Every year around this time I hear people argue against minority recruitment weekends.
The arguments are always pretty familiar:
- Minority recruitment weekends shut the rest of the community out and keep them from welcoming minority students.
- Introducing students to Duke in the context of race predisposes them to identifying themselves along racial lines. And as a result they pursue less diversity in their Duke experience.
- Minority recruitment weekends don't accurately depict life at Duke.
...Continue annually, ad nauseam.
In the interest of full disclosure, I'm in favor of keeping minority recruitment weekends, but I think it can be worthwhile to reexamine the way we implement them in the context of an ever-changing world.
In the interest of space, I'll briefly respond to the first argument and respond to the second with a bit more depth. The third...I can't really argue with.
The idea that non-black or non-Latino students are unwelcome at BSAI and LSRW events is confusing and a little ridiculous to me. Organizers of these weekends have never excluded anyone from any event, and as a former BSA officer, I can say from experience that non-black students have been involved, active and welcome in both BSA and BSAI. Participating is a matter of choice, and everyone is welcome to do so.
As for the second point, it implies that black and Latino students are somehow more culpable than the rest of the community for any racial divisions. It's insulting, so here's a bit of perspective:
According to the Campus Life and Learning Project, which the university published in two parts in 2006 and 2007, Duke students' social networks remain "remarkably stable" from the senior year of high school to the fourth year at Duke. For white students, it found that in high school their close friends were 90 percent white and by the fourth year at Duke their close friends were 82 percent white. For Latino students the percentage of close Latino friends declined from 22 percent to 16 percent. For black and Asian students the percentage of close friends of their race rose from to 56 percent to about 67 percent and 47 percent to about 49 percent respectively.
The project also examined students' broad social networks including all friends, and in this it found that Duke students were "slightly more diverse." It found that for black, Latino, Asian and bi-racial students the proportion of friends of the same race or ethnicity declined across the college years, while white students' networks became slightly less diverse.
Take whatever you choose from these statistics, but here's what I get:
Black and Latino students haven't demonstrated any aversion to diversity that distinguishes them from any other group. In fact, both Latino and black students increase the diversity of their social networks at Duke, although black students tend to gain more close black friends. It seems to me that there's little evidence to suggest that black and Latino students are being poisoned against diversity through BSAI and LSRW. So guys, let's put it to bed.
I think there's a bigger question raised here as well: What sort of ratios should we be targeting to prove our "diversity" credentials? Should the ethnic diversity of our friends mirror Duke's population? America's population? The world's population (since we all want to be global citizens...)?
I don't know the answer to that, and I don't think you do either.
Get The Chronicle straight to your inbox
Signup for our weekly newsletter. Cancel at any time.