Bridget Veltri
news@mustangdaily.net
When Cortney Stafford came to Cal Poly on a track-and-field scholarship, she didn’t know what she was getting into as an African American student.
Her team became her support system along with other athletes. She worked on campus and mentored for the Allensworth Mentoring Program, helping African American freshmen adjust to college life. For fun she and her friends would have movie and game nights.
But outside of Stafford’s niche, the reality of being a minority on a predominately white campus had it challenges- – even if it was just walking into a classroom.
“You enter assuming that you will be the only African American student in the class,” she said. “And when you see another black student it’s like Christmas, like finding out that someone else speaks English in a foreign country.”
Stafford graduated in 2005 in political science and continues to take classes at Cal Poly.
In the fall of 2007, Cal Poly was the third whitest of the 23 campuses in the CSU system and the least black, with 237 African American students out of 19,777 total enrolled, according to the California State University Statistical Reports.
“I haven’t seen all of them,” president of Cal Poly’s Black Students Union and agricultural business junior Tova DeSantiago joked. “Sometimes as a minority here, you stick out like a sore thumb.”
Thanks to the recent racially charged incident at the crop house, the lack of diversity at Cal Poly has become an unavoidable topic. The protest and subsequent forums about this incident sparked a campus-wide discussion about diversity and campus awareness of the issue.
There were 4,554 non-white students out of 18,842 undergraduate students that attended Cal Poly in the fall of 2007, according to the Cal Poly Institutional Planning and Analysis factbook undergraduate enrollment profile.
As of last fall, Cal Poly was 64.7 percent white, 11.4 percent Asian-American, 10.8 percent Hispanic/ Latino, 1.2 percent African American, and 0.8 percent Native American.
But the college has limited options to combat its lack of diversity.
In 1996, California passed Proposition 209, an amendment to the state constitution that essentially banned affirmative action. A portion of the proposition said that the state cannot give preferential treatment to, or discriminate against, any person or group based upon their sex, race or ethnicity. The freshmen class of 1998 was the first to be affected by the proposition.
“Cal Poly cannot give any preferential treatment to women or unrepresented groups for admissions to the university,” associate director admissions, recruitment and financial aid Walter Harris said. “Everyone has to compete on the same playing field whether they had the same opportunities for preparation or not; it’s horrible but we cannot break the law.”
Harris said that before Proposition 209 passed, underrepresented students at Cal Poly received bonus points during selection. He said Cal Poly was the only school in the state of California affected by the proposition for two main reasons: the year prior to the passing of 209, the Board of Regents for the UC system had already eliminated race, gender, and ethnicity from their selection process, and because as a selective CSU, Cal Poly turns down qualified students who apply. Those with the lowest test scores are rejected first, and historically it is minorities who have lower test scores, Harris said.
Harris said that it would seem to make sense to him to level the playing field for people applying to college. However, not everyone applying to college received the same level of preparation at the high school level, leaving them at a disadvantage, he said.
Admittance to Cal Poly is based only upon test scores and grade point average. Renoda Campbell, recreation science grad student and coordinator of multicultural programs and services, thinks that changing the admittance process would help diversify the school.
“A lot of people say that the situation is reflective of the community here; I personally think the admission process needs to change,” she said.
Harris said that studies show eliminating test scores could help “level the playing field for diversity to increase.” He also explained that the faculty at Cal Poly could decide to discontinue using test scores for admittance and focus on qualities such as classes taken, GPA, work experience and extra curricular activities.
“There is one factor that could level the playing field for diversity to increase and that is remove the SAT as a pre-requisite for selection,” he said. “Cal Poly as an institution is well within their privy to do that, whether they will or not, is highly unlikely.”
One of the things the university is doing to increase diversity is adding the Cal Poly Partners program. The program teams up with approximately 182 high schools in the state and informs them about Cal Poly admissions criteria early on in their high school career.
“The goal is to reach students that might not normally consider Cal Poly,” said Donna Davis, partners’ program coordinator and academic advisor.
Harris pointed out that students accepted to Cal Poly often have the option of attending other prestigious universities that may be more diverse.
“There is a high quality student that is applying to Cal Poly,” he said. “And the African American students that are admitted to Cal Poly don’t come.They do have other options. You have (minority) students that visit Cal Poly and look around and think in the back of their minds, is there something about this institution that’s keeping folks like me from coming here? Is there a reason folks like me are choosing not to come here?”
Linda Halisky, Dean of the College of Liberal Arts and member of the university diversity enhancement council and inclusive excellence working group, agreed that the lack of diversity deters some minority students from attending Cal Poly.
“It’s a critical mass issue,” Halisky said. “We have a hard time building either a critical mass among African American faculty or African American students so that they begin to feel more comfortable here.”
DeSantiago was accepted to several other schools including Purdue, but still chose to come to Cal Poly.
“I’m in the College of Agriculture so it’s a different world within itself,” she said. “When I came here, I came for the education not for the cultural experience, but at the same time I want to feel comfortable.”
Animal science senior Kara Hargraves thinks that the lack of diversity at Cal Poly and the community of San Luis Obispo is part of the reason why it continues to be an issue.
“I think that is the biggest deterrent because there aren’t very many minorities here and people don’t want to be the only person,” she said. “You become a representative for your race and that gets tiring; everything you do is attributed to your race.”
Nutrition senior Jena Bookatz said it is impossible to truly emphathize with minority students.
“I can be sympathetic but I don’t know,” she said. “Until you are put in that position you can’t know; you don’t know how people feel until you live it.”
Events like the recent crop science incident have brought concerns about the lack of diversity to the forefront of campus discussion.
“The student clubs are really working hard on trying to bring awareness to their culture and nationality,” Campbell said. “But students have to be interested in it.”
“When you get acts like what happened at the crop science house.It hurts us and makes us ask why are we trying so hard to help heal diversity at this school,” DeSantiago said. “We can’t punish people for what they don’t really know. but we can assist and enlighten.”
Harris has faith that Cal Poly is aware of the diversity issue.
“I believe that the university has a strong commitment to helping with diversity on campus; the attitude on campus gets to be a whole other thing,” he said.
But nutrition senior Elizabeth Hermann doesn’t think Cal Poly is taking a serious stance on the issue.
“I feel like Cal Poly’s attempts to diversify the campus are shallow and on the surface,” she said.
Halisky thinks that the lack of diversity at Cal Poly could potentially detract from the college experience here.
“I think we short-change people for the worlds they will enter if they are unable to enter worlds that are different than their own, (during college)” she explained. “It is important to realize that diversity is more than ethnicity, you learn so much when you see things from a perspective different than the one you are comfortable with.”