8 - The Michigan Daily - Wednesday, March 23, 2005 NEWS DIVERSITY Continued from page 1 Patricia Pacania, director of the Office of Multi-Ethnic Student Affairs, said she thinks the University still does not have a large enough population of minority stu- dents to achieve a critical mass. Pacania said this creates a need for minority stu- dents to self-segregate in residence halls and said she thinks the University should allow this clustering to happen. "To just sprinkle students in dorms, knowing that we have not achieved that critical mass ... I don't think that that's effective," she said. But University President Mary Sue Coleman said that while she understands the desire of minority students to live together, she believes a more diverse living experience is desirable. "I would think that one of the huge val- ues of being in a University setting is being able to get acquainted with people from a different background or different race, and I encourage students to really pursue that. I think it's important. It's one of the great things we offer at the University of Michi- gan," she said. "I would hope that we can continue to find ways to get to people to mix themselves up." Pacania said she worries that spread- ing minority students throughout all the dorms, rather than allowing them to form communities, would "add another set of stress upon students of color." "I think to primarily look to students of color to say 'educate me' is an unfair burden, and I don't think that's something we as a University should ask of students," she said. "And students of color also need opportunities to have a living space where they don't feel like they always have to edu- cate other people or don't have to always justify themselves or explain themselves." Housing spokesman Alan Levy said the process of housing application and assign- ment is done without racial information, meaning the uneven distribution of minor- ities in the dorms is not a product of the housing assignment process. He suggested that certain residence halls, especially those on North Campus, have a high sat- isfaction rate and a high rate of return. He said black students are very likely to return to North Campus housing because "it's a positive, welcoming environment." He added that parental influence to return to residence halls might play a part as well. University spokeswoman Julie Peter- son said the lack of black fraternities who have houses also cuts down on off-campus housing choices for black students. Many black students living on North Campus say they intentionally moved or requested housing there because of North Campus's reputation for being a good place for black students. Engineering freshman Kyra Watts said she felt good about living on North Cam- pus because of the large black population. "When I first got here, people said, 'Don't worry, you'll be fine - all the black people live on North Campus."' Other students say they appreciate the close community but worry about the neg- ative effects of self-isolation. LSA sopho- more Ashley Stokes, who is black, said she wanted to live in Baits because of the suite- style room layout, but also because of the large black community. "It's positive in the social aspect, but as far as diversity goes, the negative comes in because (black stu- dents) are used to being around our own." Administrators who work with the minority community say they worry about the geographic isolation of black students on North Campus. Pacania said she has heard from students living on North Cam- pus that they feel isolated from activities and resources on Central Campus. "Some- times you have students ... who seek out those opportunities," she said. "(But) I think it's harder for the students who don't have that opportunity, or maybe their style isn't as outgoing, so it's harder for them to know the resources on campus, especially Central Campus." Another factor that plays into the uneven distribution among dorms involves the nine residential Michigan Learning Communi- ties, which house members together in certain residence halls. Some MLCs make diversity a key goal in recruiting - for instance, the Lloyd Hall Scholars Program and the Health Science Scholars Program, both housed in Alice Lloyd Residence Hall, use face as a factor in reviewing applica- tions to the programs. Despite Alice Lloyd Hall's reputation for housing mostly white students from the East Coast, the dorm is actually home to one of the most concen- trated minority populations on campus. Both LHSP and HSSP house a dispropor- tionately high number of minority students, Underrepresented Minorities in Learning Communities 10% Honors South Quad |(no honors) RC East Quad (no RC) LHSP/HSSP Lloyd (no MLC) 4 ....................4..... 40589 475 390 rr 38 188 __R___5.9%I- 14.3%________13.9% ____13.3%______18.1%_______________18.6__ °_______ .+ 2 '} 2'': I ~ .2 ... n . ' ..5' to*2k2 : 'f _ < ?~ ?:L ~. .,, , . ., "{~ #<':z2 22 .2, 2 .;2 ,.,, <:: 2. .. 22, :>°2 2', 2/ >x, 2x '2 > 'I { i . , ''t2-2. 2 2'2 2/ '2,, ,22 '2222' 22.2.2 22~ 2,2 .2 22 2 ~ 222 2 2, '"12 2'22222~2222222 A 22,' 222 ''22' '2 .2.2.2 "''''2 2 ,22 22, '7 2>' 22 4 2< ~22~ 2 222 222 2 '2 2' ~ 2 .2.2'222 222 '222,2 '2 222' 2,2 ~ 2''' 22 .2.22,22 .2 2' 2 " ' ~ 2223.2 3 2' /'' 2 ;2 /22, 22 '. r:. ',.. 23. 