15520: Loans, Moans & Groans.

 

You’re covered for the whole school year—and in debt for your whole life.

14940: A Homework Assignment For Advancing Diversity In Adland.

Adweek published a perspective from Dr. Monique Bell, associate professor of marketing at California State University, who presented another education-related notion for advancing diversity in adland. While most brainstorms in this area involve recruiting school kids of color, Bell suggested increasing the number of Black marketing professors. However, Bell acknowledged a current lack of Blacks working in higher education. So, boosting diversity in the advertising industry will require first addressing the diversity dilemma in colleges and universities. Brilliant.

Advancing Diversity in Advertising Starts in the Classroom

Black marketing professors can foster a legacy of change

By Monique Bell

Close your eyes and imagine a college professor. Who comes to mind?

In my mind’s eye, I see my favorite professor: a bespectacled, golden-skinned and immaculately dressed black woman, who epitomized excellence. While I attended a historically Black college (HBCU) where black professors are plentiful, for many future and current marketing professionals in the U.S., exposure to scholars of color is desperately lacking (a recent count identified only 1,470 business faculty of color).

In this context, especially, it is remarkable to reflect upon trailblazing black educators who established themselves as distinguished marketing scholars and often injected discussions of race, social justice and public policy issues into the ivory tower of business academia.

Why black faculty matter

Before we highlight our “hidden figures,” let’s illuminate why black faculty matter. First, a number of studies reveal the role model effect, whereby black students experience significant gains when they have at least one black teacher. Yet black educators can also positively influence non-black students. As black business faculty encourage black student success, those graduates are better prepared to join firms and, ultimately, champion inclusive and thoughtful marketing.

In advertising, the downstream effects of black faculty include more diverse talent behind and in front of the camera and less offensive and/or exploitative ad executions. Ultimately, black consumers lead the culture, and while Google deftly showed its appreciation in its Grammy’s spot, most companies have much to learn.

Marketing’s hidden figures

Now let’s explore a brief and wholly incomplete history of trailblazing black marketing scholars.

After serving in the army, Thaddeus Spratlen earned his Ph.D. in 1962 and later became the first African-American professor at the University of Washington business school. Spratlen is a prolific researcher who has studied harmful product advertising and urban enterprise development, among other topics. Jerome Williams, a research center director and distinguished professor and prudential chair at Rutgers University, was an early pioneer in multicultural marketing and marketplace discrimination studies. He recently examined banking (and living) while black.

In the area of consumer decision-making, we look to William Qualls, professor emeritus at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, where he became the business school’s first African-American tenured professor.

Of course, we cannot overlook the black girl magic brought to marketing academia by several torch-bearing women academics.

Graduates [will be] better prepared to join firms and, ultimately, champion inclusive and thoughtful marketing.

Sadly, in 2019, we lost the legendary Geraldine Henderson, who served as professor and multicultural marketing research powerhouse at premiere universities, including, most recently, Loyola University Chicago. She is renowned for her student mentorship and social justice perspective.

American University marketing professor Sonya Grier continues to advance scholarship and society by marrying social marketing and consumer health research with policy, including her work with the Federal Trade Commission. Eastern Michigan professor Judy Davis concentrates on black consumers and advertising, and heralds ground-breaking black women of Madison Avenue in her book, Pioneering African-American Women in the Advertising Business: Biographies of MAD Black Women.

Beyond their marketing prowess and academic acumen, black professors bring themselves and their experiences to the classroom. Their mere presence can shift student perceptions, open new dialogues and confirm to black students that they, too, belong.

As students of all backgrounds become more knowledgeable and mindful about racial representation and related practices, they will begin their marketing careers endowed with an appreciation for diversity and inclusion. Eventually, the marketing communications that they produce can shape consumer behavior (particularly among underrepresented consumers), which will translate into engagement and sales.

Who’s got next?

While the number of black business professors is growing much too slowly, we are not “rare creatures.” Due in large part to The Ph.D. Project, a nonprofit focused on expanding workplace diversity by increasing the diversity of business school faculty who encourage, mentor, support and enhance the preparation of tomorrow’s leaders. The Ph.D. Project participants are more likely to complete their doctoral degrees, and many have advanced to administrative roles, including college presidents.

Furthermore, I was introduced to many of these hidden figures through the Race in the Marketplace (RIM) network, an international transdisciplinary research network dedicated to knowledge production on the historic, contemporary and future interactions of race in the marketplace through scholarship and practice.

These efforts, coupled with the day-to-day presence of and mentorship by black faculty, will continue to bring positive change. Ultimately, as faculty, we can be optimistic that our work will foster genuine inclusion for marketing both at work (diverse practitioners and leadership) and in the work (culturally competent media and marketing practices).

Dr. Monique Bell is an associate professor of marketing at California State University, Fresno. She teaches and studies marketing communications and is a member of our Adweek Academic Council.

12624: Setting Course For Diversity.

The Los Angeles Times reported UCLA approved requiring students to take courses on diversity. Gee, imagine if Madison Avenue did the same, mandating that all employees enhance their cultural competence. Of course, it’s so much easier to delegate diversity and make tax-deductible donations to ADCOLOR®.

UCLA faculty overwhelmingly approves required courses on diversity

By Larry Gordon

UCLA’s faculty approved, by a large margin, a controversial new policy that requires most future undergraduates to take a course on ethnic, cultural, religious or gender diversity.

The strongly supportive vote announced Friday night was the culmination of efforts that began two decades ago and previously faced rejections.

In a tally posted online, the campus-wide Faculty Senate voted 916 to 487 to begin the requirement for incoming freshmen in fall 2015 and new transfer students in 2017. It would affect students in the College of Letters and Science, which enrolls 85% of UCLA undergraduates.

The approval in the two-week online voting is a victory for UCLA Chancellor Gene Block. He endorsed the requirement, saying the courses would help prepare students to live and work in a multicultural society. Other supporters said the case for the classes was made more compelling by several recent incidents on campus that raised allegations of anti-Semitism and a lack of attention to racial bias.

