Documenting Instanity

A little evidence

Pius Kamau writes "CU's black condition" in the Denver Post. He provides a better picture of a serious problem at CU w.r.t. black students. His kids went there and he claims they were "harassed, ostracized and abused". He further claims the university couldn't or wouldn't do anything about it. That is useful, but not complete, information. He goes on:

Few people know the facts about CU's admission of black kids. The highest enrollment was 1.77 percent in 1999; now it's 400 blacks out of a 24,600 student body, or 1.5 percent, and just 1.2 percent of the graduate student body. By comparison, 3.8 percent of Colorado is black, according to the U.S. Census.

That is very useful, but still not complete. I would be surprised if blacks in this state go to college at less than half the rate of whites. But CU is a major university. What percentage of the students there are from Colorado? I would think it more likely that a black student from Denver would be more likely to go to an east coast school than a black student from the east coast going to CU. Ditto for white students, btw.

My point is that there may in fact be a racial problem. I am beginning to suspect that there is. If that is the case it should be easy to put together a simple picture with hard facts that shows it in blazing bright lights. On the other hand maybe it is simply a matter of black students not wanting to hang out with a bunch of ill mannered, upper middle class liberal snobs. I don't. As I have said in a previous post, some of my white neighbors are forbidding their children from going there because of their seemingly valid perceptions of the school. That indicates a problem but not a racist one. Does the school have a racism problem as well?

What are the percentages of in state students at various universities that are black? White? What percentage of black students that are accepted to both CU and CSU go to CU? How about Northern Colorado? School of the Mines? Has anybody tried to contact the black students that were accepted but didn't attend to find out why?

From CSU's web site: "12% of U.S. students are ethnic minorities"

Northern Colorado has a plethora of information here including 2.6% black and around 10% out of state undergrads.

Didn't find anything directly on CSM but their site did have this showing that in 2002 nationally there were almost 16% blacks in engineering programs. That is MUCH higher than I would have expected and is a great sign. These degrees are the closest thing to a guarantee of a middle/upper-middle class existence.

That took 15 minutes. If I had used the phone I bet I could get the relevant statistics in less than an hour.

posted by mailgeek @ 1:25 PM