Simon Morrison ’04 wants to know why it took him so long to find a place to get a haircut in St. Paul.

“There is nowhere around here for black people to get their hair cut,” he said.

According to CMA Assistant Director Sedric McClure, domestic students of color may find the Twin Cities a less-than-welcoming place to spend four years.

“It can be a chilly environment for minority students, and I don’t just mean the weather,” McClure said. “When you come to an institution and there aren’t many people from your background or your culture, you have trouble fitting in.

“It can be as simple as, ‘where do I get my hair cut?’”

Multiculturalism has been a major issue at Macalester for years. The college seeks to promote “academic excellence in the context of internationalism, diversity and a commitment to service.” However, many students-especially U.S. students of color-say that while internationalism and service are adequately supported institutionally, support for domestic multiculturalism is lacking.

The lack of domestic diversity on campus provides compelling evidence for that opinion. The number of first-years of color has dropped two years in a row amid reports from prospective first-years that their hosts discouraged them from coming to Macalester. The Admissions office may need to step up recruitment of students of color-but retention of those students, and their satisfaction once they are here, is an equally important issue.

The Numbers

The current first-year class yielded the lowest number of students of color in 13 years. Yield is the number of admitted students who actually enroll, and the number for students of color last year was 20.5 percent, compared to an overall yield of 28.8 percent. This was a dramatic drop from the 31.8 percent yield two years ago. Yet, the number of students of color admitted has remained constant the last three years.

In the past 13 years, the admittance rates of U.S. minority students rose 45 percent at Macalester, compared to a 29 percent rise overall. The number of students of color who have chosen to enroll, though, has not increased concurrently. That number has fluctuated over the past 13 years, reaching peaks of almost 80 in 1992 and again in 1999. This year, the number dipped to 49, one of the lowest in 13 years.

This year’s first-year class has nine African-American students, also the lowest number in 13 years. The number of Latino students who enrolled is also at a relative low, with 13 first-years. The numbers of Asian and Native American students are each about average for the past 13 years, with 23 and four first-years, respectively.

Overall, 13 percent of all Macalester students are U.S. students of color, while 14 percent are international students. Out of the 41 colleges with which Macalester compares itself, the one with the highest level of diversity is Occidental, with 39 percent non-white students.

There is not a significant difference in the retention rates between students of color and white students.

Recruitment

• Admissions Office tactics

• Critical Mass

• The Multicultural Sampler

• Image versus reality

Recruitment has been a key part of the multiculturalism discussion, with some students charging that Macalester’s Admissions Office does not do nearly enough to recruit students of color.

The Admissions Office currently has two full-time staff members and three student workers who focus on multicultural admissions. The full-time staff members are Jessie Zapata and Niccole Coggins. Each of the ten Admissions officers has regular duties, plus a special focus or extra duties. Multicultural recruiting is Coggins’ and Zapata’s focus.

Their main duty relating to multicultural recruiting is to run all aspects of the three multicultural samplers every year. They also work with agencies, both in the Twin Cities and around the country, that specifically help underprivileged students of color attend college, run MASAB, and oversee multicultural recruiting in the whole Admissions Office. MASAB is a group of students that works with admissions and maks suggestions regarding ways to improve multicultural recruiting. It also provides hosts for PFs and volunteers for the Phonathon.

While it is also the duty of all officers to try to recruit students of color, the specific duty of Coggins and Zapata is to oversee the effort. Much of the two officers’ work is done after the students of color get to campus.

“Basically, me and Niccole just get them up here, tell them what’s here for them,” Zapata said, referring to the multicultural sampler. Zapata and Coggins run the tours and show the students around the campus. “We want them to get a feel for Macalester, all aspects [of the college], not just specifically the multicultural aspects.”

The Admissions office also works with agencies that specifically seek to send students of color or students from a lower income bracket to college. All Admissions Officers meet with these agencies while recruiting in their regions. Coggins and Zapata give the other officers a list of agencies in each recruiter’s area and run the visit to campus of students from those agencies. Few students recruited from the agencies come to Macalester, according to Director of Admissions Lorne Robinson.

Little is done to specifically get students of color interested in Macalester in the first place, above and beyond methods of recruiting overall. The Admissions Office gets the student database of PSAT scores, and “we go through the database and find people who might be interested in Macalester,” Zapata said. They also rely on letters of recommendation from college counselors and the aforementioned specialized agencies. However, this may not be enough to increase the number of students of color.