Opponents said students were overburdened with other requirements, particularly in the sciences, and said the budget-strapped university could not afford extra classes. Additional questions were raised about whether these classes improve ethnic relations and whether they typically skew left politically.

Most other University of California campuses and the UCLA School of the Arts and Architecture already require such courses.

Similar proposals were rejected by the UCLA faculty three times in the last two decades. And the vote announced Friday came after a lengthy and difficult process.

In late October, the faculty of the College of Letters and Science voted by a narrow margin – 332 to 303—for the requirement. In the following weeks, two other faculty panels added their approval. At that point many people on campus thought the debate was finished. But as allowed by campus rules, opponents petitioned for a vote by the entire campus faculty, a much larger group, and an election was scheduled.

“A diversity-focused course requirement has been a long-standing priority for me because of its clear value to our students, so I am very pleased with the campuswide faculty vote approving the proposal,” Block said in a statement Friday. “I want to thank the many faculty members and students who have worked hard for several years to make the diversity requirement a reality.”

In the recent online election guide, 70 professors and administrators posted statements of support and five expressed their opposition.

Among those for the new requirement, physical sciences dean Joseph Rudnick wrote: “Just as a proper introduction to the nature of the scientific enterprise is an irreplaceable component of a complete education, an exposure to rigorous scholarship on diversity is essential preparation for life in the world that awaits our graduates.”

In contrast, political science professor Thomas Schwartz wrote that there is little need for the courses and that proponents seem to be exaggerating how biased UCLA students are.

“The idea that 21st century American 18 year-olds who have been admitted to UCLA are so afflicted with bigotry that they must be forced to endure an attitude-altering course is preposterous. It is like forcing Norwegians to get inoculated against malaria,” he wrote.

Supporters say the requirement measure would not increase the units needed for a diploma and that many students are already taking classes that meet it. More than 100 existing courses across many departments are said to fit the bill and more will be added.

12580: School Daze.

From The Associated Press…

List of Fraternity and Sorority Incidents Involving Race

By The Associated Press

The University of Oklahoma recently banned the fraternity Sigma Alpha Epsilon and expelled two students after members were caught on video doing a racist chant. Some examples of fraternity and sorority chapters that have gotten into trouble because of racist-tinged events:

March

— A University of Maryland student resigns from Kappa Sigma fraternity after being suspended after a 2014 e-mail containing racially and sexually suggestive language about black, Indian and Asian women is made public.

December 2014

— Sigma Alpha Epsilon suspends all activity at Clemson University in December after white students dressed as gang members at a “Cripmas” party.

— Phi Delta Theta fraternity suspends chapter at the University of Pennsylvania for issuing a holiday card with members posing with what it called a Beyonce sex doll.

November 2014

— Pi Kappa Alpha fraternity suspended at the University of Connecticut after a confrontation with historically black sorority Alpha Kappa Alpha in which the sorority members were called racially- and sexually charged epitaphs.

April 2014

— Lehigh University suspends Sigma Chi fraternity because of vandalism at a student residence hall dedicated to campus diversity.

February 2014

— Sigma Phi Epsilon fraternity suspends its University of Mississippi chapter after three of its members tie a noose around a statue of the school’s first black student, along with an old Georgia flag with a Confederate battle emblem in its design.

— The sorority Chi Omega closes its Penn State chapter, which had been on probation since December 2012 when a photo appearing on the Internet showed members wearing sombreros and fake mustaches and holding offensive signs.

January 2014

— Arizona State University bans Tau Kappa Epsilon fraternity for an offensive party in commemoration of Martin Luther King Jr. Day replete with racist stereotypes and offensive costumes.

October 2013

— University of Florida reprimands Alpha Tau Omega fraternity after a member jeered at a student as she walked by on the opposite side of the street.

— University of Alabama announces that more than 20 minority women have been offered membership in historically all-white sororities in response to allegations of systemic racism.

July 2013

— Alpha Delta fraternity at Dartmouth College apologizes after throwing a “Bloods and Crips”-themed party.

February 2013

— Kappa Sigma fraternity suspends its Duke University chapter over a party some claimed was racist after photos surfaced of partygoers in Asian-style clothing.

— Washington University in Saint Louis suspends Sigma Alpha Epsilon fraternity after pledges are accused of singing racial slurs to African-American students.

September 2012

— Alpha Tau Omega fraternity cancels its “a border to cross” party, which was supposed to have an obstacle to represent the border between the U.S. and Mexico, after complaints from students.

12296: Merry Cripmas, Clemson!

From The New York Post…

Clemson fraternity suspended over gang-themed ‘Cripmas’ party

By Reuters

A Clemson University fraternity has been suspended indefinitely by its national organization after some of its members threw a gangster-themed Christmas party over the weekend seen by many as racially insensitive. The Saturday night off-campus party, dubbed “Clemson Cripmas,” was thrown by the South Carolina school’s chapter of Sigma Alpha Epsilon, which school officials say has no black members.

The Crips are group of mainly African-American street gangs founded in Los Angeles in the late 1960s. Many of those attending wore bandanas, oversized T-shirts and low-slung pants, and were shown in photos posted on social media sites making what appeared to be gang signs.

“The decision of a few brothers to hold this type of social event is inexcusable and completely inappropriate,” the national Sigma Alpha Epsilon organization said in a statement announcing the suspension posted on its website on Sunday.

“Their behavior in no way reflects the values and creed of the fraternity, and we apologize to (the) campus and local community for their actions,” the fraternity added. News of the party spread quickly through social media among students and community members, many of whom had participated in recent campus rallies over the refusal of grand juries in Missouri and New York City to indict white police officers in the deaths of unarmed black males, said Clemson Chief Diversity Officer Leon Wiles.

A group of students protested over the party on Sunday, he said.

