Huge hugs and the occasional tear. Remembered moments from the 1970s, and questions about student life today.
All were evident as more than 700 of the University’s 22,000 alumni of color gathered in MemAud on the April 30 weekend for three days of catching up and looking forward. “Community, Diversity, and Excellence: Celebrating Stanford’s Minority Alumni” was a first-of-its-kind conference.
Harvard law professor Charles Ogletree, ’74, ma ’75, noted the historic nature of the conference as he opened the first session. “Let’s use this weekend to challenge the University to do more as we go forward,” he said.
As chair of the Board of Trustees Task Force on Minority Alumni Relations, Ogletree supervised the report that was the centerpiece of formal presentations and of many overheard conversations. Among the findings: minority students make up almost half of the University’s undergraduate population, but less than 15 percent of tenure-line faculty are members of minority groups. There has been a “slow and unsteady growth of minority graduate students.”
University administrators and faculty addressed compelling issues in their presentations—mixed-race identities, stereotyping, student activism, linguistic profiling—but none drew more comment than admissions policies. Speaking about the University’s success in attracting undergraduate minority students, dean of admission and financial aid Robin Mamlet said her office “openly practiced” affirmative action. She explained that 20 readers look over more than 19,000 applications each year, weighing issues that include race, socioeconomic status and whether a student is the first family member to go to college. “It’s a fundamentally gray and fundamentally value-laden process,” Mamlet said. “But it’s as good a process as we can achieve.”
Several parents implored Mamlet to continue giving special attention to children of alumni. “It’s our turn,” one mother of four said. “Don’t get rid of legacies, because it’s our children now,” another added. Mamlet assured listeners that legacies still “receive very careful notice.”
University President John Hennessy and his two immediate predecessors, Gerhard Casper and Donald Kennedy, took the stage to talk about how student activism had helped diversify the campus. When they opened the floor to comments and questions, a woman who graduated with a degree in environmental engineering in 1991 tearfully recalled her time on the Farm: “It took years to feel I belonged as a Chicana.” Another Latina graduate of the Class of 1996, who lives in El Paso, Texas, told of her efforts to revitalize a local alumni group. She encountered some “resentful” Caucasian graduates of the 1950s and ’60s. “They say because we got in, their children didn’t.”
Kennedy replied that he had talked with alumni groups who voiced similar feelings, and said that “nobody can make it go away.” Some older alums, he added, “are worried about their kids getting in, and worried about the University changing in ways they don’t comprehend.”
Faculty of color presented glimpses of their research throughout the three days, and they weighed in on the issues of recruitment and retention. History professor Al Camarillo noted that the School of Humanities and Sciences made an “unprecedented” number of offers this year to members of minority groups. “President, provost, deans—we all must double the effort to make our faculty more diverse.”
Conference participants also took time out to mingle with students and enjoy mariachi concerts, drumming exhibitions, and performances by Ballet Folklorico de Stanford and the Stanford Gospel Choir. Said one graduate from 1975, “It's not the last conference we need of this type.”
