Reaching Out, Holding On

With a racist past fading into history and racial consideration following close behind, how will UT continue to recruit and retain minority students?

When the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that race could no longer be considered in admissions to Texas, Mississippi, and Louisiana public universities, reaction varied from happiness to horror. When Attorney General Dan Morales interpreted Hopwood vs. The University of Texas as banning race as a factor in financial aid programs, UT administrators began dismantling or altering minority recruitment and retention programs.

Melody Douglas (BBA '76), former chair of the Texas Exes (Ex-Students' Association) Black Alumni Advisory Committee, saw the decision as the undoing of more than 10 years of hard work. She says that blacks in the Houston community reacted poorly to the decision, tying Hopwood and the University together and creating an image of the University that did not welcome minority students. That image already had existed, says Douglas, but she and her committee had been working with students and their parents to change it. Now she says she must start again from scratch.

Few if any administrators openly endorsed the Hopwood decision, but many have said that the result is not as bad as many people feared. UT has changed its recruitment and retention programs in accordance with the law, but people were already working to change several programs before the ruling. "You knew Hopwood was out there," says Don Davis, associate director for the Office of Student Financial Services. UT admissions and financial aid officers, the recruiters, were presenting procedural changes to top administrators before the Hopwood decision.

The legal appeal of Hopwood and other pending cases against the University of Michigan and the University of Washington could mean a nationwide loss of racial consideration. Therefore, worried administrators around the country are looking to Austin to learn how UT is coping with the law.

"Many people think it sounds silly to be concerned about being the 'only one,' " says Marlen Whitley (BA '98), former UT student government president, "but I think you take any one person and put them in an environment where very few people, if any at all, look like them, act like them, and understand where they come from--they'll feel intimidated and act a bit discouraged."

Those who believe in retention programs share the opinion that someone needs to step in and make minority students feel welcome and needed. For some current administrators, outside intervention kept them in school. Ricardo Romo (BS '67), president of The University of Texas at San Antonio, was at UT on a football scholarship when he decided to quit, mainly because his roommate wanted to drop out. In order to leave, he had to sign off on his scholarship; Darrell Royal had to approve it. Royal called Romo into his office, asked for his reasons, shredded his admittedly "flimsy" excuses, and encouraged him to stay, which he did.

Bob Galvan ('52) was a high school track star when UT track coach Clyde Littlefield visited his school and asked him about his college plans. Galvan dismissed his overtures and went to work on the railroad, like a lot of people from his school. He found out that Littlefield phoned his parents with news of a scholarship, and after a summer of working in the Texas heat, college sounded a lot better. He says he never would have attended if Littlefield hadn't pursued him and stepped in with the money. Galvan is now a special assistant in the Office of the Vice President for Human Resources and Community Relations.

People in the recruitment and retention programs agree that most students need some kind of outside source of encouragement, whether a counselor, a parent, or teacher. This holds true for all students, no matter what their academic record or race. However, most of the top students "get recognized, they are coerced, pushed, supported, and usually they are going to succeed," says Wanda Nelson, director of the University Outreach Center. Students that do not receive this outside attention have a lower chance of succeeding.

Administrators, from the University president on down, have taken it upon themselves to encourage and help these potential students because they feel that without extra attention, the cycle of failure and apathy will continue indefinitely.

Nelson says that even in top schools like Yale, each freshman is assigned an older student, a faculty member, and a staff member to create a support structure. "The mindset, the philosophy, the message that students receive about being welcomed onto campus, other people wanting them to be successful, is very powerful, and that's what we're trying to portray here," she says.

Some administrators, such as recruitment director Margarita Arellano (MEd '79, PhD '87), believe that the University, as a state entity, should take responsibility and represent the state's population in its student body.

Marlen Whitley asks, "How does a school like UT champion itself as the flagship institution of the state when the enrollment clearly does not reflect the state's demographics?"

With race taken away, UT has tried to maintain black and Hispanic admissions numbers by considering students who attend high schools that perform poorly or send low numbers of students to UT. Additionally, in an effort to boost the numbers of blacks and Hispanics, the Texas legislature reacted to Hopwood by mandating that any student graduating in the top 10 percent of his or her class be admitted to any public Texas university. [See Alcalde cover story, July/August 1998 issue.]

