For Victoria Rivera, a third-year transfer student who is black, adjusting to the rigors of university academia was fairly easy.
Adjusting to people’s misconceptions of her as a minority transfer student, however, was a different matter.
“People think you got here on affirmative action. They ask you, “˜Who helped you get in? Are you an athlete?'” she said, referring to some of her encounters with other students.
Rivera’s incident is not isolated, with many minority transfer students stating that they felt uneasy and unwelcome on their new college campus.
As one of a handful of non-traditional students that have transferred from community colleges to attend UCLA this year, Rivera is also one of only 125 black transfer students along with an additional 204 black freshman that enrolled.
Rivera, a sociology major and former salutatorian of Los Angeles Southwest College, also said students assumed that minorities such as herself were admitted for reasons such as “not having enough money.”
“I always thought of myself as middle-class,” Rivera said, who resides in Compton, California. “My street was very wholesome, cultured and sheltered.”
Other transfers said UCLA students did not seem accepting of a truly diverse student body.
“There seems to be immense pressure for black students to assimilate to a dominant culture,” said Eric Lambkins II, a third-year Afro-American studies and philosophy transfer student.
Lambkins also said he believes students of color are seriously underrepresented on campus, and expressed his desire for the university’s population to represent the state’s population as a whole.
“UCLA is definitely not everything that I anticipated,” Lambkins said. “I feel let down, and the school does not feel welcome.”
But Charles Alexander, the director of the Academic Advancement Program, said that there are services available to help transfer students fit in at the university.
“Some transfer students don’t take advantage of some of the programs and services available ““ they have a commuter mentality,” Alexander said.
For example, he said his own program is geared toward academic and social support for transfer students. In addition, counseling, alumni groups, and peer mentors have also been made available to transfer students, with AAP serving about 6,000, or 25 percent, of the student population.
In addition, Alexander said AAP is attempting to create an adult re-entry program, geared toward returning students.
Alfred Herrera, the director for the Center of Community College Partnerships, said he believes that establishing diversity is key to maintaining the quality of his program, and cited age instead of race as a major factor of peer acceptance.
“In general, it’s a more freshman-oriented campus. Peer advisors are younger than they are, TAs are younger than they are, some professors could be younger than they are,” Herrera said.
In recent years, attending a community college has become a way for low-income and minority students to avoid the rising fees of UCs, while still gaining admission to prestigious UCs such as UCLA and Berkeley.
Mentoring programs such as the Transfer Alliance Program are offered at many community colleges, providing students with priority transfer admission based on a mandatory honors curriculum.
This year, 90.47 percent of all transfers accepted to UCLA were from California community colleges.
Herrera stated that the Center for Community College Partnerships seeks to assist first generation, low income immigrants in addition to economic minorities and students from community colleges with low transfer rates.