“Many of our students of color were infuriated, outraged and upset by the ‘Cripmas’ party,” Wiles said. “Some white students didn’t think it was a big deal and didn’t understand why there was such a strong reaction.” The incident comes in the wake of the suspension of all on-campus social activities for Clemson’s 24 fraternities in September after the death of a 19-year-old fraternity pledge who died of a head injury following a fall from a highway bridge into a river.

11810: Elite Eight Is Enough.

From USA TODAY…

He’s all-Ivy — accepted to all 8 Ivy League colleges

By Greg Toppo, USATODAY

In the next month, Kwasi Enin must make a tough decision: Which of the eight Ivy League universities should he attend this fall?

A first-generation American from Shirley, N.Y., the 17-year-old violist and aspiring physician applied to all eight, from Brown to Yale.

The responses began rolling in over the past few months, and by late last week when he opened an e-mail from Harvard, he found he’d been accepted to every one. School district officials provided scanned copies of acceptance letters from all eight on Monday. Yale confirmed that it was holding a spot for Enin.

The feat is extremely rare, say college counselors — few students even apply to all eight, because each seeks different qualities in their freshman class. Almost none are invited to attend them all. The Ivy League colleges are among the nation’s most elite.

“My heart skipped a beat when he told me he was applying to all eight,” says Nancy Winkler, a guidance counselor at William Floyd High School, where Enin attends class. In 29 years as a counselor, she says, she’s never seen anything like this. “It’s a big deal when we have students apply to one or two Ivies. To get into one or two is huge. It was extraordinary.”

For most of the eight schools, acceptance comes rarely, even among the USA’s top students. At the top end, Cornell University admitted only 14% of applicants. Harvard accepted just 5.9%.

But Enin has “a lot of things in his favor,” says college admissions expert Katherine Cohen, CEO and founder of IvyWise, a New York-based consulting firm.

For one thing, he’s a young man. “Colleges are looking for great boys,” Cohen says. Application pools these days skew heavily toward girls: The U.S. Department of Education estimates that females comprised 57% of college students in degree-granting institutions last year. Colleges — especially elite ones — are struggling to keep male/female ratios even, so admitting academically gifted young men like Enin gives them an advantage.

He ranks No. 11 in a class of 647 at William Floyd, a large public school on Long Island’s south shore. That puts him in the top 2% of his class. His SAT score, at 2,250 out of 2,400 points, puts him in the 99th percentile for African-American students.

He will also have taken 11 Advanced Placement courses by the time he graduates this spring. He’s a musician who sings in the school’s a capella group and volunteers at Stony Brook University Hospital’s radiology department. Enin plans to study medicine, as did both of his parents. They emigrated to New York from Ghana in the 1980s and studied at public colleges nearby. Both are nurses.

Being a first-generation American from Ghana also helps him stand out, Cohen says. “He’s not a typical African-American kid.”

Enin says he got the idea to apply to all eight in 10th or 11th grade, discovering that each has “their own sense of school spirit” and other qualities he liked. He also applied to three State University of New York campuses and Duke — and yes, they have all accepted him.

In a phone interview, Enin said Princeton so far has offered the most generous aid package. But he has yet to get offers from Columbia, Cornell or Harvard. Either way, he’ll need to accept a place in the class of 2018 somewhere by May 1. He wants to pursue both music and medicine.

Cohen says he’s “sitting in a very good place right now — I think he can negotiate the very best financial aid package he can get” at his top-choice school. “Almost any of them would do anything for this type of candidate,” Cohen says.

She advises that Enin call or write each of the eight and let them know that he’s got a slot in each other’s freshman class. They’ll compete to get him to show up in the fall.

Once he decides, she says, he should write letters to the seven runners-up saying he’s “honored to have been admitted.” After all, he’s got to keep his options open for graduate school.

11439: Sorority Rejection & Racism.

From The New York Times…

Sorority Exposes Its Rejection of Black Candidate

By Campbell Robertson and Alan Blinder

On the campus of the University of Alabama, accusations that traditionally white sorority chapters had turned down an apparently impeccable candidate simply because she was black hardly came as a surprise.

The surprise was that it was sorority members — and not the candidate herself — who made the allegations, saying that in some cases they were pressured by alumnae to turn her down.

The allegations, reported on Wednesday in the student newspaper The Crimson White, were based on the account of Melanie Gotz, a member of Alpha Gamma Delta, and members of several other sororities who remained anonymous. In the report, parts of which were corroborated by sorority members, many students said they were open to recruiting the young woman, whose family has asked that she not be named; she is the stepdaughter of a state legislator and stepgranddaughter of a former State Supreme Court justice and current trustee of the university.

The members said they were pressured by outsiders, including a case in which, The Crimson White reported, the recruit was dropped from consideration at the insistence of a volunteer sorority adviser who also works for the university.

Stephannie Bailey, the executive director of Alpha Gamma Delta, said in an e-mail that the organization was “actively investigating” the situation for violations of its antidiscrimination policy.

Deborah M. Lane, a spokeswoman for the university administration, which has been criticized in the past for not doing enough about segregation within the Greek system, said that the university has been working with the organizations “to remove any barriers that prevent young women” from “making the choices they want to make.” She also said that these groups “determine their own membership selection processes and expect their members to follow their procedures during recruitment.”

Gov. Robert Bentley, who earned his undergraduate degree at Alabama, referred to the controversy on Thursday, saying to a television news reporter that universities could put pressure on the Greek system to integrate. He said that his wife, also an Alabama graduate, blamed the alumnae. “Personally, I think they need to change their attitude,” the governor said.

Ms. Gotz did not return a message seeking comment.

The news about the young woman, who was among several black women to go through this year’s recruitment process unsuccessfully, had been whispered around the Tuscaloosa campus in recent weeks. Students said they were unsurprised, even 50 years after Gov. George Wallace’s stand for segregation in the schoolhouse door and the university’s careful efforts to improve its reputation.

Black students have occasionally tried to join the traditionally white sororities, but these attempts have mostly gone nowhere. No black woman has made it through the recruitment process since 2003.

