Administrators at CU-Boulder put on a show Saturday, displaying a dizzying array of graphs and statistics along with the results of a survey that tried to recast the university as a place where diversity is Priority One and where students of color are thrilled to be there.
One slide offered this “conclusion”: “UCB is a leader in the state for retention and graduation rates of students of color.”
As they spoke, I rifled through the 3- inch-thick binder of papers given to the members of the Blue Ribbon Commission on Diversity.
They were praising a minority graduation rate of 30 percent over a four-year period?
Another slide touted the results of a student survey: “85 percent of students are satisfied with the UCB experience.”
Many of the black, Latino, Asian and Native American students sitting in the audience of the Glenn Miller Ballroom rolled their eyes in disbelief.
Tell that to Blue Ribbon Commission member Mebraht Gebre-Michael, a black student union president who last November received an anonymous e-mail that included this line: “You guys don’t belong and you look so (expletive) ridiculous walking around school with your stupid hair and ugly monkey skin. You will die if you run for student government again.”
For those minority students in the audience Saturday, the lesson was about marketing.
At CU, denial is the new reality.
Less than 1.5 percent of the student body is black, in a state where 5 percent of high school graduates are black.
It all ties back to the “Colorado paradox.” We’re the most educated state in the country, but many of those degree holders move here from elsewhere because Colorado isn’t graduating enough of its own.
Especially woeful is the large percentage of black, Native American and Latino students who drop out of high school but aren’t counted as such in a shell game of lies that school districts across the state employ.
On the surface, it looks like it’s strictly an issue of race, but the overarching problem is most of the dropouts are poor children who have been stuck in inferior schools.
None of this should be news to anyone. These problems have roots that go back to 1954, when the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in Brown vs. Board of Education that “separate but equal” schools were unconstitutional.
More than a half-century later, we’re nearly right back where we started, with schools that are more than 80 percent minority, with a few poor white kids mixed in.
Inferior schools don’t produce graduates primed for college. With few in the pipeline, CU-Boulder doesn’t have many to pick from.
Last week, Harvard University researchers released “The Resegregation of Denver Public Schools,” a study that put numbers to what most people in the city suspected: 94 percent of white students in the Denver metro area attend suburban schools. They are a sharp contrast to most public schools in Denver.
In DPS there often aren’t enough textbooks for children to take home, a high percentage of teachers are not certified, class sizes are larger and teachers have more classes to teach, which leaves them with less preparation time.
It partly explains why, according to the Harvard study, in 2002, 43 percent of DPS students completed high school with a diploma, compared with 82 percent of students in Douglas County and 91 percent of Cherry Creek students.
Dropouts aren’t going to be in the running to attend CU-Boulder or any college.
This isn’t to say that CU-Boulder is off the hook. The university has layers of issues to deal with. If students repeatedly complain about feeling ostracized and isolated, administrators shouldn’t tout a 2001 survey of 641 students, saying most are happy there.
CU-Boulder administrators acknowledge that the school needs to work harder to recruit and retain African-American, Latino and Native American students. Applauding themselves for half-baked work makes students think that for the university diversity is Priority Zero.
At the same time, we have to remember that their struggle to be inclusive wouldn’t be so great if the public schools in our state were preparing students of color for college.
Cindy Rodríguez’s column appears Tuesdays and Thursdays in Scene. Contact her at 303-820-1211 or crodriguez@denverpost.com.
