of Minorities in Higher Education.
The University of California Board of Regents voted to guarantee a place in its system for the top 4 percent of the state’s high school graduates. The 4 percent rule, expected to take effect in 2001, has been viewed as a way around the affirmative action ban and a reversal on declining black and Hispanic student admissions.
Indiana University School of Education’s policy center published a bulletin in 1999 that said its researchers found the “merit index” to be an effective diversifier amid controversy over racial preference in the admission process. The index is developed by subtracting the average Scholastic Aptitude Test score for a student’s high school from his or her individual score. Students of low-scoring high schools with a positive merit index would go in the applicant pool, as would students with an absolute SAT score.
Miami University in Oxford, Ohio, not only offers more than 40 privatelyfunded scholarships to minority students, it just concluded a $300,000 “I Am Miami” advertising campaign to recruit and keep minorities on campus. The campaign was credited, in part, for a 28 percent rise in minority applications: More than 9 percent of this year’s incoming freshmen are minorities, compared to 8 percent in 1999.
“The bottom line is that people are thinking outside of the box, if you will, to say, `OK, we still have these goals–it’s necessary for the educational experience of students, so we’ll come up with ways to make sure we have a diverse campus,”‘ Marin said.
In their zeal, though, institutions can get in trouble.
The University of Wisconsin has taken heat recently for a marketing effort in which graphic artists digitally imposed the image of a black student in a photo showing a crowd of football fans to help make the school appear more racially diverse. The picture, used on the cover of a 2000 application form, led to an apology to the student, a brochure recall and a firestorm of discussion about ethics and publishing techniques.
“Certainly, it indicates the pressures that are there,” said Holly Wissing, spokeswoman for Miami University, which relied on students, volunteers to boot, for its ad campaign. “There is a lot of competition to get minority students because they add so much to the university. It’s a balancing act: You want to show a diverse campus to attract students, but you don’t want to misrepresent the students, either.”
Why the push?
Students, faculty and business demand diversity, according to recent studies by the American Council on Education and the Business-Higher Education Forum, a partnership of the ACE and the National Alliance of Businesses.
“It’s a multicultural world,” said Art Burton, director of minority affairs at Columbia College of Chicago. “And it’s getting smaller, so to be comfortable within it is a big plus. People in corporate settings are looking for students with this type of broad-based expertise now.”
TANYA REED
When Tanya Reed traveled from her Milwaukee home to the Blackstone Hotel in Chicago to sing at the Jazz Showcase, the larger-than-life pictures of artists and dancers lining the Michigan Avenue walls of Columbia College drew her in.
“I saw the diversity. I heard the sound shots,” Reed said. “I could tell this was a place that emphasized hands-on experience for performers, not only theory.”
The 21-year-old black senior is concentrating on vocal performance and music management at Columbia. She said her first impression about a melding of diverse, creative minds at Columbia was on target. The proof of diversity reverberates inside Columbia’s Hokin Center, where Reed helps organize live performance art with students.
“We play music and take requests, and basically, we end up with a whole spectrum of music from different backgrounds and genres,” she said. The music, she said, sometimes takes the multiculti flavor of hip-hop–a “true art form that’s not just white, not just black, not just Latino. It, like life, is a mixture.”
PATRICK TABA
Patrick Taba’s parents tried so hard to assimilate to the American culture when they moved from the Philippines that their native language was no longer emphasized in their Skokie home.
Taba has opted to take a different course at DePaul University. The 23-year-old marketing major is using college as a springboard to strengthen to his Filipino identity and promote the culture with his peers.
He has been a mentor of Asian-American culture to incoming freshmen and has trekked with them to places such as the Korean Business District, Indo-American Center and Chinatown. Taba helped launch “Lantern,” a literary magazine designed to serve as a forum for the Asian-American voice. “We live in such a diverse, global community, we need to understand how to be culturally literate,” he said.
Though Taba believes DePaul has become more diverse, the senior struggles with subtle hints of unacceptance from fellow students, even racial slurs. “Sometimes I feel I am not considered as American as my counterparts,” he said. “Yet I was born here.”
