Community volunteers will meet tonight to conclude a three-day
phoneathon focused on encouraging academically qualified black
students to apply to UCLA.
UCLA alumni, current students and other concerned community
volunteers met on Wilshire on Wednesday and Thursday night and will
do so again today, with the goal of contacting about 400 black
students to tell them their personal and academic background would
be vital to the increase in diversity on campus.
On Oct. 31, UCLA released its final admissions information,
verifying that 100 black students enrolled at UCLA for the
2006-2007 academic year, the lowest number of enrolled black
students in three decades.
These figures have caused community concern.
Recently Interim Chancellor Norman Abrams fielded student
questions at a South Los Angeles high school about a new holistic
admissions process, which was enacted two months ago and will allow
application readers to evaluate each application as a whole and
give more weight to students’ personal circumstances, in
addition to standardized test scores and grades.
The chancellor was asked whether the new process will increase
the number of black students accepted to UCLA.
In response, Abrams said he hoped the number of black and other
minority students would increase under the new system, but could
not predict by how much, the Los Angeles Times reported on
Saturday.
As part of the UCLA African American Student Enrollment Task
Force, community volunteers are calling high school seniors whose
contact information was obtained through various black community
leaders, said UCLA alumna Kimberly McNair.
Two UCLA employees from the admissions department were also
present to provide assistance to the community volunteers.
“We are here to provide support for the technical
questions parents and students are asking about the applications,
which are due in about two weeks,” said Rosa Pimentel, who
works with UCLA admissions.
McNair, who graduated in 2006 with a degree in Afro-American
studies, who also works in admissions, said the admissions crisis
was particularly personal for her.
“I see the problem and I was a student, so it’s
personal for me,” McNair said.
Though the volunteers are reaching out to the black community in
light of the newest admissions figures, one volunteer said students
and parents are not as concerned with the admissions figures, but
instead wanted information about the application process and
on-campus events.
“I only had one parent or student comment on the
admissions crisis. A parent mentioned that it was a good thing that
we were doing this since there were only 2 percent of (blacks)
enrolled,” said Masai Minters, director of the Academic
Advancement Program Counseling, Mentoring and TRIO Programs and
McNair Research Scholars.
But Marilynn Huff, a UCLA alumna and vice president of
fundraising for the UCLA Black Alumni Association, said some
parents who were contacted wanted to know why the number of black
students had decreased.
“They wanted to know why the crisis even occurred in the
first place,” Huff said.
Huff said parent and student feedback about the program has so
far been positive, but some parents were concerned this was the
first time UCLA had contacted their child, while schools such as
Harvard and Princeton have been contacting them already.
Volunteers said students were excited and flattered to get a
personalized call from someone representing UCLA.
“Students were so pleased to get the phone call,”
Minters said. “One mother put the receiver down and told her
son, “˜UCLA is on the phone!’ She was
excited.”
Minters, who has worked for AAP since 1994, said as the number
of enrolled black UCLA students has decreased over the years, he
has seen black community members begin to feel less welcomed on the
campus.
“It’s just important that we turn around the
perception in the community that UCLA doesn’t welcome African
American students,” Minters said.
“Our job is to show them that they are wanted, and not
only that, but needed,” Huff said.