Benjy Egel is a journalism freshman and Mustang Daily sports columnist.
If 13.1 percent of the United States is black, how many of Cal Poly’s 17,680-person undergraduate student body identifies the same way? 2,000? 1,000? 500?
The answer is 123 students, or 0.7 percent. That’s it. The current Common Data Set, which shows campus demographics, says there are twice as many nonresident aliens on campus as black students.
But Kristaan Ivory isn’t surprised. The junior slotback, who is one of the 123, has long realized the difference between his hometown of West Los Angeles and San Luis Obispo.
“Walking around, I see it’s not too diverse on campus; it’s mostly whites,” Ivory said. “I would feel maybe more comfortable being in class, looking around and seeing other students’ ethnicities.”
Ivory has never felt discriminated against on campus, but said that a more colorful Cal Poly would benefit from more diversity.
Going from the field to the classroom can still feel strange, Ivory said. While the football team has many coaches and assistants of color, there are fewer black faculty members.
Ivory sometimes feels like he has few people to connect with in class, he said. He then goes into a shell and becomes less social, despite networking being key for a business major.
“It’s a big culture shock sometimes,” he said. “Sometimes the class makes me want to sit there and be quiet. I don’t really say much to anybody, I just sit there and take notes.”
The athletic department boasts significantly wider range of races than the rest of the student body. Since players from all sports often spend free time with other athletes, Cal Poly’s overall lack of diversity can be less of an issue.
“Athletes are basically all who I hang around,” Ivory said. “From basketball to baseball, all the sports. Mostly, I’m with my teammates though.”
Even though he is from Los Angeles, Ivory didn’t know about Cal Poly until the Mustangs recruited him. With no knowledge of the school itself, he wasn’t aware of Cal Poly’s lack of black students.
Ivory said better outreach would bring more students of color to Cal Poly. Athletic accomplishments help generate Cal Poly-centric headlines, like when the men’s basketball team beat UCLA earlier this year, but Ivory thinks more exposure is neccesary.
“Back home, I’d say ‘Cal Poly’ and everyone just thinks (of) Cal Poly, Pomona,” Ivory said. “Before I got recruited (to go) here, I didn’t even know about it.”
But the lack of awareness in some communities isn’t because the university isn’t trying. The MultiCultural Center hosts a PolyCultural Weekend each year designed to reach out to prospective students, specifically minorities. Jessica Hernandez, an AmeriCorps VIP Fellow, helps Cal Poly organize and promote the event through the MultiCultural Center.
“It’s like a mini open house, but specifically we target minority and first-generation college-bound students to come visit the campus,” Hernandez said. “And what’s very unique about that is that we partner up with a lot of the cultural clubs, fraternities and sororities on campus, and they host one of these students that come in over the weekend.”
University President Jeffrey Armstrong recently highlighted at his Campus Community Conversation Cal Poly’s lack of color as one of the university’s core problems. Though Armstrong later apologized for mixing multiple stories together in that interview, his overall message was clear.
While the baseball team has no black players, junior infielder Michael Hoo and his brother Chris are half Chinese, half white.
Michael grew up in the mostly white town of Cupertino, and was recruited by other schools with heavy Caucasian numbers. Diversity wasn’t on his mind when he chose Cal Poly, and he has rarely thought about it since.
“A lot of people don’t even realize that I am Asian,” he said with a laugh. “I wouldn’t say I’m really affected by it, I just realize that it’s there.”
Like Ivory, Hoo spends most of his time around other athletes. He lives, practices and socializes with them.
Hoo, like Ivory, also recognized that student-athletes tend to encounter more students of difference races than non-athletes.
“I feel like the athletic programs here are a lot more diverse than, like, the greek system that we have,” Hoo said. “Outside of athletics, I’d feel like it is pretty white.”
Still Hoo and Ivory came to similar conclusions. As long as students can learn and earn their degrees, the problems don’t threaten Cal Poly immediately, Ivory said.
“We’re all here just to learn, get our education, so if you focus it shouldn’t matter,” Ivory said. “I wouldn’t say it’s a big problem, but more diversity would help.”
Diversity, diversity, diversity. The unrelenting chatter about Cal Poly’s lack of diversity is not only constant but seems to be the politically correct thing to discuss. It’s gotten so bad that earlier this week President Armstrong stated in his letter to students that he’d been told in so many words by the CEOs of major corporations that Cal Poly and apparently its students are less attractive because of it.
But Armstrong is fabricating to support his personal agenda and that of individuals like Chancellor White. This observation was confirmed by one very important article released this past week by Cal Poly.
As reported on April 30th by Cal Poly’s University Relations department, Oracle Corporation, one of the world’s premier Fortune 500 corporations, hired 40 Cal Poly grads across a variety of majors. Congratulations to those hired! Go Mustangs!
What’s so important about this event, however, is that it reveals several things that refute what Armstrong is saying and what he’s trying to do at the university.
First, it completely defeats Armstrong’s suggestion that Cal Poly grads are somehow less desirable because the campus isn’t in his opinion diverse enough. Second it destroys his suggestion that Cal Poly should switch to a semester system as quarters don’t seem to be working
It would be wise for President Armstrong to read the press release prepared and delivered by his own staff. In it he’d see the following very important quote.
…“We are pleased that Oracle has identified Cal Poly as a campus of
choice. They have had great success with our graduates in the past, and
we see this as a unique opportunity to impact the future of the
company.”…Oracle is hiring graduates from all majors who possess “exceptional communications skills and a competitive mindset.”
http://www.calpolynews.calpoly.edu/news_releases/2013/April/Oracle.html
Exceptional communication skills and a competitive mindset. How interesting that corporations place an emphasis on those traits in the people they hire. What’s equally interesting, the recruiters at Oracle think Cal Poly grads possess these qualities despite what Armstrong is pushing.
How good is Cal Poly? Thankfully, the article released by Armstrong’s staff explains that very clearly as well because it details the other target universities Oracle considers to be peers of Cal Poly.
…Other universities where Oracle is recruiting include UCLA, USC,
Stanford, UC Berkeley and UC Santa Barbara on the West Coast, along with
Boston College, Cornell, Columbia, Duke, the University of
Pennsylvania, the University of Virginia and the University of Texas at
Austin.
President Armstrong there are three lessons you can learn from this.
1. Don’t create a problem when one doesn’t exist.
2. Cal Poly is doing great and is more balanced in its diversity than virtually every other school on Oracle’s list….especially schools like Stanford, Cornell and Duke.
3. Don’t try to fix something that’s not broken.
Cal Poly is a campus in a location far from any urban centers and with a non-neglibile cost of living. Should we expect anyone other than those on scholarships or from a relatively affluent backgrounds to attend?
College choice should be based on a cost/benefit analysis. If you live in the Bay Area or the greater Los Angeles area, or San Diego you can commute to a top tier school. Similarly, you can go to one of many Cal States that are even closer to you and save a bundle on room and board.
I can think of few reasons to go to Cal Poly other than the climate and the culture. These are luxury goods, especially in the current education market. These aspects of the school and community have value, but if all you want is a college degree you can go somewhere closer to home and save yourself, your parents, and Uncle Sam quite a bit of money. You might end up like the 41% of graduates whose job doesn’t even require a degree, so keep that in mind.
Greater diversity would be nice, but it would provide far less value to students than maintaining or improving outlays towards instruction versus overhead. Overhead for non-academic staffing I’m sure is not insignificant, and who knows how many positions there are for fostering diversity. If 0.7 percent is all they’ve managed, which is largely due to the athletics program, and in keeping with my experience from several years ago, than what value are they providing?