Category: Higher Education

New Position to Aid Student Retention
By Bart Shirley

Multicultural

Services is seeking to fill the position of assistant director, formerly known as coordinator of

student retention, who will be in charge of student success programs.

Student success

programs are efforts by the Multicultural Services office to aid all freshmen in their pursuit of

graduation, said Megan Palsa, assistant director of Multicultural Services. They offer a year-long

program that provides transitional help to new students.

“(The new administrator will)

look at all the data to see where we’re headed, ” Palsa said. Retention has long been a concern for

Texas A&M. Though 16 percent of the student body is composed of minority students, A&M still has

trouble shedding its homogenous image in the minds of prospective students, said Mark Weichold,

associate provost for undergraduate programs and academic services.
“Historically, from retention

and graduation rates, students of color are lower,” Palsa said.

Minority students are

statistically more at risk than white students of never crossing the stage at Reed Arena, Palsa said.

Sixty-five percent of minority students entering A&M eventually graduate, compared with 77 percent of

white students.
“Clearly, there’s no one answer,” Weichold said. “Some of the answers are not

just academic. It’s going to take the collaboration of many offices on

campus.”

Weichold said his office is working to get an indication of students who are

at risk for not returning for their sophomore year. His office is using several assessment tools, such

as the CSI and the NSE, to make that determination. Many programs exist to assist in retention

alongside the Multicultural Services office, he said.

“The Multicultural Services has

been a big part of our retention efforts,” Weichold said.
The discrepancy in student retention is

also one of the reasons for the hiring of the new vice president for diversity, Dr. James A. Anderson,

Palsa said.

“Dr. Anderson will work with Multicultural Services,” said Rodney

McClendon, chief of staff. “He will (also) be working with all colleges in regard to retention.”

via email from Asst. Prof. of English at Texas A&M, Elias Dominguez-

Barajas.

The recent Harvard study describing the resegration of U.S. schools has been

mentioned in several different contexts, and I’m sure that many … have not only heard of it but have

actually perused the full report. Despite the latter, I considered it pertinent to pass the information

along in case somebody who hasn’t heard of it wants the actual source for research purposes or

personal information.

[More summary below. Get the link at “Web Links” Module (the

menu at the upper left) under “National Resources.]

Gary Orfield and Chungmei Lee began to

circulate their preliminary findings several years ago (starting circa 1997). Those findings have been

confirmed
in their final report, which includes the following points among

others:

There has been a substantial slippage toward segregation in most of the states

that were highly desegregated in 1991. The most integrated state
for African Americans in 2001 is

Kentucky. The most desegregated states for Latinos are in the Northwest.

However, in

some states with very low black
populations, school segregation is soaring as desegregation efforts

are abandoned.

American public schools are now only 60 percent white nationwide and

nearly one fourth of U.S. students are in states with a majority of nonwhite
students. However,

except in the South and Southwest, most white students have little contact with minority

students.

Asians, in contrast, are the most integrated and by far the most likely to

attend multiracial schools with a significant presence of three or more racial groups. Asian students

are in schools with the smallest
concentration of their own racial group.

The vast

majority of intensely segregated minority schools face conditions of concentrated poverty, which are

powerfully related to unequal educational
opportunity. Students in segregated minority schools face

conditions that students in segregated white schools seldom experience.

Latinos confront

very serious levels of segregation by race and poverty, and non-English speaking Latinos tend to be

segregated in schools with each other. The data show no substantial gains in segregated education for

Latinos even during the civil rights era. The increase in Latino segregation is particularly notable in

the West.

SGA severs ties with FCIC due to diversity
By James Twine
Published:

Friday, February 13, 2004

The Texas A&M Student Senate severed ties with the Faculty

Committed to an Inclusive Campus (FCIC), due to differences in race-based admissions

ideals.

The two organizations had scheduled a Feb. 18 diversity march before they

realized their agenda differences, said Student Services Chair John Mathews.

Although

both organizations support diversity, the FCICsupports race-based admissions and SGA opposes race being

a factor in admissions criteria, Mathews said…. The Student Senate has authorized its diversity

team to organize a march of its own to be called Aggie March for Merit, beginning at 3:15 p.m. on Feb.

18.

The SGA march supports the admissions policy instituted by Gates as well as the

progress it will represent for diversity at A&M.

Mathews said he was disturbed because

the FCIC withheld information from SGA and others.