But that is only part of the strategy. Before he left his post as the vice president for Administration and Public Affairs and moved into the UT System administration, Ed Sharpe (BA '69, MBA '70, PhD '80) put together five task forces made up of students, faculty, and staff that worked on ideas to increase racial diversity through recruitment and retention. James Hill (MEd '62, PhD '78), vice president for Human Resources and Community Relations, compiled the final report that included recommendations such as creating satellite admissions offices in Dallas and San Antonio. The total cost of the recommendations equaled $1.2 million, a small sum in Hill's eyes compared to the benefits of increased minority enrollment, such as more educated minorities giving back to Texas by working and supporting their communities.

UT recruitment and retention involves the University Outreach Centers, freshman admissions, financial aid, and retention programs. Alumni get involved as well.

In 1987, then-UT president Bill Cunningham and then-A&M president Frank Vandiver began the University Outreach Centers as a partnership between the two universities. It now consists of six centers in Austin, Dallas, Houston, Corpus Christi, San Antonio, and McAllen that focus on increasing underrepresented minorities in all colleges and universities in Texas. Each center has programs geared specifically for the city. Corpus Christi's center uses Texas A&M-Galveston and the marine environment as a lure; the Dallas program focuses on tutorials; Houston uses NASA; and Austin uses the University itself to interest teenagers in college.

School counselors and teachers recommend students in seventh grade; the centers choose the students based on these recommendations and induct them into the program in the eighth grade. The centers originally focused strictly on minority children who were potential first-generation college students and those who were poor. The students were not in the top of their class but had the potential to succeed if given encouragement and guidance. With Hopwood, the program has had to become racially inclusive, but it still uses the other criteria, mitigating in favor of blacks and Hispanics.

Both the parents and students must sign a contract agreeing to participate. This is especially important for those parents who didn't attend college because, according to Nelson, some don't understand why their student should attend prep courses or workshops. The program claims high success levels because most who enter the program do attend and stay in college.

Besides the centers, the administration has created other recruitment programs. For the spring 1998, Bob Galvan set up Texas Longhorn Partners Responding to Educational Priorities (PREP), a pilot program begun under then-interim president Peter Flawn, to send out professors who would work with teachers in creating lesson plans that would help top-10-percent students develop the skills they need in college. The first program focused on English; math and science are next. Bank of America underwrote the program and UT paid for the professors. These professors set up workshops on Saturdays to let the teachers know what would be necessary for their students to succeed in college. After training, the teachers conducted their own Saturday workshops for students who gave up a portion of their weekend to be tutored in preparatory classes for college English. The programs were set up in Dallas and Houston because, according to James Hill, "We knew the majority of the underrepresented African-American students and Latino students would be located in those two areas."

Hill believes that for this program to work, the administration must support it, and he says, "I can tell you this, we have the commitment of the president himself." The PREP program brochure states the reason for the program: "Being in the top 10 percent of one's graduating class does not guarantee academic success at the college or university level."

Freshman admissions gets out the word about the University to high school students through "college day" and "college night" recruiter visits, and busing students in for campus visits. Says Augustine Garza, admissions deputy director, "I'm not too sure that admissions procedures have changed as drastically as people would like for us to have changed them."

In the "post-Hopwood era," very little has changed in the admissions office in terms of its field activities. "The patterns of high schools' behavior haven't changed all that much, so neither have our strategies," says Garza. "What we have done post-Hopwood is visit more schools." Recruiters are out in the field an average of three to four weeks longer per recruitment period, visiting twice as many high schools. The admissions office now is scrutinizing geographic areas that don't send students to UT on a regular basis, schools that also have large black and Hispanic populations.

Recruiters work from mid-September to mid-February, attending college days and college nights officially scheduled by the Texas Association of Collegiate Registrars and Admissions Officers (TACRAO), the same procedure as before Hopwood. The schedule can get grueling in the larger cities, such as Dallas, which has five programs a night during the week. In addition to the TACRAO schedule, UT sends recruiters to high schools for day-only visits to reach more schools.

The admissions office also sends out counselor handbooks listing specific UT contacts and hosts counselor workshops early in the fall to answer questions and discuss UT.

The admissions office does focus on "strong feeder schools," those who have always sent students to UT and have a good relationship with the University. These feeders include those who have sent a high number of minority students to UT, and Garza wants to maintain close ties with them to keep the cycle going.

A Houston satellite admissions office in the UT Health Science Center, directed by Spencer Bynes, sends recruiters to area high schools and supplies information right in the city. This helps decrease the Austin staff's workload and increase UT's visibility in the Houston area, which has a high minority population. The office is hoping to eventually open offices in other Texas cities.