One biracial student on campus, who asked not to be identified, described her disappointment when she was turned down during a previous year. “I was surprised when it happened because I really thought I was going to be the exception,” she said, adding that members later told her in private, “It wasn’t our decision to cut you.”

Katie Jernigan, a junior from Panama City, Fla., expressed little surprise.

“Every year, The C.W. comes out with basically the same story," she said, referring to The Crimson White. “A lot of the students want to do something about it, but there’s just a lot of red tape from older people.”

Like many on campus, Ms. Jernigan was most struck by the fact that a sorority member was willing to speak out publicly, with others backing her up.

The weakening grip of tradition at Alabama may be inevitable. In 2012, for the first time, more than half of the incoming freshmen were from out of state.

“I really think it’s hard for Alabamians to envision how peculiar our traditions seem to outsiders,” said Andrew Grace, who teaches documentary filmmaking at Alabama.

As an example of how significant a departure from tradition the Crimson White article represents, Mr. Grace pointed out that it ran on the cover on the 100th birthday of the revered Alabama football coach, Bear Bryant.

10973: Party On, Racists!

From The New York Daily News…

Duke fraternity suspended after hosting a party slammed as racist

The Kappa Sigma party saw students wearing Asian-style clothing and mimicking stereotypical Asian accents.

By Victoria Cavaliere / NEW YORK DAILY NEWS

A fraternity at Duke University has been suspended after hosting an Asian-themed party opponents dubbed the “racist rager.”

Students attending the weekend party hosted by Kappa Sigma wore Asian-style clothing and mimicked stereotypical Asian accents.

The invitation to the event, at first named “Asia Prime” told attendees “We look forward to having Mi, Yu, You and Yo Friends over for some Sake. Chank You.” The invitation also contained a meme based on the former North Korean leader Kim Jong Il’s character in the movie “Team America: World Police.”

The party’s name was changed to “International Relations” after opponents on campus got wind of the event. Angry students posted dozens of fliers around Duke’s campus urging people to boycott the “racist rager.”

The Feb. 1 party went ahead as planned, but ongoing anger over the event prompted the parent organization of Kappa Sigma to suspend the Duke chapter on Wednesday.

“The Kappa Sigma Fraternity finds that the actions which have been associated with this event are inappropriate and insensitive and Kappa Sigma does not condone such activity,” Kappa Sigma executive director Mitchell Wilson said in a statement. “This matter will be investigated and the fraternity will address this matter in an appropriate fashion.”

Duke’s chapter of Kappa Sigma had only just come back to campus last year after having its charter yanked a decade ago.

The party also led to protests on campus, with Asian student groups calling for an apology and a cultural shift at the prestigious school in Durham, N.C. They also posted Facebook photos of the event, with attendees faces blurred, around campus.

“This is not just about Asians, one party or one frat,” Ashley Tsai, a Duke senior told the student newspaper the Duke Chronicle. “This is a consistent thing happening. We want serious things to be done by the student body and the university so that this never happens again.”

At an on-campus rally on Wednesday, students from a variety of racial backgrounds chanted “racist parties make no sense.”

The fraternity this week apologized for hosting the party, saying the event should have been “completely canceled.”

“The Duke Community in which we exist is one that we see too often as divided, and while our actions have brought attention to and widened that divide, it is our sincere intention to work to contribute to a United Duke,” Kappa Sigma President Luke Keohane said in an email.

School officials said they were sitting down with Kappa Sigma to discuss how to deal with fallout from the party.

“The event was thoughtless and offensive but we’re not sure if it actually broke any rules,” Larry Moneta, vice president for student affairs, told the Herald-Sun.

9558: Win A PhD From Dr Pepper.

AdPulp spotlighted the Dr Pepper $1,000,000 Tuition Giveaway, and the ad blog remarked, “‘Dr Pepper is changing lives’ is not the kind of promotional come-on we’re used to hearing from a large packaged goods brand.” Um, it’s actually an extraordinarily common phrase uttered by nearly every large packaged goods brand, although usually to target minorities. From Coke to Pepsi, Mickey D’s to Burger King, Verizon to AT&T, State Farm to Allstate, GM to Ford, Procter & Gamble to Johnson & Johnson and more, doling out scholarship loot is a seemingly annual affair for multicultural marketers. Guess skyrocketing student debt means White kids are looking for financial assistance too. Plus, it all makes for a natural tie-in to Dr Pepper’s sponsorship of collegiate football. Ironically, AdPulp featured four videos of female tuition recipients. The irony comes when considering the recent launch of Dr Pepper Ten, hyped with a tagline that reads, “It’s Not For Women.”

8338: Smoking Guns, Exclusive Studies.

Studying the news with a MultiCultClassics Monologue…

• A new study shows smoking could vanish by the middle of the 21st century. The research was based on declining smoking figures in Britain, despite steady rates in America. Hey, Big Tobacco will probably just shift their marketing efforts toward Africa—and dramatically crank up menthol cigarette production.

• A new study of admissions at highly selective colleges shows legacy applicants—students with family members connected to the institution—have significant advantages in the acceptance process. In short, it’s not what you know, it’s who you know. However, places like Harvard and Yale don’t come close to matching Madison Avenue when it comes to exclusivity and nepotism.

8284: Affirmative Action On Campus.

From AOL News…

Does Affirmative Action Help College Students?

By Gail Periot

All across the country, high school seniors are gearing up to apply to college. Many of them assume that the best thing they can do to ensure a bright future is to attend the most prestigious school that has accepted them—even if their race, athletic prowess or rich uncle helped them get in.

But according to a December report of the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights, that may be a mistaken strategy—at least for students hoping for a degree in science or engineering.

The extensive research compiled in that report concludes that accepting an affirmative action leg-up probably hurts a student’s chances of becoming a doctor, scientist or engineer. A better strategy is to attend a school at which one’s entering academic credentials roughly match the median student’s.

