At Yale, diverse students, not faculty

Diversity may be the biggest buzzword at Duke right now, but at Yale University, where Richard Brodhead, Duke's future president, has spent the last 40 years, students report that at times it is difficult to grab the administration's attention about minority issues.

Most students report that Yalies come from a variety of backgrounds:

geographic diversity is extensive; Republicans and Democrats live together; admissions are need-blind; the University guarantees 100 percent of demonstrated need; and roughly 30 percent of undergraduates are people of color. But unlike at Duke, students report a racially integrated campus.

Undergraduates do very little to self-segregate, students said. Some of this is attributable to the residential college system, in which incoming students are randomly assigned to a college where they live for their four years. Students have only about 100 students in their class with whom to live so racial mixing is common.

There is a table in Commons, the main dining hall, known as the "black table," but it is generally regarded as no more exclusionary than the table where the football players sit.

Harris, who is black, will be living with a Mexican-American, a second-generation Polish immigrant, a Lebanese student, an Asian-American and two white girls next year. And she thinks nothing of it.

That sentiment is common among students, many of whom have to pause a moment before even remembering the race of their roommates.

"Each residential college thinks a lot about diversity, and we like to do things to instill diversity in our communities," said Steven Smith, master of Branford College.

For faculty appointments, however, it is a slightly different story.

In 2001, blacks made up 2.8 percent of the faculty, Asians comprised 8.2 percent, Hispanics were 1.9 percent and women made up 25.8 percent. In 1999, the university issued a number of policies designed to help diversify the faculty, including offering to help fund professorships given to women and minorities.

Yet even after the policies were in place, there was only a 2 percent increase in minority faculty and a 2.1 percent increase in women since 1996.

There is a prevailing sentiment among students that most faculty members are white men. Only one woman of color is tenured on the faculty and most students said they had never had a black professor.

Faculty said the commitment to diversity is strong at the university level but departmental hiring does not necessarily take that into account.

"A lot of authority for faculty hires is at the department level," said Elizabeth Dillon, a member of the member of the Women Faculty Forum and assistant professor of English and American Studies. "There is a disconnect between the administration's interests and different departments that can have different cultures. Some are committed to diversity and some aren't."

No university-wide mandates to increase the number of women or minorities among Yale's faculty have been made public. Several students familiar with tenure affairs at the university said that even if such endeavors existed, the administration-particularly Brodhead, who is partly responsible for tenure decisions-would likely not disclose them.

In light of these observations, students have begun to question the institutional commitment to diversity.

"Why is it that Yale works so hard to have this diverse undergraduate community yet the faculty and administrators aren't as diverse?" asked sophomore Suriaya Jetha, a moderator of the Asian American Student Alliance. "Are they working from the ground up, or is it something else?"

Controversies over issues of race in other areas of campus have been on the upswing since the spring of 2003, when students claim Yale President Richard Levin and Brodhead did not take enough action following a series of alleged incidents against anti-war protesters and minorities.

The first incident came as a surprise to many students at Yale, who considered the historically tolerant school to be beyond threats against minorities or individuals expressing particular beliefs.

Junior Katherine Lo reported to Yale officials and police that on March 27, 2003, a group of males entered her dormitory suite brandishing a wooden plank and wrote anti-Muslim hate speech on her locked bedroom door's message board. The day before the purported incident Lo hung an American flag upside down in her window in response to American intervention in Iraq.

Two weeks later, students reported discovering a threatening message on an anti-war flyer in front of the Afro-American Cultural Center, one of seven reported acts of alleged harassment or intimidation at the time.

Many students in the school's several cultural groups said the administration was less than responsive to the discrimination and threats. They criticized Brodhead for not disseminating enough information about the events to the entire community via e-mail and for not reacting to address the underlying ideas that motivated the events.

Around 25 students, mostly black and Arab, entered Levin's office April 11 and refused to leave until Levin, Brodhead and Dean of Students Betty Trachtenberg agreed to sign a list of three demands-including e-mailing the student body an acknowledgment of the seven "violent events," instigating disciplinary investigations of the incidents and arranging three meetings between Levin and the group.

The administrators refused to accede to the conditions. However, Levin sent the Yale community an e-mail asserting that if the allegations were true, the perpetrators of the reported incidents could be subject to university sanctions.

A group of students formed a new student organization, Concerned Black Students at Yale, specifically to force the administration to examine racial and diversity issues at the university.

So far they say the administration is listening, but they have seen few results.

"They take it seriously, but only to the extent of how they're going to be regarded by the outside community," said sophomore Adrian Hopkins, a member of CBS.

In response to student activism, Yale reinstated the Minority Advisory Committee in Fall 2003 after an eight-year hiatus. The committee-composed of 10 university officials, two graduate students and three undergraduates-is meant to address minority concerns on campus and provide the administration with policy advice.

The group immediately came under fire, however, because the Yale College Council-the university's student government body-was responsible for selecting the three undergraduate representatives on the 15 person committee.

From 80 applicants, the YCC chose a white Jewish male, an Asian female and a homosexual man of mixed ancestry who identifies himself primarily as Hispanic. Students criticized the administration giving selection power to the YCC, which many describe as an overwhelmingly white body, and for the lack of a black-identified student.

"Without the demands of CBS, who met often last spring with President Levin, the Minority Advising Committee would not exist now," Pamela George, assistant dean of Yale College and Afro-American Cultural Center Director, told the Yale Daily News in January. "Even though CBS has worked tirelessly, how ironic that the African-American student voice is now the one missing from the table."

Junior Elliot Moghul, president of the YCC, said the organization had taken considerable effort to include as many different perspectives as possible.

For a long time, Yale has underscored its commitment to widespread diversity through special programs aimed at minority interests.

There are four cultural centers-the Afro-American Cultural Center, the Native American Cultural Center, the Asian American Cultural Center and La Casa Cultural, the latino cultural center-dedicated to programming for and representing specific groups. Three associate deans oversee the programs.

Additionally, the university maintains about a dozen ethnic counselors, who live in freshman residence halls and offer support for minority issues, especially those concerning race.

"They're definitely there to let students know about activities and cultural shows," said Jetha, adding that the counselors are there to help students adjust to Yale but also to spread diversity issues beyond the minority community.

Cultural Connections, a pre-orientation program, used to be another mainstay of Yale's support network for minority students. Brodhead, however, announced in an e-mail to undergraduates February 20 that he was opening up CC to any interested freshman.

"It makes sense to invite all students to participate in the study and affirmation of cultural difference and connection at the start of their college careers," Brodhead wrote. The decision attracted criticism from some undergraduates because, they alleged, administrators did not seek community input.

Duke recently decided not to open up its minority programs to all students, citing the historic lack of such opportunities for minority students.

Many students at Yale, particularly former participants in CC, argued that the program is an essential part of integrating new students into the university. They noted that, especially given the scarcity of minority role models among the faculty, it was necessary to knit together the greater ethnic community at large.