A new strategy is to aggressively recruit the top 10 percent students, who are guaranteed, by law, admittance to any public university in Texas. This allows the admissions office to legally pursue minority students. Garza matter-of-factly cites the strategy, emphasizing each point with a fist into his hand: "We find them, talk to them on the phone, encourage their application, get them admitted."

The UT Texas Exes (Ex-Students' Association) works in conjunction with the admissions office on the long-standing Exes for Texas program. Many alumni are involved, including individuals who serve on the Black Alumni Advisory Committee. The program targets top 10 percent students and those who scored high on the PSAT--by mailing letters, calling them, and visiting them during college nights. The program targets all students, but Exes for Texas has renewed a program in Houston that hosts receptions for black students in homes of black alumni. These receptions also will be held in Dallas, San Antonio, and Austin. Douglas feels these receptions will help show that the University does welcome black students.

The admissions office has had to eliminate minority-only campus visits. But since UT is in the national scholar programs, for students who scored extremely well on the PSAT, admissions officers are allowed to court minority students who are part of that program.

Pre-Hopwood, the admissions office phoned only the top students and minority students to recruit them. That calling program expanded last fall to become all-inclusive. Marlen Whitley and Mike Orr, who works in the admissions office, mobilized a phone committee of more than 100 volunteers who called 21,000 students in seven nights over a period of several weeks. Whitley says a student called him before he attended UT to help familiarize him with the campus so when he arrived, he would feel more comfortable. He wanted to give back to the program because it helped him and also, "Given the low number of students of color, African-American students in my case, I really felt it necessary for incoming students to know that students from their own communities, background, culture, etc., were in positions to assist them in whatever way needed and to help them get acclimated to life at UT."

Another program that had to become racially inclusive was the Hometown Holiday Recruiting Program, in which students visit their high schools during the winter break to talk about UT. It has expanded to 200 students, but more are needed.

The admissions process was actually changed before Hopwood. "It was ironic that the day the Hopwood decision was rendered, we were at the faculty council meeting proposing new admissions procedures," Garza says. They received the green light the same day. Then-president Robert Berdahl and the administration believed that the procedure needed to change to a more "holistic process," incorporating background-revealing essays and increasing the scope of considerations. It was altered in time to comply with Hopwood because the process had been under way early and the office received approval 14 months in advance, a timeline it had to meet in order to be ready for the fall '97 semester.

Officers in student financial services anticipated the changes that Hopwood brought and prepared in advance. The office had the largest minority recruitment program in the country, which essentially was eliminated. Director Lawrence Burt and Deputy Director Don Davis were told that they were lucky to have changed over such a massive scholarship program so quickly, but according to Burt, "One definition of luck is planning and preparation."

Burt and Gary Hanson, a former coordinator in admissions, started compiling information in order to create a different database for a totally race-blind system to award scholarships. They had the administration's support and the program was ready for installation when Hopwood came down. The three factors that determine need include: the student's environment, the school and community environment, and the student's performance in relation to his or her peers. Environment is determined by such factors as the parents' education and income level, obtained from the undergraduate admissions application, which was altered to include the information. School environment includes all students' standardized test scores at the applicant's high school. And the peer performance index is the student's SAT score divided by the school's average score, divided by the number of students who scored the minimum passing score according to the state (around 1000). These three factors yield an "adversity index" that, when taken along with the student's class rank, places each student in one of three tiers, the first being awarded the highest scholarship.

The results in fall 1997 showed that 51 percent of Hispanic students and 5 percent of black students received President's Achievement Scholarships. Says Davis, "Personally, we think it's a better system." Burt adds, "This is more fair. It gets money to students who work hard and who really have financial need." He agrees that nationwide, schools are looking to UT as an example of what could be done if Hopwood becomes the law of the land. He already has received inquiries from California, Washington, and Michigan. The office has loaned its computer program that calculates the formula to Texas A&M, and they may use it. Burt laughs, "That's just about the highest praise you can get, if you have an Aggie that is going to copy what a Longhorn is doing."

