Forty years after the Rev. Joseph Lowery, the keynote speaker of Unity Week, started advocating civil rights, some racial minority students still feel uncomfortable among the predominantly white community at Ball State University.
Sophomores Debra Castro and Steven Aguilera grew up in the Chicago area, where racial diversity was prevalent. On campus, these friends said they prefer hanging out with other students of the same race.
'There's not much diversity, and the little bit of diversity tend to stick together,' Castro said. 'It took me a while to like Ball State.'
Castro and Aguilera are members of Latino Student Union, which is where Aguilera said he established his first group of friends on campus.
Tom Taylor, vice president for Enrollment, Marketing, and Communication, said Ball State's strategic plan calls for the university to increase its enrollment of international and ethnic students from it's current 11.4 percent to 15 percent by 2012. Noting various statistics, he said ethnic diversity among freshman classes has risen steadily since 2006.
Out-of-state tuition has also increased, Taylor said. A goal of the strategic plan is to have 15 percent of campus be out-of-state students by 2012. As of last fall, enrollment in this area was at 10.8 percent. Because of hard economic times and the expiration of a reciprocity agreement between Ball State and six counties in Ohio, that number dropped slightly since the previous year. Since the agreement was reinstated in July, Taylor believes the number of domestic students will rise again.
'We're seeing an upturn in out-of-state opportunities this year, and we've built a lot of momentum,' he said. 'I feel very confident.'
According to online university factbooks, Purdue University seemed to be leading the pack with a 23 percent minority population among its undergraduate community as of Fall 2007, its most recent listing. As of Fall 2009, Indiana State University had a 17 percent minority population, and University of Southern Indiana had a 9 percent minority population.
China Initiative Coordinator Po Hu said Ball State represents students from more than 50 countries and is actively recruiting international students from India, Turkey, South Korea, Saudi Arabia and China. He said the general number of Chinese students on campus is 200, and there are 20 Chinese faculty and staff. Promotion efforts include a branch recruiting office in China, brochures printed in Chinese and a version of the Ball State Web site translated into Chinese.
Hu said the strategic plan calls for an increase from 600 international students to 1,000 by 2012. Hu said the Friendship Family Program, comprised of Muncie families, helps international students become integrated into the culture of an American university.
Charles Payne, a longtime university faculty member and speaker at the Unity Week event Tuesday, said since he came to campus, the term diversity has taken on a larger scope.
'When you talked about diversity at that time [in 1972], it was black and white,' he said. 'There were very few Asian and international students. Now African Americans are the largest minority group, including faculty.'
He said people could do more to promote interaction between races, noting that most interactions are by chance. But sometimes, he sees students of different races who are good friends.
'From time to time, I come across people in [Art and Journalism Building] and the [L.A. Pittenger Student Center], and I get the sense they're old friends.'
Before coming to Ball State, Payne taught at a racially segregated school in Mississippi. He said he went to an all-black college and a predominantly white institution to earn his doctorate degree.
'I think you can have some good experience in one group, but when you enter the world, you're better off getting to know all different people,' he said.
Senior Lericia Hawkins, secretary of Today's Black Women, said she believes embracing diversity is a good idea, but in execution it fails.
'Today's Black Women holds events to get people to join, but because of it's title our audience is mainly Black men and women,' she said. 'Even Spectrum, because of what they represent, has a hard time bringing in people.'
As a transfer student from a small private college, sophomore Michael Hole said Ball State is doing a pretty good job of promoting diversity.
'At Franklin College, we were all farming white kids, and most of them went there to play division 3 sports,' he said. 'It seems there's more things [for ethnic groups] and clubs here on campus.'
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