Predominantly White colleges and universities across the country are facing similar quandaries in their efforts to become more fully inclusive and supportive of all members of their community.
Increasingly, students are taking institutions to task over issues of campus climate. Yet confronting something as amorphous as campus climate is far from a straightforward task, and many campuses are experiencing periods of challenge as they evolve.
The University of Missouri became ground zero for campus protests this fall, after racial tensions escalated on campus and ultimately resulted in the resignation of system President Tim Wolfe.
However, Mizzou is hardly alone. Most colleges and universities have a story to tell about disturbances on campus, although they did not make the news to the same degree. At Muhlenberg College, a small, four-year liberal arts institution located in Allentown, Pennsylvania, that serves 2,200 students, a series of racist comments on Yik Yak, an anonymous online forum, precipitated a campuswide forum about race and inclusion. It was attended by nearly 40 percent of the student body.
Muhlenberg is a predominantly and historically White institution in the midst of a demographic change amongst its student and faculty population. In some respects, it is a microcosm of institutional shifts happening across the country.
This May, Muhlenberg announced that it had hired 10 tenure-track faculty and six short-term appointments. Of those sixteen new faculty, five are faculty of color. For many institutions, creating a more diverse faculty is a high priority, but sometimes a challenge. Institutions cite the relative dearth of faculty of color, which makes it difficult to attract faculty of color, let alone retain them.
Diversifying the Muhlenberg faculty, however, is not quite on pace with the rapidly diversifying student body. Back in 1987, only 2 percent of Muhlenberg students were of color, Dr. John Williams, Muhlenberg president, told Diverse in a phone interview. By point of comparison, the class of 2019 was 18 percent minority and 5 percent international.
