Minority Recruitment efforts up
By Jamelah Earle and Beth Walton
Editor in Chief and Staff Writer

On February 5th, Lance Coleman, associate director of admissions, sent out an e-mail to a selected group of students from diverse backgrounds asking them to participate with the recruitment of multi-cultural students.

In his e-mail, Coleman asked current students to contact prospective students and discuss what Albion College has to offer.

This, according to David Hawsey, vice president for enrollment, is but one part of a wide-reaching plan to bring minorities to campus. “President Mitchell gathered us together to talk openly about recruitment and come up with as many strategies about recruiting for Albion’s future as we could think up. Among the 285 different ideas were several that dealt with recruiting students of color.”

He added, “In early November, I started meeting with the various groups around campus who either expressed an interest in helping out, let me know directly that Albion needed to address the percentage of minority students on campus, or both.”

“I decided to start a grass roots campaign shortly after that,” Hawsey said. “I am a very practical person, so I believe it is less critical to spend committee time on things like this . . . and [it is] much more important to simply get out there and recruit.”

“Among the best people to help identify our opportunities in multicultural recruiting are students of color themselves,” he added.

When deciding to send the e-mail to various minority students, Hawsey said, “We met as a staff and shared the names of anyone who showed an interest in this initiative (student-to-student calling), anyone who was vocal about the issues. We consider them to be a prime candidate for helping to improve the situation. We then reached out via e-mail, personal calls, or other means.”

When asked about the importance of having minorities call minority prospectives, Hawsey said, “It will help with a prospective stidents ‘comfort level,’ and may result in either affirming the decision to attend, or helping a student to make the decision to make the decision to attend in the first place.”

Since sending the e-mail, nine students have agreed to participate in the initiative. “I am very excited about the opportunity to participate in the recruitment of other minorities to this campus,” said Analisa Velasquez, blah blah class standing.

“As a minority student, I believe that it is important to make prospective students aware that there are minorities on campus, and that Albion College is actively working to increase its diversity.”

Vinson Carter, Mount Morris sophomore, echoed her sentiments. “I think it will help a lot in the area of admissions. It will make people feel more comfortable.”

Not all students agree. “I am not sure if calling students will be successful, said Darcy Crain, Plymouth Freshman and member of Asian Awareness Group. “I think that by having a specific minority call the prospective, it will give them the impression that there are already not a lot of minorities on the campus.”

“If someone had called me I think I would have been more paranoid that I was one of two Asian-Americans on campus than [I would have been] comfortable,” she added.

However, Crain says that she feels that setting up a program such as this is encouraging because it shows that Albion is making an effort to strive for diversity. “By calling multi-cultural prospective students it is clear that admissions is making an honest effort to add to the diversity on campus.”

Hawsey said that in order to make the effort successful, “we all must idividually go through the process of identifying, examining and learning to manage out own issues regarding culture, race, and ethnicity. Without this step, we may not be effectively communicating with people from other cultures, and might think we are foing a great job selling Albion, but never realize that we are not addressing the needs of a particular individual.”

Hawsey added, “Once we have taken this inward step, we as a college must move beyond what most colleges think is appropriate-just go to inner-city high school and recruit using large grant of scholarship programs. That assumes two things. First, that minority students only attend inner-city high schools and second, that all minority students are very needy. Many colleges also assume minority students achieve sub-standard academic records in high school.”

“Does this reflect our own students? Is this what Albion should be doing?” Hawsey asked, adding that his approach to recruitment is different, stating that he believes that his job is to communicate Albions academic and co-curricular strengths, acceptance requirements, how academic and co-curricular experiences translate into financial aid and scholarships, and what its like to live as an Albion student. “An administrator can only go so far in the process of explaining the value and the overall experiences and challenges of being a student. That is best left to current Albion students.”

Hawsey also said that his desire is to have students other than minorities involved in the recruitment process as well, and encouraged people who were interested in helping to contact his office. “We must show prospective students that all current Albion students welcome new Britons. For those with the desire and skills to do this, I have a place for you in our overall recruitment plan.”

In all, reactions to this new initiative seem positive. “The more diversity in leadership of a group the better the learning environment is for everyone,” Velasquez said. “The more diverse Albion College becomes, the greater it is as a learning environment and as a vital asset to the community.”

She added, “Diversity brings strength to the whole group.”