Freeman Hrabowski Summary

“...students of color are showing that they feel disconnected from their respective schools, that implicit yet institutionalized racism creates emotional distance between them and their white peers and faculty. Being a black student on a predominantly white campus certainly, doesn’t guarantee that the student will develop mental-health issues. However, various studies suggest that perceived or actual discrimination can make it hard for students of color to engage with their campus in the way that their white peers do.”

Throughout history, the United States of America has often been described as a “melting pot,” meaning a place where many different types of people blend together to form one, unified nation. If this description of the United States is accurate, it is crucial to ensure that all of these different individuals are able to live in harmony with one another. This is especially true at the collegiate level of education. In the last few decades, liberal arts colleges have made it their mission to increase diversity on their campuses. Diversity comes in several forms, particularly class-based and racial. This undertaking is one that should be prioritized at colleges across the country. There is significant evidence that diverse college campuses produce stronger, more intelligent individuals. With diversity come enhanced social development, stronger critical thinking skills, and heightened self-awareness. These features produce stronger individuals, thus strengthening the community at large.

Historically Black colleges and universities (HBCUs) are institutions of higher education in the United States founded primarily for the education of African Americans. Prior to the mid-1960s, HBCUs were virtually the only institutions open to African Americans due to the vast majority of predominantly white institutions prohibiting qualified African Americans from acceptance during the time of segregation. As such, they are institutional products of an era of discrimination and socially constructed racism against African Americans (Joseph, 2013). Successfully, millions of students have been educated in spite of limited resources, public contempt, accreditation violations, and legislative issues. The purpose of this research paper is to discuss

Another thing that places students of color at a disadvantage in college admissions is the persisting cultural bias in high-stakes testing. “High-stakes” tests are those that are tied to major consequences, such as admission to college, or even high school graduation. Fair education reform advocates have long been citing an extensive record of standardized testing concerns, many of which relate to racial bias and discrimination. As researcher and author Harold Berlak explains in the journal Rethinking Education:

No matter their race, students should not feel socially unaccepted at school. In the essay, "Learning in the shadow of Race and Class" by Bell Hooks, she states “After my parents dropped me at the predominately white’s woman college, I saw the terror in my roommate’s face that she was going to be housed with someone black, and I requested a change.” (288). Bell explains the level of discomfort while being at a “white woman’s college.” Students should never have to feel like they’re not welcomed in schools. The teachers and faculty should make sure every student feels comfortable enough to go to class, and so on. While being a colored student at an all white school would be hard. The lack of personal space, and protection can also be a huge factor. Hooks states, “ Being black made me an automatic outsider.” “ And when my room was trashed, it unleashed my rage and deep grief over not being about to protect my space from violation and invasion” (289). Being colored made school difficult for Hooks to attend college. Schooling systems have since changed, but racism is always out there. Teachers need to make sure their students academics are not affected by

“Affirmative Action may not be a perfect system, but there should be no doubt that it has endangered many successes. It has opened the doors of America’s most elite educational institutions to minority students, granting them unprecedented opportunities” (Ogletree 12). Thanks to Presidents John F. Kennedy and Lyndon B. Johnson a policy that prohibits employment and education discrimination based on race, color, religion, national origin, and sex is offered today to those who suffer from said discriminations (A Brief History). Affirmative action has opened abundant openings for minorities, allowing the cycle of going to college to be passed down generations and provided job opportunities that otherwise would not be considered by most. Affirmative

Standardized testing (SATs), in the United States has been present for years and has caused plenty of teachers, students, parents, and other individuals who are informed about it to have different perspectives and opinions on it. Before doing my research on the different opinions people had on standardized tests, I always believed they were encouraged by professors and school facilities. As a student myself and on the behalf of other students, standardized tests were always perceived to be stressful and unjust. Test taking was never a strength of mine especially if the test was timed because it just added more pressure to answer the questions quick. In high school, my teachers never discussed how they felt towards the SATs, which made

Racial inequality has plagued our society for centuries and has been described as a “black eye” on American history. It wasn’t until the passing of The Civil Rights Act of 1965 that minorities were given equal protection under the law. This was a crucial step on our society’s road to reconciling this injustice. However, the effects of past racial inequality are still visible to this day, and our society still wrestles with how to solve this issue. In 1965, President Lyndon B Johnson said: “You do not take a person who, for years, has been hobbled by chains and liberate him, bring him up to the starting line of a race and then say you are free to compete with all the others, and still just believe that you have been completely fair. This is the next and more profound stage of the battle for civil rights. We seek not just freedom but opportunity––not legal equity but human ability––not just equality as a right and a theory, but equality as a fact and as a result” (Garrison-Wade & Lewis, 2003). That same year, President Johnson signed an executive order mandating government contractors “take affirmative action” in

