On Diversity and Reality

What are readers to make of an African American engineering student’s lament (Daily Cardinal, January 27, 2010) that ”No one else looks like me” in his large 400-student lecture course?

What he says is a reality on a campus where African Americans constitute only 2.9 percent of the enrolled student body. It is a reality in a state where only one percent of African American high school graduates are viewed as “well prepared” for UW-Madison. It is a reality on a campus that for more than four decades has tried desperately though unsuccessfully, and at considerable expense, to recruit more African American students.

This is not the end of the story. African American students face a similar reality after graduation. Relatively few of their fellow employees will look like them. This is especially true for engineers of African American descent because they are so few of them .

So, what is to be done? Is it likely UW-Madison can suddenly become much more successful in recruiting African American students with a reasonable likelihood of graduating within six years of their admission? Probably not.

Should UW-Madison downplay its efforts to recruit African American students knowing the isolation they feel because their numbers are so few? Many people on campus -administrators, faculty members, and students, plus members of the African American community-would strongly object to any alteration in UW-Madison’s long-standing policy that favors the admission of African American applicants.

If greater numbers of African American students cannot be recruited and if the admission policy cannot be changed, then African American students will continue to feel they are alone and out of place on this campus. That is the reality. What is the solution to this seemingly intractable problem?