Brown has one of the highest graduation rates for black students among top universities, which University officials say is a result of their efforts to provide a supportive environment for students of color. But the inherent challenges of adjusting to a mostly white institution remain, many students say.
The University has one of the top 10 black student graduation rates among major colleges and universities, the Journal of Blacks in Higher Education reported in a recent study. In 2006, Brown's black student graduation rate was 92 percent, up from 89 percent in 1998. The graduation rate for white students at the College was 96 percent.
The study found that Harvard University had the highest black graduation rate, at 95 percent. Amherst, Wellesley and Williams colleges and Princeton University also ranked high on the list, with graduation rates of 94 percent.
Despite a four-percentage-point increase over the past three years, the national black college graduation rate is only 43 percent, while the figure for white students is 63 percent. The report concluded that "little or no progress has been achieved in bridging the divide."
According to Bruce Slater, the managing editor of the journal, the four-point increase is largely due to better financial aid and retention programs that provide help for students at risk of dropping out. But he added that financial differences still account for much of the gap between the graduation rates of white and black students.
"The main difference is money," Slater wrote in an e-mail to The Herald. "Most black students who drop out do so because they cannot afford the cost and do not want to accumulate debt."
Associate Provost and Director of Institutional Diversity Brenda Allen said Brown has worked in the past five years to make financial aid packages more competitive. The Sidney Frank Scholars program has allowed the University to provide students from the neediest families with comprehensive financial aid packages. In addition, an increased financial aid budget has allowed the University to provide adequate financial aid packages to more students.
But Allen said other factors play a role in the gap between graduation rates of white and black students.
"Money will continue to be one of the pressing factors, but it's not the only reason for the difference in graduation rates," Allen said. "How do students adjust to college? Do we have advising programs that help people with varying levels of knowledge? These are some of the questions we need to ask ourselves as an institution as we think about why we still have this gap."
Allen stressed that Brown offers a range of programs designed to promote diversity, many of which help retain minority students. The Third World Center, diverse student groups and programs that link students and faculty have created a campus "where students of different backgrounds and walks of life are able to coexist in a supportive and positive way," Allen said.
Dean of the College Katherine Bergeron said programs such as the University's African, Latino, Asian and Native American Mentoring Program - or ALANA - which pairs students with faculty, reach far beyond mere advising.
"It's also the sense of community that's created," Bergeron said. "I think that can be very important in academic success."
But these programs are not panaceas to the gap in graduation rates, Allen said.
"Not all students find these structures and environments optimal," she said. "Not all students find what they need to thrive."
Daliso Leslie '09, the Black History Month coordinator for the TWC, said he adjusted to Brown smoothly, but he added that several of his black friends had a more difficult time.
"Just from talking to people, much of the black population has trouble adjusting, and many people feel alienated by the larger community," Leslie said.
Matt Jasmin '09, a minority peer counselor, said minority students at Brown have "a strong community to fall back on." But regardless of Brown's programs aimed at promoting diversity and helping minorities, Jasmin said some students have trouble adjusting to a community that is predominantly white.
"I really don't know how much Brown could do other than remaking the student population," Jasmin said. "Sometimes you grow up in a community that's mostly African-American. Then you get to a place like Brown, and the amount of whites is just hard to get used to."
Though he said he did not have great difficulty adjusting to college, Jasmin said minority students often feel the need to prove themselves, adding additional strain to the transition.
"You feel like you're a representative of your whole population, so you put a lot of stress on yourself," Jasmin said. "Then you might feel like you can't succeed in that situation."
Jasmin recalled an Africana studies class he took last year with a white professor and only a few other black students.
"When certain things came up, there was pressure on me to say something to defend my whole race," Jasmin said. "Sometimes the majority that wasn't African-American was thinking the other way."
But Jasmin added that these situations are not specific to Brown and will continue to come up "until you have a 50-50 representation in a class."
According to Associate Dean of the College Karen McLaurin '74, the director of the TWC, Brown has a unique "third world" philosophy that encourages communication across racial lines. Other schools like Cornell, Princeton and Columbia dropped this philosophy, instead opting for separate houses for each minority group, she said.
Leslie said the TWC is under-funded but "does what it can" with programs like the Third World Transition Program, which aims to build bonds not just among black students, but among all minority students.
Jasmin said the TWTP allows minority students to form a circle of friends from various ethnic backgrounds.
"That helps them adjust, especially if they came from a school that had mostly minority students," Jasmin said.
Still, Leslie said continuing to strengthen these bonds can be difficult, especially for students who are unable to attend TWTP. He also said he would like to see more minority mentoring programs that link students to faculty.
According to Bergeron, several academic deans convened a committee on mentoring this past fall and are now looking into expanding outreach. She also said deans undertook an advising survey in November and that they are in "a good position to make some judgments about how we might change things to reach a broader constituency."
"You can always get better at advising," Bergeron said. "There are so many different types of people who interact in different ways. You need to have many different programs available."
Bergeron also said the University is currently searching for an associate dean of diversity programs, a position created at the end of last semester. The dean would be in charge of a number of constituencies, including transfer students and international students, and would look at diversity "in a broad spectrum."
"If you actually have a dedicated person, you can get follow through on some of these efforts," Bergeron said, adding that she hopes the new dean will implement the suggestions from the mentoring committee.
In addition, Allen said part of the University's diversity action plan focuses on reviewing rates of dismissal, graduation and probation across different groups with the aim of "alleviating any discrepancy that might be found."
"We would try to address those issues once we know what the reasons are," Allen said. "But you can find reasons everywhere, and our job is to figure out whether some of these things are contributing more to certain groups than just not having a good fit (at Brown)."
Allen called the gap in graduation rates of white and black students "a very important issue in higher education" and said Brown continues to make policies with the diversity of the campus in mind.
"It's been a long movement," she said. "First we opened up access so more people from different backgrounds are able to attend college, and now we want people from all different backgrounds to be able to get the most out of that education. That means we have to be very critical and vigilant in looking at what we have in place to support students and willing to make changes when we see aspects of programs that aren't doing what we want them to do."
