It was a warm Sunday evening in August, just a few days into the new semester.

Sarah Evans* ’08, an African American student, had just arrived at Albright for her freshman year. Leaving North Hall on her way to campus she passed three white males standing in front of Mohn Hall. “What are you n-----s doing here?” one of the male students said as the others laughed.

Astonished, Sarah turned around, “Are you talking to me?” she said.

“Yeah, you.”

That was the last Albright saw of Sarah Evans.

Despite efforts by the dean and the president to get her to stay, she packed her belongings and headed home, where she didn’t feel unwelcome.

How does this happen at Albright, an institution that was listed in 100 Best Colleges for African American Students, and has a diversity rate that is the envy of many colleges?

A Diverse Campus Community

Albright has seen tremendous growth in the ethnic diversity of its student body. In 1998, U.S. minorities comprised 6.8 percent of Albright’s student population. Today, that number has risen to 15.5 percent. In addition, there are 5.1 percent international students representing 20 countries.

“We have a long tradition of being a diverse campus,” says Greg Eichhorn, vice president of enrollment management and dean of admission. “We have many first generation students and because we have a diverse student body, incoming students see that…there’s a comfort level there.” Unlike many of Albright’s peers, the Admission Office actively recruits in urban areas such as Philadelphia, Washington, D.C. and Baltimore.

Compared to Albright’s 15.5 percent U.S. minorities, Elizabethtown College has 6.3 percent minority student population; Muhlenberg has 8.2 percent; Dickinson has 11 percent; Susquehanna has 8 percent; Juniata has 8 percent; and Ursinus has 13.5 percent.

The Distinguished Joseph E. Coleman Award, named for the late Philadelphia City Council president and the first African American to graduate from Albright College, is one incentive for minority students. The award provides financial assistance ranging from $8,000 to $12,000 to qualified students of color who have shown academic excellence as well as community and/or extracurricular involvement. Approximately 30 to 40 students are selected for the award each year.

The Reality

But Albright doesn’t exist in a vacuum. If acts of prejudice happen here, what’s happening on other American college campuses?

According to 10 Ways to Fight Hate on Campus published by the Southern Poverty Law Center: “Every year more than half a million college students are targets of bias-driven slurs or physical assaults. Every day at least one hate crime occurs on a college campus. Every minute a college student somewhere sees or hears racist, sexist, homophobic or otherwise biased words or images.”

Unfortunately, when you bring people together with diverse backgrounds there’s the potential for incidents to take place. Whether it’s eggs thrown on a gay student’s dorm window, derogatory words written on a student’s door, or anti-semetic literature placed on college property, Andrea Blassingame ’05, president of the Student Government Association, says she knows these incidents do occasionally occur at Albright. “Fortunately, they’re not big things like people getting beat up. Most of the time they’re mindless things…it’s a big ignorance problem,” she says.

In fact, “I sometimes get profiled because I’m a black female in the role that I’m in. People ask me questions specific to African American women and poor people from the ghetto. I know ghetto, but just because I know it, doesn’t mean I am ghetto!”

Yukari Kondo ’06, an international student from Japan, says that when she was a freshman, she and her roommate, an international student from China, would receive prank phone calls late at night. “They knew we were international students because our names looked different in the directory,” she says.

Prejudice and ignorance do exist at Albright, just as they exist in the world outside of Albright. But Patricia Snyder, Ph.D. ’70, professor of psychology, believes that a college campus is the perfect place to work on these issues. “We’re a community where people can be different, but we’re still connected as members of the Albright community. If we can create changes on campus, we’ll be very attractive to diverse students and especially faculty. They’ll have more reasons to feel comfortable.”

* The name of this student has been changed to protect her identity.

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