The office still supports the National Achievement (for black students) and National Hispanic scholarship programs, which are legal since the financial aid office doesn't choose the recipients. Says Burt, "This university has decided that you will get the same scholarship package, whatever your last name is, if your first name is 'national.' " That increased the percentages of Hispanic and black freshmen that received scholarships in fall 1997 to 58 and 9. However, without the minority-only scholarships, they awarded money to 100-150 fewer Hispanic students and 50-60 fewer black students. Contrary to popular belief, the new system is not the only reason. The program had to be scaled back to a more manageable budget of $4.5 million, which had nothing to do with Hopwood. Overall, the financial aid office is pleased to have implemented what it considers a good program so quickly after the decision, a logistical nightmare if the staff hadn't started early.

As has been the case for many years, alumni are also helping to recruit blacks and Hispanics. In 1997 the Texas Exes (Ex-Students' Association) made headlines by creating the Texas Leader Scholarship fund to allow donors to specify the race of the recipient, a maneuver made possible by the Association's independence from the University. The scholarship's description included a slew of demographic variables, such as attracting more students from urban and rural areas, poor high schools, and underrepresented races. In early May 1998, Houston lawyer Joe Jamail announced he and his wife, Lee Hage Jamail, were pledging $2 million to the scholarship fund. Supporters have now pledged more than $3.5 million, and 800 scholarship applications have been received. Administrators praise the Texas Exes (Ex-Students' Association) for doing what they can't do and feel it will be a future trend that can combat the effects of Hopwood.

Vice President James Hill is unequivocal about his feelings on affirmative action: "I do believe in affirmative action and will always believe in it as long as we don't have the equality of opportunity for all citizens. I will believe in affirmative action until we eliminate all vestiges of past discrimination in this country."

Margarita Arellano, who runs the retention program out of the Office of the Dean of Students, is committed to stopping the cycle of non-college graduates begetting non-college graduates. "You have to be intrusive and break that cycle," she says. "I think affirmative actions are good, but I don't think they should exist forever, just long enough to break the cycle."

Arellano believes the cycle hadn't been broken yet--that the Hopwood decision came too soon. Students didn't know what to expect, but the situation has settled down. The Hispanic and black communities reacted negatively to the decision, but their attitude toward UT has been negative in the past, according to Arellano, something she attributes to the fact that the University was integrated relatively recently.

But with each new generation, Arellano says, attitudes are improving. Hopwood caused a negative reaction, dropping minority applicants, but the numbers are increasing again. "Hopwood was a major issue at the time and it's much less now," she says. "The students are either getting used to it or are less afraid to apply now."

Retention programs are relatively young. Preview is the oldest, having begun in 1986, then Success in '91, Gateway in '96, and the newest program in '97, Achieving College Academic Excellence, which focuses on freshmen or transfer students who aren't in any of the other programs and are experiencing trouble. Transfers are in the same category as freshmen in terms of retention rates. While Arellano supports the programs, she currently is concentrating on University-wide, systematic change to create a more welcoming environment for students. Bob Galvan is working toward the same. He says that when he offers to help students or hands out his card to parents and encourages them to call, the majority take the help he offers. To him, that shows a need that must be filled.

Margarita Arellano, Augustine Garza, and Ricardo Romo agree that their best ambassadors and best recruiters are those college graduates who return to their communities. By example, these alumni show their peers that they have the potential to succeed at UT. The opposite is also true, that those who fail and return to their communities convey the message that those in that community will fail as well. So these administrators feel that they must work to hold onto every student.

Distinguished Alumnus and former regent Mario Ramirez ('45) is held up as a perfect example of what can happen when minority students return to their community. He began organizing scholarship banquets more than 30 years ago in Starr County to recognize Hispanic students and recruit them to college. Each year, presidents from UT Austin, Texas A&M, and UT-Pan American attend the banquets to spread the word of the universities to the top students in South Texas. Ramirez has helped establish a strong link between the Rio Grande Valley and the universities, a cycle that continues to this day.

The University has come a long way with respect to minorities in four decades, but not far enough, according to these professors and administrators. However, people like Wanda Nelson are optimistic about minority enrollment and retention after Hopwood. "We're going to recover. We have to," she says. "We just have to be creative and find ways to make that happen."

Before Hopwood, five programs existed for minority retention: Preview, Success, Gateway, MAPS, and freshman seminars.

Preview: for black and Hispanic scholarship recipients only. In 1986, students petitioned then-president Bill Cunningham for a program that would help minorities succeed at UT, because they were watching their peers drop out of school. In the second session of the summer, students took nine hours of college classes with no larger than 25 students, all tuition and fees paid. Says Wanda Nelson, "Preview was the most successful retention program at UT, ever." Why? "Individual attention had a lot to do with it."

