Boston University officials said that while ethnicity and racial diversity continue to be factors in admissions, other determinants, such as economic diversity, are becoming increasingly important.
Since 2005, BU has enrolled 70 percent more international students, said Laurie Pohl, the vice president of enrollment and student affairs. BU has also doubled the enrollment of both African-American and Latino students.
Pohl said that economic diversity is in particular a concern for many board members and admissions officials at BU, especially considering the cost of tuition.
“I think also what happens is people start to say okay, well let’s dig deeper on specific diversity,” said Dean of Students Kenneth Elmore. “Let’s look at racial diversity – and even there we start to break that down in the American context. Let’s start to look at international students. Let’s start to look at opinion and viewpoint. Let’s start to look at where people are from in the world or from in the United States.”
Pohl said that “the first-generation student, the first generation immigrant family [and] the urban poor that maybe aren’t in the best school systems” should still have the opportunity to succeed at BU, despite costs.
“One of the things we want to be very careful about in the future is to remain an option for students of lesser means, financially.” Pohl said.
College of Arts and Sciences junior Tino Bratbo, a student ambassador in the Howard Thurman Center, said that diversity exists at BU, but that students have to make an effort to experience it.
“It’s not going to just come to you. You actually have to pursue it,” Bratbo said.
While BU may be increasingly diverse, diversity is becoming harder to quantify, said Raul Fernandez, the assistant director of the HTC.
“The reporting structure is different and people now [aren’t] required to pick just one thing. If they’re black and white, they can say that they’re both, which is fantastic, because people can now more accurately identify who it is that they really are,” Fernandez said. “But it makes it very difficult to compare one year from the next because people may check off a few boxes but really associate with one community over another.”
A large number of students who choose not to report their race are in minority categories, said BU spokesman Colin Riley.
Students and administrators alike said diversity is necessary in any learning environment.
“BU needs diversity to stay on the edge,” said School of Management sophomore Aditya Rudra, another student ambassador. “Having a homogenous student body is going to limit the experiences that every student has. It’s going to limit the number of ideas and perspectives that are nurtured on campus.”
Diversity means absolutely nothing, Elmore said, “unless people are sharing their stories, their narratives, their viewpoints with each other.”
Bratbo said that while students should try to expose themselves to different BU students, forcing diversity can be counterproductive.
“Once you try to force diversity, it just doesn’t work. Then it just has this sort of fake, artificial feeling to it,” he said.
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