Contrary to some people’s expectations, college-bound African-Americans express a desire to major in science and engineering as often as whites and maybe a little more often. But something happens during college, and they disproportionately abandon that ambition, taking up softer majors instead. By graduation, African-Americans are markedly underrepresented in science and engineering bachelor’s degrees—a gateway credential for many well-paying, prestigious careers.

For decades, some blamed the attrition problem wholly on African-Americans’ science-related standardized test scores, which remain on average lower than those of whites or Asians. It should surprise no one to learn that students with lower standardized test scores are indeed less likely to stick with science and engineering than students with higher scores, no matter where they attend school.
But that’s not the whole story.

As three independent scholarly studies show, part of the problem appears to be relative. A student who attends a college at which his entering credentials put him near the bottom of the class—which is where a student who needed an affirmative action preference will be—is less likely to persevere in science or engineering than an otherwise identical student attending a school at which those same credentials put him in the middle of the class or higher.

The reasons for this comparative effect are doubtless complex. But they are based on a common everyday observation: A good student can get in over his head and end up learning little or nothing if he is placed in a classroom with students whose level of academic preparation is much higher than his own, even though he is fully capable of mastering the material when presented at a more moderate pace. Discouraged, he may even give up—even though he would have persevered and ultimately succeeded in a somewhat less competitive environment.

The effect does not appear to be slight. In a 2004 article, University of Virginia psychology professor Frederick Smyth and University of Southern California psychology professor John McArdle predicted that 45 percent more minority women and 35 percent more minority men in their sample would have persisted in science and engineering if they had attended schools where their academic credentials matched their peers.

Further proof of the inadvertent harm being caused by affirmative action can be found in the remarkable success of historically black colleges and universities, where half of African-American students naturally have entering credentials in the top half of the class.

HBCUs graduate more than their proportionate share of African-American students with science and engineering degrees and send more than their share on to get Ph.D.s at mainstream institutions. A few years back, for example, the National Science Foundation reported that with only 20 percent of total African-American enrollment, HBCUs produce 40 percent of the African-Americans graduating with a bachelor’s degree in the natural sciences. This is impressive.

All of this is something high school seniors deserve to know. The commission challenges colleges and universities to tell them.

Gail Heriot is a professor of law at the University of San Diego and a member of the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights.

8211: Mad (Men) Professor.

The Chicago Sun-Times reported that Northwestern University is offering a course on AMC series Mad Men titled, “Consumerism and Social Change in Mad Men America, 1960-1963.” The instructor claimed the program spotlights social reform movements and “shows the way the 1950s and 1960s blend together and how they related to each other.” Well, sure, in a culturally clueless, revisionist history kind of way.

Northwestern offering class on ‘Mad Men’

By Kara Spak

It’s not just Sterling Cooper employees who get to study the ins and outs of “Mad Men’s” dashing Don Draper.

Sixteen Northwestern University freshmen are watching the first season of the hit AMC series for a freshman seminar titled “Consumerism and Social Change in Mad Men America, 1960-1963.”

History professor and “Mad Men” fan Michael Allen, who teaches post-1945 U.S. history, said one of the main questions of that period is the origins of social reform movements, like civil rights and feminism.

“It shows the way the 1950s and 1960s blend together and how they related to each other,” Allen said of the show.

The first season of “Mad Men” was set in 1960. Allen expects to teach the seminar next year “if the show maintains its high quality.”

8063: Unbearable Mascots.

From The New York Times…

Controversy Over Mascots at Ole Miss

By Robbie Brown

Colonel Reb, meet your replacement.

On Thursday, the University of Mississippi announced the successor to its former mascot, a white-goateed, cane-toting Southern plantation owner that many have criticized as racist and anachronistic. The new mascot? The Rebel Black Bear.

Supporters of the old mascot were quick to find flaws. For one, an artist’s design shows a brown bear, not a black one. The animal was chosen based on the short story “The Bear” by William Faulkner, himself a former student, in which a bear is killed. Not exactly inspiring on the football field. And how original is a bear mascot?

“There are many, many other schools with bears — U.C.L.A., Maine, Brown,” said Brian Ferguson, a 2007 graduate and the director of the Colonel Reb Foundation, a group that supports bringing back the old mascot, which was retired from sporting event sidelines in 2003. “We might as well be called P.C.U. — Politically Correct University.”

School administrators say they want to balance tolerance with tradition at Ole Miss (itself a nickname for a slave owner’s wife). The school has discouraged Confederate battle flags at football games, discontinued “Dixie” as the unofficial fight song and raised enrollment of black students to 14 percent, from 5.8 percent in 1995 (though Mississippi is nearly 40 percent black).

Fans are divided over whether the university has become more open-minded or just too conscious of its reputation beyond the South. The committee of students that picked the mascot said it hoped to avoid any racial significance in the design. One finalist had gray-colored skin because, said Margaret Ann Morgan, 19, a committee co-chairwoman, “it is a combination of black and white.”

The Rebel Black Bear won an online poll this month, with support from 62 percent of students, alumni, staff and faculty members and season ticket holders. That beat the two other finalists: Hotty Toddy (a muscular man named after the school cheer) and the Land Shark (an allusion to the football team’s “voracious” defense).

As for Colonel Reb, his fans are not surrendering. The Colonel Reb Foundation’s leaders will dress in replicas of his costume and tour the state next week, talking to members of the local news media and trying to reverse the school’s decision. “We’re not giving up,” Mr. Ferguson said. “The Rebel Black Bear is just not the tradition we’re used to at Ole Miss.”

7592: Regents Recognize Racism.

From The Los Angeles Times…

Regents apologize for racist incidents at UC San Diego
They propose changes in admissions policies that would boost enrollment of minorities across the system and promise to help create campus environments in which minority students feel more comfortable.

By Larry Gordon

Reporting from San Francisco - University of California leaders Wednesday apologized to black UC San Diego students for recent racial incidents at the campus and proposed changes in admissions policies aimed at boosting enrollment of minorities across the system.

