On March 15th, 1847, Townsend Harris, the founder of what is now The City University of New York (CUNY), said “Open the doors to all, let the children of the rich and the poor take their seats together and know of no distinction save that of industry, good conduct, and intellect.” Over the last couple of decades however, recent data has reflected that there has been a decrease in the percentage of black and Latino students who attend public colleges in the city of New York. According to a report released by the Community Service Society for example, from 2001 to 2012, there has been a four percent decrease of Hispanic students CUNY wide, and for African American students that decrease is at an even greater figure, which is estimated at seven percent. And if this trend continues, it only means that CUNY would face an even greater divide among the rich and the poor students that attend CUNY colleges; rather than there being a shrinking of this gap in the way that Harris would had initially envisioned. And the reason as to why this is so, is because there is a greater percentage of lower income African American and Hispanic students who graduate from public high schools in New York than there are for Whites or Asians. Yet it is these very same black and Latino kids that experience a lesser rate of acceptance at the various city colleges in New York too, when compared to the enrollment rates of White or Asian freshmen at CUNY.
So why is there a smaller percentage of African American and Hispanic students today, than there was just ten years ago? It is because factors such as raised admission standards, a decrease in public funding, and higher tuition costs are just some influences that play a part of these wealth and ethnic divides. And while black and Latino students make up about 70 percent of the student body of public high schools, there has been an increase in the numbers of White and Asian students that actually end up making it to the top city colleges, such as Baruch College. In fact, according to U.S. Census data and a 2015 fact sheet taken from the Baruch website, while Black and Latinos represent over fifty percent of the total population in New York City as a while, only a little bit less than 27 percent of these students are actually admitted to Baruch College. Yet in 2001, black and Hispanics students reflected over a third of the student body at Baruch College, which means that there has been more of a six percent drop of Hispanic and blacks at Baruch, just over the last fifteen years as well.
Founded in 2005, the Black Male Initiative (BMI) was established to offer greater support to many of the CUNY students who were a part of an ethnically underrepresented population at their colleges. According to the CUNYBMI website, “BMI’s mission is to increase, encourage, and support the inclusion and educational success of students from groups that are severely underrepresented in higher education, in particular African, African American/Black, Caribbean and Latino/Hispanic males.” Yet individuals such as Dr. Arthur Lewin, a member of the Advisory Board of the Black Male Initiative at Baruch College, has expressed that CUNY “doesn’t really support” organizations such as the BMI. And that CUNY uses the organization for “just a public relations game” instead. Lewin himself even wishes that CUNY would “[take on] diversity as a serious issue, and try to really recruit students here and not just keep on raising the criteria…. Because when somebody does good on the SATS, and has a good gPA, it doesn’t mean that they are going to succeed necessarily better than somebody else [who doesn’t].” And because black and Latinos score less well than Asians and Whites on average; Lewin feels that because “Most of the public school students in America are people of color… You can’t just not be educating these people and think that you are going to have a country down the road.”
But achieving high SAT scores just to be accepted into some of the better city colleges is only a fair part of the many other issues that students who are part of the ethnically underrepresented face. For example, according to Lewin “when you only have a few black and Latino students, it’s hard for them to maintain their identity and their culture.” Which means that adapting to CUNY is often a cultural as well as an academic challenge for the small percentage of blacks and Hispanics that are admitted to these city colleges. And overall, Lewin feels that a more diverse CUNY is something to be desired as it “benefits the majority of people in New York City because they are black and Latino, but they are being excluded from the city university.” And when asked if he feels if organizations such as BMI are doing enough to support underrepresented students; “It’s like putting on a windbreaker or sweater and going out to a blizzard, it’s almost next to nothing,” said Lewin.