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.