The highly structured nature of the program also contributed: students attended classes at specific times, and study groups and meetings at other times. The students were intelligent, but never really studied in high school since their curricula weren't challenging enough.

Administrators felt the structured nature showed the students the kind of discipline and work necessary to succeed at UT. Tenured professors requested to teach the classes, the students paid nothing, and peer counselors helped. The Hopwood decision eliminated the black- and Hispanic-only Texas Achievement Award and Texas Achievement Honor Award scholarships that paid for the program, so students had to assume the financial burden, which most couldn't bear. Now money has been reallocated back into the program, but students still need to pay for a portion, and it is now all-inclusive.

Success: Wanda Nelson wrote the proposal for the program for students that weren't scholarship recipients but had the potential to succeed at UT. The student attended for the entire summer and took a more intense course load, along with workshops and orientations. If they maintained a 2.25 GPA, they were admitted to UT. It is now all-inclusive.

Mapping A Plan for Success: The Hopwood decision eliminated this tutorial program for minorities, which helped close to 1,200 students a year.

Gateway: This program anticipated the coming changes and was created to be all-inclusive. It's for regularly admitted students whose files have red flags that indicate they need extra help to stay at UT. Often their school did not have a college prep curriculum or the school has never sent a student to UT.

Freshman Seminars: Seminars are taught throughout the fall semester in small classes with professors who teach the courses in addition to their normal course load and act as mentors. Former UT president Robert Berdahl and former Provost Mark Yudof conceived of the idea; it wasn't new in the nation, but it was in Texas. The program has grown to 55 classes, impacting approximately 900 students, and receives rave reviews from both students and administrators. Arellano says the seminars are important because they break the University down into smaller units so it's not so overwhelming. Many cite the importance of the personal touch.

While blacks and Hispanics share the plight of underrepresentation and many of the experiences of discrimination, their histories at the University are quite different. Students and faculty members with Spanish surnames range from the 1890s on. Because not all Hispanics have Spanish surnames, even these may not represent the first Hispanics at the University. It appears that many of the Hispanics on campus during the early years were foreign students.

Hispanics
• 1894 M.M. Garcia is first graduate of the University with Spanish surname.
• 1897 Lilia Mary Casis (BA 1895, MA 1896) joins faculty as a tutor in French and Spanish.
• 1914 La Tertulia, a Spanish-language club, is founded. Two of its 18 members are Hispanic.
• 1919 David R. Pena is a T-man for the Longhorn football team.
• 1927 Club Mexicana founded with 16 members "to foster and develop a better understanding between the two neighboring countries and to bring together the peoples of this continent." Club renamed El Club Mejicano the following year, and expanded to the Latin American Club in 1929 with 27 members, most of whom are students from Mexico. Club begins El Universitario, a Spanish-language student newspaper.

African-Americans
• 1950 UT becomes first university in the South required by law to admit black graduate students; Heman Sweatt is the first black to enroll in law school.
• 1952 John Chase becomes UT's first black graduate with an Master's degree in Architecture.
• 1964 UT abolishes all segregated housing; track member James Means becomes first black varsity letterman in Southwest Conference history in any sport.
• 1969 History and sociology professor Henry A. Bullock becomes first black professor to receive tenure.
• 1969-70 Carnegie Mims, a black law school student, becomes the first University student ombudsman.
• 1970 Julius Whittier becomes first black student to receive a football scholarship.
• 1971 Darrell Royal hires Alvin Matthews as a part-time defensive back coach; Matthews becomes UT's first black coach in any sport and only the second in the SWC.

By Cora Oltersdorf,
from Texas Alcalde magazine (September/October 1998)

Sources:

Overcoming: A History of Black Integration at the University of Texas at Austin by Duren and Iscoe; UT history professor Dr. Norman Brown

UT Commencement Programs, Cactus yearbooks

Links:

UT Austin:

• Responding to the Hopwood Decision

• Office of Admissions

• Office of Student Financial Services

• Longhorn Opportunity Scholarships

• Office of the Dean of Students

• Office of Retention Services

• University Outreach Center

• SHARE Program

• Freshman Seminars

• The Alcalde magazine

The Handbook of Texas Online:
http://www.tshaonline.org/handbook/online

• Orville Bullington

• Clyde Littlefield

• Heman Sweatt

• Sweatt v. Painter, Supreme Court decision