UC President Mark G. Yudof and other UC regents acknowledged that the UC San Diego episodes, including an off-campus student party that mocked Black History Month, has brought attention to the low enrollment of African American students on the campus. About 1.6% of UC San Diego undergraduates are black, among the lowest such figures for any UC campus. The UC leaders promised to help create campus environments in which minority students feel more comfortable.

Speaking during a regents meeting at UC San Francisco, Yudof said he wanted all UC campuses to adopt an admissions process known as “holistic” review, in which applicants’ test scores and high school grades are considered in the context of their life experiences and personal accomplishments.

“I want a system that is less mechanical and takes a serious look at a range of talents and skills and history, and takes into account poverty,” Yudof said.

Holistic review is permitted at the university, but Yudof said he would like it to be required at all nine UC undergraduate campuses. UCLA and UC Berkeley now use the approach most extensively, while others, including UC San Diego, rely on a more rigid formula that allows less consideration of personal accomplishments and, Yudof said, may unfairly reject otherwise academically eligible low-income and minority students.

Such a change would need approval by the systemwide faculty senate, something that will be under discussion within a few months, officials said.

Last year, UC regents adopted sweeping changes in undergraduate admissions policies that were designed partly to boost the number of low-income and minority students without violating the state’s ban on racial affirmative action. Starting with freshmen entering in fall 2012, applicants will no longer need to take two SAT subject exams, although the main SAT test would still be required. The change also will widen the pool of students eligible to be considered for admission based on high school grades.

Seeking to show their concern about the racial incidents, regents Wednesday spent nearly two hours discussing the UC San Diego situation, which included the use of a derogatory term for blacks on a student television show, and other episodes elsewhere. At UC Davis, swastikas were spray-painted at several locations on the campus last month and one was carved on a Jewish student’s dorm door there; an anti-gay slogan was sprayed on a UC Davis gay and lesbian student center.

Regent Eddie Island extended an apology to all students who felt under attack. “We failed to provide a nurturing environment,” Island said.

But he also blamed UC’s admissions policies for artificially limiting the rolls of minority students. “It is the absence of inclusion that frees hatred, that frees bigotry, that allows it to go unchallenged. That’s our biggest problem,” he said.

Black student leaders from UC San Diego addressed the regents and said that the controversial party, a so-called Compton Cookout at which guests were invited to dress like ghetto residents, was just the tipping point after decades of blacks feeling marginalized on campus. David Ritcherson, a fourth-year international economics major who is co-chairman of the UC San Diego Black Student Union, said the regents probably wouldn’t be seeking to make amends now if “they didn’t get all this media attention, if the image wasn’t tainted.”

Ritcherson, however, said he welcomed the regents’ comments and the efforts they promised to combat bigotry. “It’s a good start,” he said.

In other business, the regents Wednesday took steps to protect the university from court challenges to student fee increases. A regents committee approved a statement that UC has a right to change its fees at any time and that the publication of fee levels does not constitute a contract or promise.

A Superior Court judge in San Francisco this month ordered UC to refund a total of $38 million to 2,900 professional degree students who enrolled in 2003 and were charged increases after being told their fees would not rise. UC probably will appeal that decision, a UC spokesman said. In 2007, UC lost a similar case involving $40 million that UC has since repaid.

7569: Urban Prep Academy Is Perfect.

From The Chicago Tribune…

On to college…

If nothing else made you feel good last week, you had to smile at the news out of Urban Prep Academy for Young Men, a charter school in Englewood.

Every one of the 107 students in Urban Prep’s first senior class has been accepted to a four-year college.

That’s a remarkable achievement, especially considering that the overall college acceptance rate for Chicago public school graduates is 52.5 percent. And that number doesn’t include the many students who start high school but don’t finish it.

Urban Prep’s acceptance rate would be the envy of any school, public or private. But consider this: When these seniors entered Urban Prep as freshmen, only four percent read at grade level. And 82 percent of the school’s students come from low-income families.

Urban Prep helped the kids make up ground by implementing a tough, college-prep curriculum that required double periods of English. All told, Urban Prep students spend 72,000 more minutes in the classroom than their peers at regular CPS schools.

We’ve been harping on that for a long time. Fact is, Urban Prep should be the norm, not the exception. Most Chicago public school students spend far too little time in the classroom.

Urban Prep hasn’t necessarily turned miracles. The average ACT score for its students is lower than the systemwide average for Chicago Public Schools. The kids qualified for college based on a lot more: their grade point averages, tough course loads, extra activities, etc. And because they had a single focus: going to college. Even before the first day of freshman year at Urban Prep, students go on a field trip to Northwestern University. The message is clear: This is your future.

Tim King, the school’s founder and CEO, recognizes that he can’t simply bid these students adieu. The college graduation rate for African-American men isn’t good. The school’s counselors will support these young men through their college careers.

Let’s hope that in four years Urban Prep can hold a welcome home event and show off 107 college degrees.

We wouldn’t bet against that. Nice going, gentlemen. You should be proud.

7536: Diversity And Diplomas.

From Newsweek…

Minority Report
American universities are accepting more minorities than ever. Graduating them is another matter.

By Evan Thomas and Pat Wingert | NEWSWEEK

Barry Mills, the president of Bowdoin College, was justifiably proud of Bowdoin’s efforts to recruit minority students. Since 2003 the small, elite liberal-arts school in Brunswick, Maine, has boosted the proportion of so-called underrepresented minority students (blacks, Latinos, and Native Americans, about 30 percent of the U.S. population) in entering freshman classes from 8 percent to 13 percent. “It is our responsibility, given our place in the world, to reach out and attract students to come to our kinds of places,” he told a NEWSWEEK reporter. But Bowdoin has not done quite as well when it comes to actually graduating minorities. While nine out of 10 white students routinely get their diplomas within six years, only seven out of 10 black students made it to graduation day in several recent classes.

