As another year at Boston University winds down, another batch of proposals and reports from Student Union members finally sees the light of day. With less than three weeks remaining in the school year, Vice President of Multicultural Affairs Deborah Greene has delivered her report concerning minority recruitment to Provost Dennis Berkey and Dean of Students W. Norman Johnson. Of all the issues Union members have provided reports for, minority recruitment and retention is by far the most important. It is a shame the topic was given far less professional treatment than other proposals on 24-hour study lounges and mail service because the shoddy minority retention report will provide administrators with no reason to tackle the issue.

Greene said she wanted the proposal to be a ‘statement of their feelings,’ and therefore less details-oriented than previous ones. However, this does not excuse the report’s overall sloppiness. Instead of following the ordered and concise format of previous proposals, the report is formatted like a poorly-written academic paper, complete with typos and grammatical errors. Greene would not have met with Berkey and Johnson wearing a stained T-shirt and ripped jeans, and she should have made her report look better.

Unfortunately, the proposal’s problems run even deeper. The statistics provided are vague, robbing them of any significance. The proposal makes the interesting claim that BU’s black population was once 9 percent of the student body, but does not say when the population was so high. And ‘feelings’ aside, using surveys to provide a sampling of student views is worthless unless the number of students surveyed is provided. This absence is especially annoying considering part of the proposal’s delay stemmed from extra time taken to distribute and analyze the survey.

The proposal is also conflicted at two crucial points. While purporting to address ‘minority’ recruitment and retention, the document only specifically addresses concerns of black and Latino students. While those two groups have legitimate concerns, singling them out at one moment and draping the blanket of ‘minority’ over them is confusing. The proposal also confuses issues of race and culture, even though the writers attempt to focus on racial prerogatives. The proposal calls for black studies and Latin American studies to become majors, despite the university’s long-standing antipathy toward such ideas on cultural grounds. Advocacy for an ‘Afro-American/Latino Cultural Center’ to help ‘explore these cultures’ obviously focuses on increased multiculturalism. These may be admirable goals, but the proposal writers should have found newer arguments and methods of increasing black and Latino presence, instead of falling back on those the administration has already rejected.

BU has visible problems with recruiting minorities, but the proposal blames the university for problems beyond its control and does not give it enough credit for the initiative it does take. The report rightly describes Boston as a city with a tumultuous racial history, but that is hardly the university’s fault. Claiming black and Latino students do not receive enough financial aid is similarly wrong-headed. BU rewards many students with generous aid packages based on income, and students who ‘come from the ‘middle bracket’ class of America,’ which the study claims includes most black and Latino students, are members of all races. Many independent organizations offer race-based scholarships for students of a specific background, while BU fairly provides aid based on economic background.

More disturbingly, the report claims during its statistical breakdown of BU by race that ‘one group of people is being overeducated while another is being undereducated here at Boston University,’ implying specific action on the part of BU educators and administrators to alter the quality of education based on a student’s race. While this may just be poor wording, its tone indicates an unwarranted suspicion of the university that certainly will not resonate with its recipients

All of these problems are particularly grievous because they overshadow some interesting ideas to remedy BU’s minority retention. The creation of a Minority Recruitment Council made up of alumni, faculty and students would place those most concerned with the problem in charge of rectifying it. As the proposal suggests, this council could organize both ambassador programs to high schools and a student weekend for accepted minority students to inform them of the resources and opportunities BU has to offer. However, the proposal does not place enough responsibility on individual student groups to unify and organize, instead relying on the proposed Cultural Center to provide most of the impetus.

Minority retention at Boston University is a complicated and troubled issue. The Union’s proposal never could have found a miraculous cure acceptable for all sides involved. However, the proposal needed to outline minority concerns in a clear and professional manner. Instead, the proposal is haphazardly thrown together, confused and utterly inadequate, ensuring that the issue of minority retention will remain unexamined until this time next year.