Twice a year, Deidrie Buchanan heads to Brooklyn as a recruiter. She goes to high schools and after-school receptions, where she speaks with inner-city high school kids about her experience at Boston University.

Time and again, the number one question she gets asked is, “What’s the diversity like there? Is it really as bad as I heard?”

Deidrie, a senior in the College of Arts and Sciences, tells them exactly what she thinks. “It sucks,” she says. “It really does.”

It’s a strange comment to make about Boston University, consistently ranked near the top in various student diversity rankings. Last year, in fact, BU was named the most diverse college campus in the country, according to the Princeton Review. More than academics, it is BU’s diversity that draws students from all across the globe, with more than 4,000 international students on the enrollment list.

So what, then, is the problem? Well, nothing, unless you’re black.

Quite simply, BU does not enroll many blacks. As a matter of fact, its black population makes up only 2.5 percent of the student body, which is to say, less than 800 people in a school of 28,000. Think of it this way: while walking through the George Sherman Union, you are likely to pass one black for every 40 students in line at Jamba Juice.

BU’s figures look pathetic next to its neighbors’ in and around Boston. Of the six major schools in the area, BU’s black percentage is the lowest. Both Harvard and Northeastern universities, in fact, enroll more blacks than BU, which is appalling when you consider that each school’s student body comes up short of BU’s by more than 4,000 students.

Black high school students are justly wary of coming to BU. A black student on a walking tour of the Charles River campus isn’t likely to see many others like him. Far more likely, he is the only black person in the tour group. And while his tourmates evaluate the campus Greek life and the quality of the dining hall food, he silently wonders whether his classmates will automatically assume he’s here on financial aid.

The incoming student will also wrestle with BU’s profound gender imbalance, which has a particularly severe affect on blacks. University-wide, there are nearly twice as many black women as black men. Without enough black men on the BU campus, many female students head onto other campuses in search of a date. Some blacks, whether male or female, even go abroad to escape the isolation they feel at BU.

Academically, the implications of BU’s black drought run deep. The numbers tell the tale. Given BU’s student-faculty ratio of 14-to-1, the average BU student will theoretically have one black classmate for every three classes he or she takes. For many, that amounts to one or two black classmates a semester. That’s one or two opportunities for a different perspective when studying early American literature in your 500-level English class, or when debating social welfare in your politics course.

It’s true that high-achieving black students are increasingly gravitating toward historically black colleges, such as Atlanta’s Morehouse College, these past few years. Further decreasing black enrollment is the trend among black, male high schoolers, whose graduation rate has dropped recently. Neither fact, however, explains BU’s miniscule enrollment percentage, which is roughly one-fifth of the national collegiate average.

It could be said that the city of Boston is a turnoff for black applicants. Associate Dean of Students Herb Ross suggests black parents may have found it difficult to forget Boston’s busing crisis of the 1970s, or the 1976 assault on black businessman Ted Landsmark by a white student outside City Hall. To this day, there remains a racial stigma to the city, which is roughly one-quarter black but has only two black city councilors.

There is certainly a case against Boston, and the low figures throughout the city support the argument nicely. But BU doesn’t quite fit into the mix. There is no reason why BU should repel blacks more than all other area colleges. Very likely, the problem is self-perpetuating. Black students are repelled by nothing other than BU’s lack of black students, which further diminishes the university’s minority population. And with so many friendlier options elsewhere, there’s scarcely a reason to tough it out here.

Regardless of why they steer away, the lack of a significant and vocal black student body is a loss for Boston University that too often goes unrecognized. While BU relentlessly touts its diverse campus, there’s a faint and distant cry emanating from its black residents. Perhaps the Princeton Review just couldn’t hear it. I’m sure they aren’t the only ones.