Dartmouth's Racial Separatism

By Alexander Talcott and Darren Thomas | Monday, February 12, 2001

Last April, Dean of the College James Larimore distributed a memo to the entire campus detailing changes to be expected in the next phase of the Student Life Initiative. 'Now that President Wright and the Board of Trustees have provided a guiding framework for the future of student social and residential life at Dartmouth,' he began, 'I am writing to share with you some of my initial thoughts on the exciting opportunities before us.' Among the changes, Larimore explained that 'The advisory positions for African-American students, Latino/Hispanic students, Asian Pacific American students, and Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual and Transgendered students will be expanded from half-time to full-time.' Apparently, the advice provided by class deans is inadequate, or culturally indecipherable, for students with minority backgrounds (or alternate sexual orientations). As such, Dartmouth is providing special advisors just for them.

Despite Dartmouth's stated faith in multicultural integration—the College's 'Principle of Community' states that diversity provides 'an opportunity for learning and moral growth'—the administration continually creates group distinctions among students, and separates them along racial and sexual lines.

According to Michele Hern∑ndez, a former assistant director of admissions at Dartmouth and author of the 1997 book, A is for Admission: The Insider's Guide to Getting into the Ivy League and Other Top Colleges, applications from minority students are literally flagged early on. 'At Dartmouth,' she writes, 'minority-student status is designated by blue tags for black students, red tags for Hispanic students, and black tags for Native American students.' Admissions officers apply different criteria to these applicants. Hernandez says that officers are willing to trade off test scores for class rank, or vice versa—and will generally 'give less weight to test scores and class rank than would be accorded to nonminority applicants'—when weighing a decision about a non-Asian minority candidate. 'For white students without tags, modest test scores are not offset by superior class rank.' According to 1992 data, the average SAT score of black students at Dartmouth is 218 points below that of whites.

Hern∑ndez notes the cost of hosting minority students for special recruiting weekends—'Dartmouth in a typical year spends in excess of fifty thousand dollars to fly or bus accepted minority students to the campus'—and finds that the real difficulty is that 'many of the highly selective colleges end up fighting over a small number of qualified minority students, such that it becomes a Sisyphean task to enroll even a low number of minority students at each individual college.'

The College actively recruits minority students through a series of mailings, meetings, and weekends targeted at black, Hispanic, and Native American students. Before his acceptance, Taylor Keitt '04 attended one such weekend. 'The trip up was fully paid for, and we were set up with hosts for the three-day stay in Hanover,' Keitt recalls. 'We were given information packets that detailed campus events, classes, financial aid workshops, and other assorted social goodies across campus. I got assorted mailings detailing perspectives from minority viewpoints, the website for Shabazz House, etc.'

Kieron Bryan '04 says that his 'personal experiences have reflected that Dartmouth definitely does a lot as far as minority recruitment is concerned.' He received mailings as well as invitations to various minority-only events. 'I know that I was receiving mailings from Dartmouth during my entire application process starting junior year,' says Bryan. 'I think the efforts that Dartmouth made at those particular meetings outdid those that other universities made.'

Minority students who read the mailings and participate in the weekends are introduced to a number of minority-specific programs. There's the Mellon Minority Academic Careers Fellowship Program, which encourages undergraduate African-American, Native American, and Latino students to pursue academic careers, and is thus designed to increase the number of minority professors in the academic world. The program does not include Asian-Americans, who are already 'over-represented' in academe—that is, they exceed their proportion of the population.

Dartmouth also participates in the Doctoral and Dissertation Scholars program, which was inaugurated in 1994 by the New England Board of Higher Education under its Equity and Pluralism Action Program. Dartmouth's math department participates actively in the program, which 'aims to increase the number of Black, Hispanic, and Native American graduate students who complete doctorates and become professors.' Through the program, NEBHE engages in 'community building with students and faculty mentors,' brings researchers to meet with the students, and provides 'professional development seminars' for minority students. 'Different perspectives ought to be brought into academia and we're doing our part,' says NEBHE Vice-President JoAnne Moody. She further explains that the program is open to only African-Americans, Hispanics, and Native Americans because those groups are 'most underrepresented in academia.'