The picture of diversity—black, white, and brown students cavorting or studying together out on the quad—is a stock shot in college catalogs. The picture on graduation day is a good deal more monochromatic. “If you look at who enters college, it now looks like America,” says Hilary Pennington, director of postsecondary programs for the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, which has closely studied enrollment patterns in higher education. “But if you look at who walks across the stage for a diploma, it’s still largely the white, upper-income population.”

The United States once had the highest graduation rate of any nation. Now it stands 10th. For the first time in American history, there is the risk that the rising generation will be less well educated than the previous one. The graduation rate among 25- to 34-year-olds is no better than the rate for the 55- to 64-year-olds who were going to college more than 30 years ago. Studies show that more and more poor and nonwhite students aspire to graduate from college—but their graduation rates fall far short of their dreams. The graduation rates for blacks, Latinos, and Native Americans lag far behind the graduation rates for whites and Asians. As the minority population grows in the United States, low college-graduation rates become a threat to national prosperity.

The problem is pronounced at public universities. In 2007 (the last year for which Education Trust, a nonprofit advocacy group, has comparative statistics) the University of Wisconsin-Madison—one of the top five or so “public Ivies”—graduated 81 percent of its white students within six years, but only 56 percent of its blacks. At less-selective state schools, the numbers get worse. During the same time frame, the University of Northern Iowa graduated 67 percent of its white students, but only 39 percent of its blacks. Community colleges have low graduation rates generally—but rock-bottom rates for minorities. A recent review of California community colleges found that while a third of the Asian students picked up their degrees, only 15 percent of African-Americans did so as well.

Private colleges and universities generally do better, partly because they offer smaller classes and more personal attention. But when it comes to a significant graduation gap, Bowdoin has company. Nearby Colby College logged an 18-point difference between white and black graduates in 2007 and 25 points in 2006. Middlebury College in Vermont, another topnotch school, had a 19-point gap in 2007 and a 22-point gap in 2006. The most selective private schools—Harvard, Yale, and Princeton—show almost no gap between black and white graduation rates. But that may have more to do with their ability to cherry-pick the best students. According to data gathered by Harvard Law School professor Lani Guinier, the most selective schools are more likely to choose blacks who have at least one immigrant parent from Africa or the Caribbean than black students who are descendants of American slaves. According to Guinier’s data, the latter perform less well academically.

“Higher education has been able to duck this issue for years, particularly the more selective schools, by saying the onus is on the individual student,” says Pennington of the Gates Foundation. “If they fail, it’s their fault.” Some critics blame affirmative action—students admitted with lower test scores and grades from shaky high schools often struggle at elite schools. But a bigger problem may be that poor high schools often send their students to colleges for which they are, in educators’ jargon, “undermatched”: they could get into more elite, richer schools, but instead go to community colleges and low-rated state schools that lack the resources to help them. Some schools out for profit cynically jack up tuitions and count on student loans and federal aid to foot the bill—knowing full well that the students won’t make it. “Colleges know that a lot of kids they take will end up in remedial classes, for which they’ll get no college credit and then they’ll flunk out,” says Amy Wilkins of the Education Trust. “The school gets to keep the money, but the kid leaves with loads of debt and no degree and no ability to get a better job. Colleges are not holding up their end.”

A college education is getting ever more expensive. Since 1982 tuitions have been rising at roughly twice the rate of inflation. University administrators insist that most of those hikes are matched by increased scholarship grants or loans, but the recession has slashed private endowments and cut into state spending on higher education. In 2008 the net cost of attending a four-year public university—after financial aid—equaled 28 percent of median family income, while a four-year private university cost 76 percent of median family income. More and more scholarships are based on merit, not need. Poorer students are not always the best-informed consumers. Often they wind up deeply in debt or simply unable to pay after a year or two and must drop out.

There once was a time when universities took a perverse pride in their attrition rates. Professors would begin the year by saying, “Look to the right and look to the left. One of you is not going to be here by the end of the year.” But such a Darwinian spirit is beginning to give way as at least a few colleges face up to the graduation gap. At the University of Wisconsin-Madison, the gap has been roughly halved over the last three years. The university has poured resources into peer counseling to help students from inner-city schools adjust to the rigor and faster pace of a university classroom—and also to help minority students overcome the stereotype that they are less qualified. Wisconsin has a “laserlike focus” on building up student skills in the first three months, according to vice provost Damon Williams.

State and federal governments could sharpen that focus everywhere by broadly publishing minority graduation rates. (For now students and counselors must find their way to the Web site of the Educational Trust, which compares data obtained from schools by the federal government.) For years private colleges such as Princeton and MIT have had success bringing minorities onto campus in the summer before freshman year to give them a head start on college-level courses. The newer trend is to start recruiting poor and nonwhite students as early as the seventh grade, using innovative tools like hip-hop competitions to identify kids with sophisticated verbal finesse. Such programs can be expensive, of course, but cheap compared with the millions already invested in scholarships and grants for kids who have little chance to graduate without special support.

With effort and money, the graduation gap can be closed. Washington and Lee is a small, selective school with a preppy feel in Lexington, Va. Its student body is less than 5 percent black and less than 2 percent Latino. While the school usually graduated about 90 percent of its whites, the graduation rate of its blacks and Latinos had dipped to 63 percent by 2007. “We went through a dramatic shift,” says Dawn Watkins, the vice president for student affairs. The school aggressively pushed mentoring of minorities by other students and “partnering” with parents at a special pre-enrollment session. The school had its first-ever black homecoming. Last spring the school graduated the same proportion of minorities as it did whites. If the United States wants to keep up in the global economic race, it will have to pay systematic attention to graduating minorities, not just enrolling them.

7413: It’s All Greek…

From The Miami Herald…

South Florida fraternities, sororities become more multicultural

By Laura Figueroa

Over at Florida International University, the South Asian and Caribbean brothers of Sigma Beta Rho raise money for tsunami and hurricane ravaged countries.

At Nova Southeastern University, the brothers of Alpha Nu Omega gather weekly to host Bible study sessions.

And online, the plus-size sisters of Chi Zeta Theta chat about self-esteem issues.

