When Tyris Jones was a high school senior, he narrowed his college prospects down to two: Washington University in St. Louis and Northwestern. He attended a diversity weekend at Wash. U., where African-American students welcomed and told him all about the resources and life within the minority community. Although Northwestern did not have a comparable event, Jones took it upon himself to “dig out” the minority community and spent some time at the Black House, where he learned about campus inclusiveness.
All factors considered, Jones optimistically chose Northwestern. But as much as he liked what he saw within Northwestern’s minority population, only 87 African-American freshmen matriculated in the fall of 2008.
Since then, Jones, who is now Speaker of the ASG Senate and a Weinberg junior, wants to improve minority representation at Northwestern, through both quantitative measures like student enrollment and qualitative measures in terms of a instilling a sense of belonging in students from underrepresented groups. He has sought the help of the ASG Student Life Committee in drafting a resolution to better represent minorities in campus tours. They plan to propose it to the Senate Mar. 9. McCormick junior Katie Bradford, vice president of the Student Life Committee and McCormick junior, says this resolution differs from a bill, as it will not impose changes on the tours system.
“The main idea is to look at tours as a recruitment method,” Bradford says. “Students go on tours for different reasons and showing minority resources on the tours wouldn’t hurt other students.”
Following a double-digit percentage increase last fall, minority application numbers are up again for the Northwestern Class of 2015. A total of 2021 African-Americans (a 12.6 percent increase from the previous year) and 2384 Hispanic students (15.9 percent increase from the previous) sent applications to Northwestern, according to reports from University Enrollment. This rate surpassed those of both Wash. U. in St. Louis and the University of Chicago.
Despite these increases and distinct recruitment efforts in place to serve to attract minority students, Jones wants Northwestern to do even better.
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“Diversity is a buzzword. You see it plastered everywhere,” Jones says. Jones says that he has been planning amendment efforts for about a year and that he hopes to access a tour map and redraw the route, indicating potential areas — such as the Multicultural Center and the Black House — where guides may be able to discuss or visit aspects of the minority community. “I feel like we’re really losing out on a lot of perspective minority students by not showcasing these things.”
The tour guides are critical of ASG members’ leading this initiative, saying none of those involved have been on a tour in recent years. “If I go to a university that is predominantly white, and predominantly people who don’t look like me, how are you going to make me feel special?” Jones says. “Even if I am a white student, and I see that the university is investing its resources in all of its students, then I know this is the university for me.”
Although Jones does not have statistics that link prospective students’ underrepresentation in campus tours to deterrence from applying — and has not personally been on a tour since high school — he says that he has spoken with those who are familiar and disgruntled with the current system.
“I’m not somebody who’s just like, ‘We should put this on the tour,’” says Jones, who is also a member of the Freshman Activities Board, Chicago Area Mentorship Program and For Members Only. “I’m somebody who has been active in trying to get more minority students at least exposed to these great communities,” Jones says.
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Although Bradford says that those working on the project have contacted the admissions office, Sean Kim, tour guide coordinator and McCormick junior, says that he has not heard anything about it.
“I don’t understand why ASG would try to alter our tours,” Kim says. “They can give us suggestions, but it’s ultimately the admissions office who decides on the changes’ implementation, and it’s a pretty lengthy process.”
Tour guide and FMO secretary Zoe Goodman says that guides are required to mention multicultural resources. Northwestern has 124 student tour guides, and 25 percent of them identify as African American, Hispanic, Asian, or non-U.S. citizens, according to Associate Provost Mike Mills. Goodman, who is white, says that several tour guides participate in multicultural organizations, but even those who do not are trained to discuss them.
There are two types of tours: general and specialized. General tours are the ones in question — the tours that occur one to three times per day and pass through much of campus (beginning this year, featuring North Campus and Tech), and those who lead them follow general guidelines. Specialized tours are more personalized, catered to those who schedule large group visits, such as students from Chicago Public Schools.
Although there is not enough time to walk through the multicultural houses during general tours, Goodman says she will answer any questions has even walked students to the houses afterwards.
“To me, there are so many people who are in Organic Chemistry that have orgo lab — that doesn’t mean we’re going to give them a tour of the lab,” says the SESP sophomore. “If we included every single space on the campus tour, it would be ten hours long.”
The tour guides are critical of ASG members leading this initiative because none of those involved have been on a tour in recent years. Bradford says that she was told that members of student government are not allowed on the tours, but Kim says this is false and that all students are permitted to go on tours as long as they file a request with the admissions office. Despite these contradictory reports, the guides say they think that there are other means of affecting change in the name of recruitment. And because students who participate in tours are what Goodman describes as a self-selecting group, she says that tours do not function to recruit students, per se.