The diversity that may be found all around the world and in our very community has always fascinated me. I am aware that it is a widely held belief that being a minority is considered a disadvantage in various aspects and I would disagree with this. Diversity and culture is a two-way street- as a community, whether that be society as a whole or simply a freshman class, we have the potential to be able to learn from each other. I believe that my status as an underrepresented minority has shaped me into the person I am today. Despite moving to the United States at a young age and being a first-generation college student , I am grateful for the privilege to be able to further my education at the University of Utah.

It is hard for a person to learn and develop something that quickly. Many children have been learning things from school. I think being in college is when students really show what they're good at and still learning and developing their intelligence. The two authors of the books, White Like Me by Tim Wise and Between the World and Me by Ta-Nehisi Coates, discuss education on their point of view when they experience this during their college years. Coates states, “When our elders presented schools to us, they did not present it as a place of high learning but as a means of escape from death and penal warehousing” (Coates 26). He talks about how education is perpetuating injustice. He thinks that schools are hiding something from the students,

In “Net (Race) Neutral: An Essay on How GPA + (reweighted) SAT - Race = Diversity,” Christine Goodman illustrates the opposing viewpoints in regards to the racial discriminatory efforts by the college institutions to help diversify the incoming freshman class. With this, Goodman provides statistics and opinions of experts on the matter, which includes comparison of such discriminatory acts against other institutions. To begin, she brings up an enlightening, yet controversial court case decision: Fisher v. University of Texas at Austin (2013). This court case demonstrates significance to this topic because it counteracts a previous court case, Grutter v. Bollinger (2003), which, “upheld diversity as a compelling interest that would justify narrowly

Modern day classrooms were unheard and unseen of more than 50 years ago. If we were to travel back to the past and step foot in classrooms of that time, one theme would run throughout. More than 50 years ago, classrooms were segregated and spoke volumes about the oppression of the colored population. Before the Civil Rights Movement of 1964 and during slavery, classrooms were split up based on color and were limited resources depending on the color of their skin. (Graglia, 2014) Educating colored people wasn’t as important and in some states illegal. Many colored marched with pride for freedom over and over again. This was until May 17, 1954, when the famous case, “Brown v. Board of Education unanimously ruled “separate but equal” public schools for colored people and “white people” and that went against the constitution (Stallion, 2013). This case directly dealt directly with segregation between those of black color and those of white color. It allowed more students to study, work, and learn about each other together. As time went on, this also impacted students to keep studying and motivated students to earn higher education (Stallion, 2013). Assisting to the desegregation between colored people and “white” people, were many great public speakers. One man gave the famous, “I have a dream” speech and risked assassination (Tuck, 2014).

The NOVA documentary “Naturally Obsessed: the making of a scientist” shows the lives of three post-graduate students at Columbia University and their experiments and struggles they faced in the lab and the impact their research had on their mental and social health. One of the students, Rob, has aspirations to become like his mentor Larry and have his own lab and students. Personally, I relate more with Rob than the other students in the film because like him, I tend to look up to the people I admire. Additionally, Rob and I share a steadfast resolve when doing work regardless of the difficulty. Although Rob has been unsuccessful for two and a half years in producing successful results, he is still determined to finish his research and earn

In today’s American school systems, Hispanics are among the most at-risk in the student population. They are less likely to finish high school and even fewer go on to enroll in college, let alone graduate from a higher education program. The number of Hispanic students is constantly growing, especially in urban schools, and most of those schools are desperately trying to create programs and systems to help accommodate the large number of English language learners. Those students’ scores are drastically lower than English speaking students. A study by the National Center for Education Statistics found that three out of four 8th graders are not able to pass a simple math test that includes

Shariah Salahaladyn currently serves as the Graduate Assistant Dean of Faculty Affairs and Diversity at Graduate School of Education at the University of Pennsylvania. In this role, she participates in data collection and organization of Diversity in the Graduate school of Education. She also helps design and administer surveys, update the diversity website, and most importantly research literature and perform annotated bibliographies on diversity-related topics.