“So many people had united for this

cause, and to now realize that FCIC was cause, and to now realize that FCIC was hiding behind this

secret agenda is upsetting,” he said.[sic]

The bill commended Gates’ admissions

policy.

“(Gates’) admissions policy will lead to greater diversity at A&M, and we

fully support his bold decision to affirm the dignity and worth of every person by making individual

merit the only criterion for admission and refusing to institutionalize discrimination on the basis of

race, legacy, sexual orientation or any other demographic characteristic unrelated to individual

merit,” according to the bill.

Published at

Counterpunch

The War on Civil Rights
What Gives Texas A&M the Right?

By GREG MOSES

[Editors’ Note: During February the Texas Civil Rights

Review uncovered documents from a specially appointed task force at Texas A&M that recommended strongly

in favor of affirmative action on Aug. 29, 2003. That finding was over-ruled by the President and

buried from public view. Following is the cover story that will appear for the next month at the Texas

Civil Rights Review.] During the Fall Semester of 2003, Texas A&M University President Robert Gates

put the Civil Rights Act in his pocket and he left it there until people thought it was his. And when

he refused to take it out of his pocket ever again, people said, okay, he can do that. But can he?

Can the President of a University pocket-veto the Civil Rights Act? Ultimately this is

a question for the federal government to decide. It would make a fine question for our Presidential

candidates. If elected president, Mr. Kerry or Mr. Edwards, will you enforce the Civil Rights Act in

College Station, Texas?

It was because of the Civil Rights Act that the Office of Civil

Rights visited Texas in 1978 to determine if de-segregation had been accomplished. But de-segregation

had not been accomplished in the higher education system of Texas.

At that point the OCR

had the power to make an adverse ruling against the state of Texas, which would have caused serious

difficulties with federal funding. And so, once again, because of the Civil Rights Act, Texas was

feeling some heat.

It is well documented in records kept by Texas A&M, and by analysis

that was produced at the time, that Texas A&M University Regents adopted affirmative action as a way to

show federal authorities that the Civil Rights Act has a meaning they were bound to

respect.

It made plain sense in 1980 that affirmative action in admissions was one

necessary means that a University under federal supervision for de-segregation should adopt. The state

of Texas then entered into a series of agreements, under federal supervision, for de-segregation. These

facts are plain as one can find. They are also plainly evaded.

In 1997, OCR returned to

Texas, found de-segregation still a work in progress, and in the summer of 2000 received from Governor

Bush assurances that all available means would be used to advance the de-segregation process. Then in

the summer of 2003 the Supreme Court restored the Constitutionality of affirmative action in Texas with

the Grutter ruling.

Where it is plainly agreed that a University should undertake every

means necessary for de-segregation, where that same University has previously agreed that affirmative

action serves as a baseline commitment of good faith toward de-segregation, and where affirmative

action is clearly vindicated by the Supreme Court as a Constitutional means to de-segregation, there

can be no plainer conclusion at hand as to what a University should be doing. But the conclusion is not

at hand. It is in the pocket of President Gates.

Soon after the Grutter ruling,

President Gates called together his best and brightest, and he asked them to consider what should be

done. By the end of the summer, his own hand-picked committee strongly recommended a return to

affirmative action.

Not only did President Gates put that report in his pocket, but he

failed to consult with state regulators about his responsibilities under the Civil Rights Act. Folks he

asked he ignored, folks he should have consulted, he did not.

If during this Black

History Month we are going to share platitudes about the meaning of America, if during this traditional

month of celebration for Lincoln’s birthday we are going to speak of one nation, and if the Civil

Rights Act actually happened and is really law in America, and in Texas, too, then, we have to say:

give back the Civil Rights Act President Gates, or step aside and give us a University President who

respects the laws and Constitution of the United States.

There are perhaps a thousand

ways to cut the argument for affirmative action in admissions. But given the peculiar circumstances in

College Station, Texas, crucial considerations have not yet been addressed. What is the meaning of the

Civil Rights Act? Is the federal Constitution still a framework that a Texas University President is

bound to respect?

If we could make just one wish come true it would be that journalists,

bloggers, politicians, and activists would simply include the following claim in their discussions of

admissions policy in Texas Higher Education:

Texas is still under federal supervision

for desegregation in higher education and has promised to use all available means to diversify its

historically white campuses.

That’s it. One wish for Christmas by

July.

Greg Moses
Editor

[Above claim evaded once again in front

page story of New York Times on June 13; see
TCRR coverage of the Texas ten percent plan.]