Every year, colleges and universities across the nation release brochures and annual reports for the public discussing the benefits of attending their particular school. These institutions mail them to prospective students, employees and donors every year with information about how the school ranks among other institutions, upcoming alumni events or about the new projects that the university will be participating in. Although the content inside the brochures is ever changing, the photo on the front remains the same. In this picture, there are various minority faces, showing exceptional diversity. Honestly, if college campuses were as diverse as the brochures, this debate would not even be occurring. The use of these photographs is a complete misrepresentation of diversity; in actuality, the brochures are blatantly exploiting minorities for personal gain. These photos over-represent the number of minorities that are actually on campuses, which is a distortion of diversity.
A study published last year in the Journal of Marketing for Higher Education observed more than 10,000 photographs found in the recruitment brochures that institutions craft. They analyzed 165 four-year education institutions in the United States and found that the majority of images reflected populations that were drastically different from the actual student body. In addition to this, they found that colleges that were the least diverse featured the most diverse images in their publications.
Although the universities are sending out this photo as an attempt to show that their universities are diverse, this misrepresentation has caused several problems. First, colleges and universities are now exploiting their minority students, as opposed to what was done in the past, which was ignoring them and the issues related to being a minority in a university. These publications are also being broadcasted to every area of the university, including to alumni. These photos are showing minorities happily interacting in the university, smiling in the classroom and laughing with their teachers. They are showing a positive university experience, without addressing the prolonged sense that minorities feel that they do not belong on campus because people that do not look like them surround them. Photos without action are simply exploitation.
Harvard University created a photo project called, “I, Too, Am Harvard,” which is a photo campaign in which minority students make public their own image of what life is at the university. When looking at the photographs, the majority of students stared straight into the camera as opposed to the large smile people see in the brochures. They were expressing a day-to-day reality as opposed to a multicultural party that seems to be displayed on a large portion of a university’s marketing materials. These brochures do not express real issues or illustrate accurate diversity across campuses.
Currently, at our University the enrollment rate for Asian Americans is about 11.8 percent. For African Americans it is about 6 percent and for Hispanic and Latino people it is about 5.8 percent; Pacific Islander fluctuates around 1 percent. These diversity percentages are exceptionally low, yet when there is a photo released on a brochure, people would assume these numbers are much higher because of the number of ethnic faces on the cover. It would be more accurate if schools put 75 white students, six black students, six Hispanic students, 12 Asian students and one Pacific Islander on the cover. Minorities would probably blend into the background considering the outstanding number of white students at the University.
This raises the question of what actions need to be taken to increase diversity. Some universities are allotting money for the recruitment of minority students and they are attempting to implement diversity initiatives. The University has implemented several initiatives in order to increase the number of minorities. The Honor Committee has partnered with the Black Student Alliance, Latino Student Alliance and Asian Student Union in order to create an essay-based award competition to celebrate minority communities and engagement in minority issues on grounds. There is also Spring Fling, at which prospective minority students come and tour the university. Furthermore, there are several initiatives that have been implemented that need to be mirrored by other universities in order to enhance diversity nationally, as opposed to just on brochures.
Creating initiatives and taking an interest into the very real issues that minorities face on Grounds could potentially limit the backlash that these photos are receiving. Minorities are coming into an environment where nearly everyone around them does not look like them, which can create a potentially difficult learning environment. Universities across the nation need to take initiative and fix the diversity disparity instead of publishing misrepresentations in their brochures.
Jasmine Burton is a fourth-year Batten student.
Read More
EDITORIAL: Celebrating and reflecting on The Cavalier Daily’s independence
By Editorial Board | 3 hours agoOur independence grants us the ability to ask the hard questions and to say what University representatives cannot.
ARRAS: U.Va. must revise the Sexual Assault Prevention Training module
By Aoife Arras | YesterdayIn addition to its failures in interactivity, the module lacks details specific to the University and discusses key concepts in universal terms.
EDITORIAL: Pedestrian safety is an institutional imperative
By Editorial Board | 3 days agoAmid a national crisis of pedestrian safety, Charlottesville and the University are also struggling to properly maintain pedestrian safety.
