When Kisa Ruiz walks around the campus, she said she notices the different faces that surround her, but doesn’t feel a part of a connected community.

‘There’s a group of blacks together, there’s a group of Indians together, but there’s no integration,’ said Ruiz, a senior social work major.

While Syracuse University welcomes the most diverse freshman class in its history, the lack of racial and class interactions among students have left some, including Ruiz, feeling as though the university’s efforts are not enough to bring about a sense of community among all cultures.

‘This campus may be diverse; there’s people from every country here,’ she said. ‘But we’re not integrated at all.’

When Ruiz first came to the university, she was given a diversity magazine depicting the different ethnicities that exist on campus through a series of pie charts which presented a predominantly white campus with a very small population of students of color.

‘They were so proud,’ she said.

And while the university makes attempts to formulate a diverse community, it is still ranked eighth-worst for race and class interaction in the 2004 to 2005 Princeton Review rankings of top national colleges and universities.

‘I don’t have a problem with white people; I lived with them my whole life and I like Syracuse,’ Ruiz said. ‘But don’t try to push on me that you’re diversity when you’re not.’

Although statistics for this year’s total enrollment of students of color will not be available until October, the total enrollment of students of all ethnicities is estimated at 16.9 percent as of last week, according to information provided by Lynda Mason, director of Enrollment Management Research. Last year’s numbers consisted of 15.7 percent of total students of color enrolled at SU. These percentages are comparable to other universities, such as Boston College, where there has been a steady increase in levels of diversity enrollment over the past five years, according to the college’s Web site.

BC has made an effort to draw students of color to enroll in the college’s academic programs. One initiative that has helped assimilate students of color into the college has been the Options through Education, a six-week academic enrichment program designed to give students primarily from urban areas an opportunity to succeed at college-level work before they are accepted into BC, said Jack Dunn, director of public affairs at BC.

‘It demonstrates what can happen when given an opportunity,’ Dunn said.

With the successful graduation and retention rates of students of color, Dunn said this has proved to be a factor that helped make BC attractive, which has added to the consistency in having a diverse campus population.

There has been a dramatic increase of students of color at SU enrolled this year compared to last year, said Susan Donovan, dean of admissions, who was only available through e-mail. Whereas last year there were 494 students of color enrolled, this year the university enrolled 801, she said.

‘We have found that some of our competitors – that is, comprehensive universities – tend to have greater diversity if they are located in major metropolitan areas,’ Donovan said. ‘Often students who have grown up in these larger cities perceive Syracuse to be a small town and not offering the same advantages of a larger urban area.’

Meanwhile, at the University of Kansas, located in the city of Lawrence, the number of students of color enrolling in the school is expected to continue to increase due to recruitment programs that reach out to multicultural communities, according to Robert Page, Jr., director of the Office of Multicultural Affairs at KU. The university, with established programs allowing students of color to feel more acclimated to their campus, already saw a 10 percent increase in students of color last year bringing the multicultural population to 18 percent.

‘We have a ‘Mi Familia’ program where we go out to the Hispanic community and do all of our programs and recruitment programs in Spanish,’ Page said.

The school offers similar programs that work with students in Asian and black communities, where leadership programs are designed to prepare hundreds of high school students in the surrounding areas of KU for college life, Page said.

‘We want all students to feel welcome,’ Page said. ‘In order to offer an inclusive (education) we have to have a diverse population. Our purpose is to see that the academic mission is achieved both in and out of the classroom.’

While at SU, Chancellor Nancy Cantor has had a greater sensitivity about diversity than previous chancellors and has worked on increasing the numbers of students of color at the university; these students are only occupying the same geographic space, but not the same cultural space, said Arthur Paris, a professor of sociology at the Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs.

As students from different locations come together on one campus, there is less mixing of cultures because of the various backgrounds that make up each student, Paris said. Many students may be more boxed into a traditional paradigm of understanding one another’s cultures, which may make it more difficult for a fluidity of all ethnicities to exist together, he said.

There are many contributors to this boxed-in view including numerical dominance, cultural differences and the role the university plays in attempting to accommodate students of color, he said.

Paris pointed out the various ethnic dance groups on campus, which he said were created by students to be able to do something within their own culture, although the university should have these set up already.

‘It’s a burden on these students to do all the work to operate (a group),’ Paris said.

Paris mentioned the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender Resource Center as an example of how the university has taken it upon itself to create a complete support services system for students of that identity. He said it would be a benefit to campus cultural groups and organizations if the university made available some of the institutional supports other students take for granted.

Paul Buckley, the associate director of the Office of Multicultural Affairs, agreed.

‘There needs to be more safe, cultural spaces on campus,’ Buckley said. ‘Our name is OMA: Home Away from Home; it’s a place that’s comfortable where (students) can come, feel safe and explore a bit.’

OMA has set up several programs that deal with designating time for understanding cultures, such as promoting themed months like the current Latino Heritage Month and dialogue circles that discuss race and ethnicity, Buckley said.

‘Often students see something that does not say ‘this is you’ and think it’s not for them to attend,’ Buckley said. ‘I can’t emphasize enough how important it is (for) every student to see every programmatic activity.’

And as new students are trying to assimilate themselves into the campus community, some of them have also noticed the need for the university to establish more of comfortable environment.

Marguerite Moore, a freshman television, radio and film major who recently joined OMA’s WellsLink program in search of meeting other students of color, said she had hoped for more of a support system on campus that would make her feel more connected to the university.

‘I don’t feel alienated; I’m fitting in,’ Moore said. ‘But when I came here I had an ideal image that it would be more of a community. Your chances of meeting minority students are a lot fewer by living day to day. It involves an effort. I want more of a community feel, (and) I don’t feel as though we are one.’

Published on September 19, 2005 at 12:00 pm