Improving multicultural recruiting is a long-term process, and one that does not have a definite end, according to Robinson. “We have several people who focus on multiculturalism, Niccole and Jessie, and special mailings and publications,” he said. “What pays off is working relationships within the community. We’ve gotten that going, but that takes time.

“We can always do more,” he said. “We could hire ten more people and send them out on the road. But is that a realistic designation of resources?”

McClure, the CMA Assistant Director, who also runs various mentoring programs on campus, also mentioned the difficulty of the process. “When it comes to recruiting students of color, there is no one method,” he said. “They are largely marginalized communities. The question is, how do we get information to students compatible to Macalester?”

McClure suggested that the entire Macalester community might do more to help recruit students of color: “There are overall ways that the community can help in attracting students. [Academic] departments could send out a form letter or could call students. That way, you are not just coming to Macalester, you are coming to talk to a coach or faculty member.”

McClure also cited Maccess as a good way to recruit students of color. Maccess is an academic program for juniors and seniors of color in St. Paul high schools to ready them for college. Thirty students come to Macalester for four weeks during the summer to participate.

Another suggested solution to this problem has been to appoint a recruiter in the Admissions Office specifically for domestic students of color. This position would be similar to that of the recruiter for international students at Macalester, Jimm Crowder. Crowder is in charge of transfer and international students.

However, Coggins argues that an Admissions Officer specifically in charge of multicultural recruiting would “ghettoize” that person and multiculturalism at Macalester.

“I haven’t seen it here,” Coggins said. “We have gotten a lot of support from other people in the office, but it is along the lines of having a multicultural affairs office-everyone thinks, ‘There’s a multicultural person, so I don’t have to deal with it.’ If someone is here just to recruit students of color, it kind of boxes them in. It makes it easier for other people to say, ‘That’s not my job.’”

One major problem that hinders Macalester’s ability to recruit students of color, several say, is its lack of a critical mass of students of color. Prospective students of color are more likely to come to a school if they see that there is a certain number of students of color there already.

When a college has a critical mass, “students of the same background who are applying can see that their folks are represented here on campus and can know that they’re going to feel at home,” McClure said.

Nevertheless, getting a critical mass is a circular process-one can only get a critical mass by recruiting more students of color, but more effective recruiting requires a critical mass.

Perhaps because of the lack of critical mass, there have been reports of some prospective first-years of color who have been discouraged from attending Macalester by their hosts of color.

“It’s one of the issues that has been brought up a few times at MASAB,” Zapata said. “We get feedback saying that [the PF’s] host or someone they know told them not to come here.

“Basically, [the complaint] stems from a lot of students being either burned out with everything they do, or not feeling like they are being recognized,” Zapata said, “Or they feel that when they came to Macalester as a PF, they were shown there were all these students of color, and once they got here, it wasn’t like that.”

Zapata said that disgruntled students of color tended to be juniors or seniors. Since the time that upperclassmen were PFs, the multicultural sampler has been changed for the better, and that has helped the satisfaction level of students since then, according to Zapata. In fact, that was part of the reason the sampler was changed-students were getting a false impression of multiculturalism at Macalester.

“We bring white students and students of color up at the same time,” Zapata said, regarding the new structure for the multicultural sampler. “The, well, ‘regular students,’ are here for one night, do the sessions, and leave in the afternoon of the next day. The multicultural students are here for the night, do the same sessions, and then the following night is the kickoff of the multicultural sampler.”

“It used to be the other way around, where the students of color came [earlier than the rest of the PFs], and made friends with all the other students of color, and then didn’t make friends as much with other PFs who came later,” Zapata said. “This way, they can see what the demographics are going to be like before they get exposed to all the multicultural [aspects].”

At the multicultural sampler, students of color have a relatively unstructured schedule. They can listen to McClure tell them about the support systems both institutionally and otherwise, or to cultural organization leaders talk about their organizations on campus, or they can spend time in the Cultural House.

“We want to make sure PFs know there are students of color here, that they are a close-knit group,” she said. “But at the same time, we do not want to give a false impression. We want to give a “realistic picture” of multiculturalism at Macalester? Why did the hosts tell their PFs not to come here?

“Admissions practices is not what we need to think about,” said André Carrington, a member of the Multicultural Steering Committee, at an open forum sponsored by the committee. “We admit tons of [students of color], but they don’t come. We have to think about why they aren’t coming.”

Retention and satisfaction

• Mentoring

• Institutional Support

• Intercultural Communication

“As important as recruitment is,” said Lorne Robinson, Dean of Financial Aid and Admissions, “so is retention.”