Whether it’s the fraternity for gay men at FIU or the multicultural sororities at the University of Miami, the options for brotherhood and sisterhood at South Florida’s schools have seen a growth in organizations catering to a wide array of beliefs and lifestyles.

“Miami is so diverse, it’s only natural that there are more multicultural-minded groups out there,” said Adrian Macatangay, chapter president of Sigma Beta Rho, a South Asian/Multicultural fraternity at FIU.

Macatangay, who is Filipino, heads a chapter of nine brothers hailing from India, Guyana, Bengal and Trinidad. To share their diverse cultural roots, they’ve done everything from organize fundraisers for tsunami victims in the Philippines to organizing brotherhood dinners focused on cultural cuisine.

Sigma Beta Rho is one of nine organizations that make up FIU’s Multicultural Greek Council—three of those groups, including two Latina sororities and a multicultural fraternity, were admitted in the past year.

Most of the culturally based sororities and fraternities say they offer an alternative to student clubs because their smaller size creates a tight-knit sense of family. That sense of family is cultivated over several weeks, as prospective members spend time getting to know the organization’s members before committing to pledge and pay membership dues.

“You’re joining a family, so you want to take your time making sure you feel at home,” Macatangay said.

FIU is also home to the state’s first fraternity for gay men—Delta Lambda Phi.

“We’re not that much different than the other fraternities,” said Christian Rodriguez, a 20-year old psychology major and brother of Delta Lambda Phi. “The only aspect that makes us different is we take pride in homosexuality.”

Rodriguez said he originally joined his fraternity because he did not feel the other fraternities at FIU were as “accepting” of his sexual orientation.

That has changed, Rodriguez said. Now his chapter of 25 brothers attends other fraternity parties and community services without feeling isolated.

Administrators at other South Florida college campuses are taking note of the demand for such diverse groups. Several say the smaller niche groups—which usually range in size from 5 to 20 members—help minority students adjust to life on a large urban campus.

“I think a lot of the growth with these groups has do with the students really owning who they are and what they’re looking for,” said Chini Camargo, director of student services for Nova Southeastern University in Davie.

Camargo said over the past two years, NSU’s fraternity and sorority options have grown to include two Latino groups and four historically black fraternities and sororities.

MORE PETITIONS
More growth could be on the way at NSU, as three other culturally based groups have petitioned the school for permission to establish a chapter. Countless others have also reached out for more information about recruiting members at the school, Camargo said.

“They’ve been pounding on our door trying to get in,” Camargo said.

While the smaller groups don’t have a house, they host their chapter meetings at the student union. Toga parties are replaced with dance lessons in everything from salsa to bhangra, and movie nights have become a venue to showcase foreign films, from African action flicks to Japanese animation.

“There are some things you can’t learn from books, only from people,” said Cushla Talbut, 18, president of Lambda Theta Alpha, a Latina-based sorority at UM. “These are lessons and relationships that will last a lifetime.”

A NEW ADDITION
UM’s campus is now home to five Latino and multicultural-based fraternities and sororities. This semester the campus welcomed its newest addition, Delta Epsilon Psi, a South Asian fraternity.

“There has never been a period of growth like this before,” said Walter Kimbrough, author of Black Greek 101 and president of Philander University in Arkansas. “I call it fraternalism on steroids. Especially now with the advent of the Internet, it’s easier to start a fraternal organization than ever.”

Starting up their own sorority from scratch is just what a group of Florida Atlantic University students did in 2005 when they formed Chi Zeta Theta—a sorority for “plus-size” women.

“Just because you can’t fit into a size 2 doesn’t make you a bad person,” said Rosemary Austin, president of Chi Zeta Theta. “I’ve met a lot of plus-size women who are insecure about themselves. Our goal is to motivate these women to see their true beauty.”

With a membership of 25 sisters spread throughout the United States, the group’s sorority experience relies heavily on the Internet and phone. Members are recruited from social networking sites like MySpace and Facebook. Since there aren’t any chapters charted at college campuses, weekly chats on online forums and regional community service events help the sisters stay connected.

“We strive to be the best sorority for our members and our community,” Austin said. “We’re not concerned with being like any other sorority.”

While some look for a support network, others like Fermin Vasquez, 20, look for a more divine connection.

The search for an unconventional fraternity led Vasquez, a NSU biology major, to bring a chapter of the Christian fraternity Alpha Nu Omega to his campus.

Now Vasquez, 20, spends Tuesday nights hosting Bible study sessions for Nova students with his fraternity brothers.

The group also performs step-routines at local community centers and churches.

“I found a brotherhood that would allow me to get closer to my faith,” said Vasquez, who serves as chapter president. “My brothers motivate me to try and be a better Christian, a better person overall.”

6676: Head Of The Unemployed Class.

From The Chicago Sun-Times, figures show unemployment for Black college students is disproportionately higher than other groups. Gee, you mean all those diversity job fairs and Madison Avenue youth outreach programs aren’t working?

Unemployment for black college graduates at 7.2 percent, nearly twice as high as whites

By Francine Knowles

Unemployment among African-American college graduates is 7.2 percent, nearly twice as high as their white counterparts and significantly higher than among Hispanics and Asians with four-year degrees.

That’s according to U.S. Labor Department data compiled by the Economic Policy Institute that also showed the jobless rate among Hispanic and Asian college graduates also exceeds that of whites. The rate for Hispanic graduates was 5 percent. It was the same for Asian Americans. For whites it was 3.8 percent.

Several factors could account for the disparity, said Algernon Austin, director of the institute’s program on race, ethnicity and the economy.

“The black population is somewhat younger,” he said. “The situation of the last hired, first fired dynamic could be at play.”

The concentration of blacks in regions and cities with higher unemployment rates is also likely a factor, along with discrimination, he added.

Even in good economic times, “there are disparities among college grads by race at all educational levels,” he said. “The disparities are even greater among individuals who just have a high school diploma or equivalency and even greater among high school dropouts. It looks pretty clear that there’s discrimination in the labor market.”