Symbolism in Song
Earlier this week, University of Vermont President Judith Ramaley closed her state of the university speech by joining the audience to sing a rousing Kenyan folk song.
The crowd butchered the pronunciation and at times sang off-key, but it was a good show of effort and enthusiasm. Nonetheless, the sight of the almost entirely white audience belting out a song of Africa was a none-too-subtle reminder that UVM continues to fall short of its goals to educate a broad range of students, including students of color.
Ramaley and other administrators must work harder to increase the ranks of minority students, who represent just 4 percent of the student body. They also must increase efforts to help minority studetns stay and graduate.
The goal: to extend equal educational opportunity to all who qualify, including people who were once systematically denied entrance to most colleges on the basis of race.
Although education holds great promise to reduce income gaps between the races and to heal old wounds, Vermont´s state university attracts few minorities. This cannot be explained by Vermont´s 98 percent white population, because 50 percent of UVM students come from out of state.
Colleges with larger scholarship funds such as Dartmouth and Middlebury often have higher percentages of minority students - 25 percent in the case of Dartmouth and 20 percent in the case of Middlebury, counting international students.
UVM cannot match their scholarship programs, but it can do a better job with retention. In 1997, 76 percent of first-time, first-year Asian, Latino, African and Native American students stayed at UVM, compared with 83 percent of all first-time, first-year students.
To keep more students, the university must continue to work to create a welcoming climate and condemn racism in all its forms. The recent hiring of an experienced retention officer, Sandra Spiegal, and the opening this week of UVM´s new Center for Cultural Pluralism are steps in the right direction.
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