Black Berkeley Enrollment Decreasing
KTVU has quite an interesting article on minorities (specifically African-Americans) at Berkeley. The article is headlined, "African-American Admissions Drop Dramatically At UC Berkeley". Here are the details from the article:

This fall, being black at Berkeley is likely to become even more of an anomaly. As of late spring, 98 black students had registered for fall enrollment out of an expected class of 3,821...

What is even more interesting that the decline in blacks at Berkeley, is the reaction of some of the people quoted in the article. Here are a couple of quotations from people of note:

Renita Chaney: [CalSERVE Presidential Candidate]
Fewer black students mean fewer people to call on for help on community issues, says Chaney. Still, she'd be reluctant to encourage black freshmen to attend this fall unless they're looking for a challenging environment.

"If it's activism or some kind of fight they're looking for, then come here. But if education is what they're looking for, then don't come here," she said.

Ward Connerly: [UC Regent]
Don't go there thinking, 'I'm going to be looking around for other black kids,"' says Ward Connerly, a part-black UC regent who led the fight to drop race-based admissions. "Go there and recognize that it's going to be one of the greatest experiences of your life. You're there to meet new people. You're there to learn. You're not there to engage in this racial, 'Mirror, mirror on the wall' kind of thing."

Of these two viewpoints, I find myself agreeing much more with Connerly. There is a certain delicious level of irony in the executive director of the Black Recruitment and Retention Center telling blacks not to come to Berkeley.

If this year's results do speak to a trend, then it is a regrettable one. Ideally, colleges across the nation should model the diversity of the population. This is not diversity for the sake of diversity. I just mean that people of all ethnicities should be receiving an equal pre-college education, and hence attending college in roughly equal numbers. There is something occurring that is leading to less and less black students being accepted into UC Berkeley. It should be a goal to figure out where the problem lies, and attempt to come up with a solution.

I have heard nothing about the "multicultural center" to be opening soon on campus, according to the article. I'm curious what role an institution like that can play in reaching out to minority students. Email This Post!