Retention rates for African-American, Asian and Latino students do not differ drastically from overall retention rates. For students enrolling between the years 1991 to 1995, the overall six-year graduation rate for African Americans and Latinos, it was slightly lower than average, 70.9 percent and 74.7 percent, respectively. The rate for Asian Americans was slightly higher than the average, at 80.9 percent. The exception was the rate for Native American students, which was 38.1 percent. In the four years recorded, only three to five Native American students enrolled, so the retention percentages were more sensitive to change in that group.

“If you look at the numbers, our retention among students of color is no poorer than our general retention rate,” said Joi Lewis, Assistant Dean of Students. “However, ‘retention’ does not mean ‘satisfaction,’ and I think that students of color are on the average less satisfied with Macalester than their classmates. It’s the elephant in the room that nobody really wants to talk about.”

One study done several years ago by the Internal Multicultural Audit Task Force reinforces Lewis’ contention. President McPherson proposed the task force in Dec. 1998 in order to “perform an audit of the status of multiculturalism on campus,” according to the group’s final report, which was issued in September 2000. The report included the experiences of minority students in the Macalester community.

One particular finding of the report, which surveyed a total of 132 faculty, staff and students about their views on multiculturalism, was that over 50 percent of black students at Macalester “report being responded to frequently on campus as if they were frightening, were not intelligent, or were not as good as the person with whom they were interacting.”

Lewis said that the problem at Macalester is bridging theory to practice. While discussions among people of different races occur in the classroom, they do not occur as much, say, in the dorms.

“I hear from students that there is a timidity to talk with students with different backgrounds as them,” Lewis said. “Students do well at deconstructing knowledge, [but] they experience more difficulties with using that knowledge to build community across differences outside of the classroom. [Students will] have a discussion in class, but then at Café Mac, it doesn’t happen.

“The institution doesn’t have to absorb all of the responsibility, but it has a responsibility to get students to be comfortable with their [racial] discomfort,” she said

Lewis went further in her analysis of institutional support for multiculturalism at Macalester. Because multiculturalism is concerned with issues of oppression, she explained, it is harder for the institution to create programming and education with this focus-thus, the burden generally falls on cultural organizations.

Carrington suggested at the Multicultural Steering Committee forum that Macalester could be allocating its funds differently to better benefit multiculturalism.

“We’ve got a renovated Kagin and dorms, but no money for more faculty?” Carrington said. “[The college] needs to do more to take care of its students. We’re trying to out-rich other colleges by pursuing some agendas at the expense of others.”

At the same forum, Rino Koshimizu ’02 compared the institutional support system for international students to that of U.S. students of color, saying that, for international students, there was the international students recruiter and the International Center, but there was not much in the way of support for multiculturalism.

As it stands, many students of color rely on staff and administrators like McClure and Lewis for support. McClure also runs a mentoring program for first-years. However, this is clearly not enough.

What next?

Though many suggestions have been made in order to increase both the number of and quality of experience for students of color, there are indications within discussion of the subject that the problem goes deeper. McClure suggested that essential aspects of the curriculum added to the problem. Students of color are generally learning about white people: “The sciences and philosophy are largely dominated by white faces. You go to the humanities building, and learn about what? Largely, European people.”

Problems such as these would require a massive curriculum overhaul. At the very least, effective solutions will be neither simple nor inexpensive. It comes down to the so-called “chilly” environment that McClure mentioned.

“Obviously, we’re not grabbing a whole lot of students of color,” Zapata said. “A lot has to do with the college as a whole.

“Admissions can sell the college all it wants on paper, but when they come up to visit, it’s a matter of how they feel when they get here. If students here don’t feel happy, we aren’t going to get more [of them to come].”

Regardless of change, the class of ’06 looks to be more diverse than the current first-year class, if early numbers are any indication. The college has admitted 253 students of color this year, the most in 12 years. However, that has historically been a poor indicator of yield.

“Last year, we admitted a high number of students of color,” Robinson said. “But the yield was low. Contrast to a few years ago, when admittance rates were low, and yield was high. It’s hard to tell-you never know how you’ve done until the students show up in the fall.”

Prospects for hope lie in the individuals working to pursue multiculturalism on campus, as well as the various committees trying to draw a plan for the future. The Multicultural Steering Committee (whose student members are Beth Azuma ’03, André Carrington ’03 and Haris Aqeel ’04), should be issuing recommendations soon about how Macalester’s infrastructure should look if the school wants to pursue its multicultural ideals.