“I don’t think ASG should be regulating something that is so closely tied to admissions for the university,” Goodman says. “It’s not even so much to recruit as it is a demonstration.”
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While visiting the University of Chicago during Thanksgiving break of her junior year of high school, Sydney Smith stopped a female student for directions. Both of them happened to be African-American, so Smith asked about the minority community at the school.
The student responded that she felt so unwelcome that she was planning to transfer.
So when Smith arrived at Northwestern a few days later for a tour, she selected the only African-American guide that day and made sure to ask the same questions. She knew that Northwestern’s minority population was small — statistics on the website told her that. And she says that although one black person cannot speak for the entire community, she wanted an honest opinion.
“She got me really excited about the school,” Smith said. “She told me that it was a close-knit community and that you have support.”
Nonetheless, Smith was still struck by the low number of minorities on campus when she moved here last fall.
“I felt like it was kind of a little culture shock,” says Smith, who is now a Weinberg freshman and an Ambassador co-coordinator for the Northwestern African American Recruitment Organization. “I felt like, if I’m going to do something here, I need to do something to change that.”
Student recruitment groups, many of which work closely with the admissions office, are some of the chief means of encouraging individuals from underrepresented groups to apply to Northwestern. Smith heard about the Ambassadors program through her involvement with FMO and decided to apply for a work-study position. Like many students who work in minority admissions, Smith plans events, reaches out to students via phone and letter writing and explains what it means to be a Northwestern student.
Smith attributes the tour to her decision to come to Northwestern, but more specifically, she says tours are obligatory, and the conversation she had with the guide was what influenced her decision. She says that as an Ambassador, she wants to dispel myths about minority representation at Northwestern.
“Part of our responsibility as Ambassadors is to show that our program is needed and to do things and show that we are an integral part of this campus,” Smith says.
The NU Ambassadors share an office with their Hispanic counterparts, the Council of Latino Admission Volunteers for Education. Medill freshman Oliver Ortega recruits with CLAVE and is also a member of Alianza, a group on campus dedicated to bettering the experiences of Latino/a students.
“Many Latino students have parents that maybe don’t speak English or aren’t really familiar with the education system in the U.S.,” Ortega says. “Overall, it’s just an awareness of education that’s important.”
This awareness may include information about Northwestern, or about college admissions in general. Weinberg freshman Isely Hernandez, participates in several minority organizations and visited her high school, J. Sterling Morton East in Berwyn, twice this year with a group of Northwestern students. The group also visited the Morton West campus, where Hernandez says she saw students with a lot of potential to attend a selective school.
“Because they come from families that don’t have enough money, they look at the price tag and they just get scared away,” Hernandez says. “Since many of us were in that position ourselves, we’re kind of like models for them to follow.”
Jaime Garcia, co-coordinator of Latino recruitment at Northwestern, graduated from Morton East in 2000. Hernandez says she remembers him visiting her class last year as a part of his travels. In addition to his trips to the west suburbs of Chicago, Garcia also visits schools in the Southwest U.S. annually in order to give potential prospective students a “crash course” on college admissions.
“We show them that NU is a possibility,” Garcia says.
Student and faculty admissions workers agree that their efforts are equally important in the process. While full-time employees provide organization and authority, admissions workers say that students are able to answer questions and provide insights when non-students cannot.
“We’ve certainly put a lot of effort into recruiting African-American and Hispanic students, and low-income students,” Mills says. “I think we’re seeing the fruits of all of that hard work by many people.”
Aside from personal outreach, the Good Neighbor, Great University program, a new program this year that offers aid to Evanston and Chicago students, has also inspired a boost in applications from area students in general. There were about 1000 applicants from Chicago Public Schools this year — a 28 percent jump from last year, Mills says. For non-residents, a new marketing campaign for admissions by Lonely Planet features Chicago as a selling point.
“In the beginning of this decade, 2001, there were a grand total of about 225 Chicago Public School applicants at Northwestern,” Mills says. “So we’re quadruple that now at the end of the decade, which was necessary, and it’s very, very gratifying.”
To continue these types of increases, Goodman says she thinks that the university should maximize resources already in place as opposed to making drastic changes to campus tours. But the ASG Student Life Committee says they plan to proceed with the resolution.
“How we best recruit minority students is worth exploring,” Bradford says “I don’t know what will come of it in the end.”