Minority enrollment has fallen at Temple University, according to a report made at the Nov. 25 Temple Student Government Meeting.
TSG vice president for Academic Affairs Alex Norman, parliamentarian Tomas Varela and speaker for the TSG General Assembly Bryan Carter discussed statistics that showed that both total minority enrollment and the number of entering minority freshman has fallen since 1997.
The data on minority enrollment was provided by director of Student Information Systems Timothy Walsh. Dean of Students James Fitzsimmons said the statistics were based on information provided by students when they applied to Temple.
According to the statistics, overall enrollment of African American students has fallen from 26.3 percent in 1997 to 23.9 percent in 2001. Asian enrollment has fallen from 10.7 to 8.6 percent; Hispanic enrollment increased negligibly, from 3.1 to 3.2 percent. White students made up 53.2 percent of the population, as compared to 52.1 percent in 1997.
The number of minority students coming to Temple has also fallen. In 1997, 27.6 percent of entering freshman were African American, in 2001, 23.7 percent were. The percentage of entering Asian students fell from 10.6 to 8.2 percent and that of entering Hispanic students fell from 4.5 to 3.3 percent. Entering white freshmen made up 47.2 percent of students in 1997, in 2001, they made up 53.9 percent.
“[Are] those programs encouraging minority [enrollment] working? That’s our question,” said Carter. “[We’re] just giving numbers so that we can take questions and comments now and bring them back [to administrators].”
“We just want to maintain diversity [on campus],” said Norman.
“We wanted to present numbers … and try to come up with a possible solution,” said Varela.
Several allocation bills for student organizations were approved by General Assembly at the meeting: $675 was allocated to the Temple University Community Services Association, $1,175 to the American Marketing Association, $2,028.43 to Students Against Sexual Assault, $700 to the Hip Hop Society, $1,252.93 to the Student Organization for Caribbean Awareness, $1,200 to Hillel, $500 to Alpha Alpha Nu and $1,200 for LMS Productions.
Allocation bills for Phi Sigma Phi, Progressive NAACP and Sigma Gamma Rho Sorority, Inc. were tabled due to absence of their representatives.
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Saeko Komura can be reached at saekokomura@yahoo.co.jp
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