Multicultural Misrepresentation

By Stella Baer | Monday, June 11, 2001

Oh what a tangled web we weave,
When first we practice to deceive!
—Sir Walter Scott

When it comes to trying to make a campus more diverse, just how far is too far? Admissions Director Robert Seltzer at the University of Wisconsin-Madison tested the limits when he allowed the head of a black student, Diallo Shabazz, to be electronically cut from one photograph and inserted into the cover picture of the University's application brochure—a picture of white Badger fans at a 1993 football game.

The University might have gotten away with the deception had not Anna Gould, a reporter for one of the university's two student newspapers, noticed that Shabazz 'was in the sun,' while the other students in the cover photograph clearly were not. Gould showed the suspect photograph to her editors and within moments they found the two original photos on the college website; from there they put two and two together, so to speak.

Since Gould's discovery the scandal has received national coverage and sparked debate as to just how far is too far. University officials—after publicly apologizing for trying to be so surreptitious—have decided to spend $64,000 (not taken from tuition money, they claim) to print a fresh batch of applications. The 100,642 new applications will feature an untouched cover photo of the school's Memorial Union Terrace at sunset with no digitally added heads of minorities.

'We basically decided we had to pull them,' Vice Chancellor for Student Affairs Paul Barrows said in late September. 'It was wrong, and we wouldn't perpetuate the wrong by continuing to send them out.'

Prior to Gould's exposé, the admissions office sent out about 64,000 copies of the 44-page brochure to high schools and to individual students who had requested them. They attempted to solve this dilemma by mailing everyone a new brochure along with a request to destroy the old one.

'Our intentions were good, but our methods were bad,' admitted Al Friedman, director of university publications.

Seltzer claims the photograph was altered to reflect the diversity of UW-Madison's campus. UW-Madison has been criticized for its lack of diversity, and officials have been trying for years to shed its reputation as a campus that makes minority students feel unwelcome. The percentage of minority students at UW-Madison has increased a paltry 2.6% over the past decade, and Chancellor David Ward has said repeatedly this summer that diversifying the student body and faculty should be the university's top priorities in the next decade.

The admissions officials at UW-Madison clearly demonstrated how far a school will go to 'diversify' its student body. For them, deception was acceptable as long as it was done for the all-important goal of diversity.

The University of Wisconsin at Madison is certainly not the only institution to cross ethical boundaries in trying to appear diverse.

Less than two weeks after the officials at UW-Madison apologized for deceiving the public a similar scandal was unveiled at the University of Idaho. Officials at the university removed a photograph from the top of the college's webpage when students at the college newspaper noticed that a picture of eight smiling faces had been digitally altered. As it turns out, two of the faces, one black and the other Asian, had replaced the actual heads of white students.

David Embleton, a computer technician at the university, literally pieced together the photograph after being encouraged to find a photograph of minority students for the webpage.

Out of U of I's 10,500 students only 8% are members of minority groups, but officials pride themselves on the fact that their student population is more diverse than the overall population of Idaho.

John Evey, a senior at the university, and one of the white students whose head was replaced, told the campus newspaper that 'it is probably not the most ethical thing to do. It seems like they're faking it.'

A similar web page fiasco unfolded at Dartmouth this past summer. Students were almost as disappointed with the new web page as the Art History department was with the aesthetically unappealing Berry Library. The old web page—with large alternating photographs of beautiful spots around campus—was replaced with a new page that showcased tiny rotating pictures of students' faces and college scenes. All of the close-up frontal headshots were originally of minority students. The first photograph to load was a headshot of Janine Denny '02, an African-American, which was placed on the web page without her permission. Denny eventually asked that her picture be removed due to the large number of questions and e-mails she received concerning the photograph.

Among the 11 photographs in the flashing pictures, there is a Native American student wearing traditional attire at graduation ceremonies, an Asian student wearing a bicycle helmet, and an African-American student reading on the Green.

As Phil Mone, president of Dartmouth's class of 2002, told The Dartmouth, 'There's a misrepresentation going on here. It's a misrepresentation because Dartmouth is 68% Caucasian and the slide show that you see is about 95% minority. The College is clearly using this as a marketing tool to draw minority students. I work in admissions, and I know that nothing so far-reaching and public as the official College website would have anything but a lot of thought put into what images it portrays,' Mone said. 'The problem is that it's done in such an obvious way.'

Lonnie Threatte '02—an African-American—told The Dartmouth that he thought the website's images were 'deceiving.' 'They make it look like we've got all these different people here,' he said. 'Dartmouth can't claim diversity when it's just surface diversity.'

The web design team consisted of members of the Admissions, Computing Services, and Public Affairs departments and the President's Office. The team worked together to design the web site over a period of six months. They claim diversity was only one of many concerns and deny that they tried to misrepresent Dartmouth's student body in any way.

But whether they tried to or not, the website is a misrepresentation. It simply does not correspond with the actual composition of the student body. Officials at Dartmouth and other universities are not trying to represent their schools as they truly are; they are trying to represent them as they feel they should be. And so their ideological commitment to 'diversity' has led to some shocking chicanery.

The Dartmouth saga continued this fall when Freshmen students were merrily welcomed with a Green Book cover picturing several minority students holding hands to protest an ostensibly offensive 'ghetto' party held on campus two years ago. Not only is the mood of the photograph somber and unwelcoming in comparison to Green Book covers of years past, but not a single white student is to be found in foreground of the picture.

Obviously something is seriously wrong when American universities across the country not only condone, but partake in deception and misrepresentation. Why can't they present things as they are?

And where is their integrity?

Multicultural Misrepresentation

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