“Tomorrow,” he asks in a Lantern poem, “Will I break free from these mindcuffs?”
JUSTYNA JERZEWSKI
Justyna Jerzewski looks like she is part of the majority.
But the daughter of Ukrainian parents was born in Poland. Her family moved to the United States when she was 5, and Jerzewski is not a U.S. citizen.
“I have no problem getting along or fitting in,” the DePaul University biology major says. “But I’ve never hidden the fact that I was not born here.”
Nor does Jerzewski, 19, hide the fact that English is not spoken in her home. Or that she teaches a class in the Ukrainian Village neighborhood on ethnicity.
Jerzewski also is a mentor in the university’s bridge program, helping incoming freshmen with low college-placement scores or grade-point averages.
Jerzewski’s role helping students adjust to DePaul suits her, as she understands what it’s like to live life in the middle.
“I’ve been surrounded by Ukrainian culture all my life, so I’m learning about different views, moral issues and beliefs too,” she said.
“That’s important because if you learn about different cultures and accept them, you won’t see the racial problems later on.
“It’s like, this is the millennium: Get over it.”
DORELIA RIVERA
Dorelia Rivera is proud of her Mexican-American heritage.
So much so, the 26-year-old Northeastern Illinois University student has a major in Spanish literature, a minor in Mexican-Caribbean studies and finds time to take flamenco dance lessons.
“Fifty-two different languages are spoken at Northeastern, and our auditoriums are filled with people from all places and races. We sit next to students from China, Korea and those who are Ecuadorian, Filipino, Hispanic or Latino,” Rivera said. “That experience, alone, can help break prejudices and preconceived notions: It makes you grow and become more aware of other cultures, ethnicities and languages. The more you’re willing to learn, the better person you become.”
Rivera believes affirmative action and minority recruiting should remain intact on college campuses, as they help keep a level playing field in the world of academia.
“We still come from different backgrounds, no matter what way you look at it. We didn’t all grow up with the same advantages or disadvantages.”
ANDREA CHINNASWAMY
Andrea Chinnaswamy didn’t realize she was different until she unpacked her bags at a Maryland boarding school.
The daughter of parents who came to the United States in 1969 from Madras, India, Chinnaswamy grew up in a Chicago neighborhood with a blend of African-Americans and Hispanics. She fit in, and race was rarely discussed. So when white high school students in Maryland began asking poignant questions about Chinnaswamy’s cultural heritage, she found out she loves being different.
“I like North Park University because I do stick out,” Chinnaswamy said. She gets opportunities to defuse stereotypical questions like, “Where’s your dot?” or “What tribe are you in?”
“I am Indian, but I wear jeans and T-shirts like everyone else. I’m very American, but my mind-set is still very much with my culture,” said Chinnaswamy, 19, who is majoring in English and Bible studies.
“We’re taking strides at North Park to be diverse, and that’s awesome,” she said. She is concerned, however, that diversity seems to be the new buzzword.
“That’s OK, but it shouldn’t be the primary focus: The focus should be on education, and I’d rather describe diversity another way.
“How about expanded horizons?”
CAPRICIA CAMACHO
Capricia Camacho typifies an emerging face in America, and with it comes some stinging comments.
“I hear, `You have to be black if you do that.’ I get, `You must be white if you’re doing that,'” the 19-year-old DePaul University student said.
The other students may be joking, but Camacho said the comments hurt.
Camacho is proof that people do not always fit one racial or cultural category. Her father is Puerto Rican and her mother is African-American.
“I was born in Heidelberg, Germany,” she said. “Diversity is much more than a label.”
For that reason, the pre-med student looked for a college that was not homogenous.
“I wanted to go to a school where I could learn from others, and they could learn from me,” she said.
If there is one thing Camacho would change since she’s come to DePaul it is the tendency of people of one race to huddle in college cafeterias and lounges.
“I like learning from different cultures,” Camacho said, noting that one of her most memorable experiences was a dinner she had in the home of a Japanese friend.