2 222~2'22/2,2 2 '2222 4',' 222 22~ 2% 2 2 rft A 52. }' }2 222J < ..........: .{} 4. .2.v. 01 GRAPHIC BY LINDSEY UNGAR contributing to Alice Lloyd's overall high concentration of minority students. The Honors Program, which has received criticism in the past for its low enrollment of underrepresented minority students, stands out as having the opposite effect on minority representation. Honors houses 405 students, only 23 of whom are underrepresented minorities. This means roughly 5 percent of Honors housing is underrepresented minorities, whereas 14 percent of non-Honors students in South Quad are minority students. Honors is the only learning community which invites students into the program rather than requiring an essay or application. Members of the Michigan Student Assembly say they are also concerned about the large black community on North Campus and worry that it rep- It will feel less constricting at agra b. At Ernst & Young, the opportunity for growth is enormous. We offer over 7,000 professional development programs - some of the best formal learning programs in the country - because our philosophy is People First. We recognize that our employees are essential to the firm's growth and success. And in order to attract the best talent, we've built an environment that Inrt. mn* madovinP hac rnncictpntki rnrndn i7A d aCnne of the "1 f00 Rest resents a "de facto segregation." RC junior Ryan Bates, co-chair of the Peace and Jus- tice Commission, said he is working with Melton Lee of the Minority Affairs Com- mission to track trends in minority housing through the past two decades. He said they have not been able to get University statis- tics for more than the past two years, but that "anecdotally, having talked to minor- ity peer advisors and other people involved in those sorts of communities, there has historically been segregation on campus." Bates said he is not sure which policies create the racial divisions, or if the Univer- sity even consciously perpetuates them. "It looks like there are definite disparities in University policies which conflict with their stated commitment to diversity,"Bates said. "I'm not ready to say whether this is intentional, or just a structural thing." He added that MSA will be calling on administrators to change any relevant policies to diminish the disparities once they have finished looking into the situ- ation. "If it's presented to the University by the students ... the University must act," he said. "If those demands are not met, the University is guilty of a much greater sin of perpetuating structural racism." - Aymar Jean contributed to this report NUMBERS Continued from page 1 students questioning the racial makeup of on-campus housing - it's the geographic distribution of underrepresented minority students that has led some students and administrators to question whether cam- pus housing is increasingly isolating cer- tain minority groups. For example, 17.4 percent of students living in North Campus dorms are under- represented minorities, compared with 13.3 percent on Central Campus and 13 percent on the Hill. University Housing spokesman Alan Levy said the current housing assign- ment process does not use race as a factor in room assignments. Housing assign- ments for freshmen are made through a lottery in mid to late April. Levy said applications sent in after the lottery are assigned based on room availabil- ity, because some freshmen who have already requested rooms later decide to attend other schools, allowing previously assigned rooms to become available. Levy added that incoming students are assigned rooms based on their prefer- ences and room availability. Students can express preferences for substance-free housing, room type (such as double or tri- ple) and campus neighborhood - North Campus, Central Campus or the Hill. Levy said more first-year students are assigned to North Campus or single-sex residence halls than list these choices among their preferences. He said that if students make a request to live with a specific individual, they are more likely to be assigned a room on North Campus due to a shortage of available doubles on Central Campus. Yet even without specifically using race as a factor in the housing process, racial distribution throughout the halls is uneven. For instance, Mary Markley Res- idence Hall, which has the highest propor- tion of first-year students (More than 93 percent of the dorm is freshman.) is only 6.7 percent underrepresented minorities. Black students make up only 3 percent of Markley, whereas 5.7 percent of the gen- eral freshman class this year was black. Levy called this distribution "something that would require more examination" and said he did not have specifics to explain this occurrence. Markley also has smaller-than-average populations of Asian and Latino students, making it the whitest dorm on campus. On admissions applica- tions and housing surveys, about 74 per- cent of Markley's residents indicated they are white, compared with 58 percent of the entire residence hall population. In past years, the Baits Residence Halls on North Campus have housed a very large population of black students, who make up close to 30 percent of the Baits population. This year, 18 percent of the freshmen entering Baits were under- represented minorities, far above the 11- 01 0 FORTUNE inn RFRT i i E