Initiated in 1992, the Ernest Everett Just Program for Students in the Sciences at Dartmouth funds forums, workshops, discussion groups, visiting scientists, and research internships to reverse the under-representation of minorities in science by supporting Ph.D. candidates. Dartmouth also hands out three different fellowships every year: the Thurgood Marshall Dissertation Fellowships for African-American Scholars, the Caesar Chavez Dissertation Fellowship for Latina/o Scholars, and the Charles A. Eastman Dissertation Fellowship for Native American Scholars. The three programs are identical except for the racial identity of those invited to apply. Fellows receive a $25,000 stipend, office space, library privileges, and a $2,500 research assistance fund in order to complete a Ph.D. dissertation.

These programs, and others, along with Dartmouth's minority admissions and recruitment policies, mean to broaden the representation of different cultures within the university community. Yet, while the College maintains that contact with a diverse student body enriches and facilitates the learning experience, Dartmouth also encourages self-segregation among the student body. Aside from special academic programs and advisors, Dartmouth also maintains four 'cultural affinity' houses, where students of particular ethnic backgrounds live and interact with their cultural advisor and members of the faculty.

The houses include the El-Hajj Malik El-Shabazz Center, focused on African-American culture; the Native American House; and the Asian Studies Center House. Next term, the College will complete construction of a new Latino Academic Affinity House, located on the former site of Pike House on North Main Street. The house will accommodate about 13 students and an in-house advisor. Dean Larimore called the house 'a wonderful opportunity for integrating, in significant and meaningful ways, [student's] academic, residential and social lives.'

It remains unclear, however, whether minority housing strengthens the educational experience. 'By treating minority students as surrogates for their communities rather than as individuals, ethnic dorms foster racial group thinking and defeat a university's mission to broaden all students' horizon,' argues Michael Meyers, Executive Director of the New York Civil Rights Coalition. Meyers, who became the youngest Assistant Director of the NAACP in 1975, urged the Education Department to examine Cornell University's ethnic dormitories as a violation of the 1964 Civil Rights Act.

The investigation found that students are not required to identify their race on applications to live in the residences, and so they do not constitute racially segregated housing. Still, no one can accurately label the system of ethnic dormitories 'integrated.' Noting that only one of the 122 residents of Cornell's African-American House was white, Meyers denounced university-sanctioned de facto segregation. 'Aside from the university's and the regents' collective failure to correct the pattern of racial segregation, they have ratified this segregation with the double-talk of 'freedom of choice,'' he said. 'If Cornell were a Southern university standing behind white students who chose to live in segregated dorms, the feds would demand immediate desegregation.'

Dartmouth also ostensibly allows students of different backgrounds to live in the Native American House or in Shabazz Hall (typically, none do), so it's unlikely that Dartmouth will encounter legal difficulties. Yet, if personal interaction is the key to fighting ignorance and reducing racial tension, then Dartmouth maintains a self-destructive policy. With minority students sequestered in separate dormitories, it remains possible for white students to graduate without having substantial contact with minority students, and—especially—vice versa. The ethnic residence halls are part of a larger institutional separatism, which includes special academic support programs for certain minority groups, whole academic departments, and extracurricular programs which range from professional groups such as the Society of Black Engineers to clubs based solely on ethnic and racial affiliations.

Minority students drop out of school at a higher rate than do whites or Asians, and so many race-specific programs are employed to retain minority students and to ameliorate criticisms that affirmative action admits underqualified applicants. Dartmouth's Native American Program, for example, has succeeded in raising the graduation rate of Native American students at the College to 72 percent—far above the graduation rate of Native Americans nationally, but below the College's overall rate of 94 percent.

While such programs sustain preferential admissions policies, they tend to exacerbate racial tensions on campus. Special programs and awards tend to reinforce stereotypes and promote the belief that it is through the assertion of group power rather than the pursuit of individual achievement that one succeeds, enforcing the perception that, as Shelby Steele has put it, 'somehow color, not our hard work, can bring us advancements.' As such, the isolation created through separate housing and activities fosters racial consciousness, encouraging students to define themselves not as individuals, but as part of a racial group. Campus debates take the form of group conflict, and students increasingly see themselves as victims of a bigoted society—and college.

A 1993 study by Alexander Astin of the UCLA School of Education found a correlation between an institution's 'diversity emphasis' and the perception that the institution suffered from racial conflict. When students are categorized and divided according to race, it's not hard to see what lesson the College is teaching.

Dartmouth's Racial Separatism

Article Tools

Related Articles