Administrators will spend the next few months poring over data to pinpoint how to raise GW’s 81 percent six-year graduation rate. Though above average nationally, the number sits below most of its competitor schools – a cause for concern at a University trying to raise academic standards.
In this pursuit, GW must be conscious of the the group of students graduating at the lowest rates – black males.
One in three black men who enroll at GW as freshmen do not earn degrees after six years. The six-year graduation rate for black men who started college in 2006 was only 66 percent, according to recent data about the entire student population in the NCAA.
Many take this discrepancy for granted, as it is not unique to this campus. But we can’t just accept this as a failure of our society.
Instead, top officials need to take responsibility for this issue and make it a priority. Even when you step away from spreadsheets and talk to student leaders around campus, this issue is clear.
“In terms of my own friends, I’ve seen a decline – people who don’t come back from one semester to the next – and specifically black males,” Danica Brown, president of the Black Student Union, told me.
When comparing GW to other schools, the situation seems particularly dire. The black male graduation rate at Boston University is 84 percent, according to NCAA numbers – 18 points higher than GW’s rate. Plus, there is no gap between the overall graduation rate and the grad rate for all black males at the peer university.
While it is true that BU has a significantly smaller enrollment of black students – 3 percent compared to GW’s 7 percent – the data shows that GW doesn’t reach as high as it could on this metric.
While mentorships are supported through the Multicultural Student Services Center, and various student organizations like the Black Men’s Initiative, students said that these services are underfunded and not sufficiently publicized.
If GW wants to raise the graduation rate, we need to get serious about investing in these resources and this community. Without culturally relevant experiences and supportive role models, it is very difficult for black males to feel connected to this University.
When black students walk into class, they “rarely see someone [they] can connect with,” David Myers, president of the Black Men’s Initiative at GW, told me. He said he was unaware that the MSSC even existed his first year on campus.
The problem, MSSC director Michael Tapscott said, is more complex than just a matter of racial identity. It’s because “there are additional challenges related to transitioning to college for groups historically underrepresented in higher education, including black males, first-generation [students] and students from lower socioeconomic groups.”
But the responsibility to address this issue should fall on all of us, not just the MSSC.
Brown pointed out that “in general, professors are going to feel weird reaching out to students of color in particular, because they don’t want to single them out.”
It’s understandable that faculty might be wary of singling out black students, but this type of additional support is essential. As students of color are more likely to face culture shock in a predominantly white college environment, these resources could determine whether or not they walk away with a diploma.
With a direct effort and concentrated resources, GW can close the gap. Just look a few miles down the road.
Washington and Lee, a small school in Lexington, Va., was graduating approximately 90 percent of its white students while the graduation rate of black and Latino students fell to 63 percent in 2007.
In response to this, the school put dramatic changes in place, specifically by aggressively pushing peer-mentoring programs and by supporting community-building events, including its first-ever black homecoming. In 2013, the school graduated the same proportion of minority students as it did white students.
While this University is a far different environment than Washington and Lee – GW is a more diverse, larger, city school – there is a lot that we can learn from their intentional concentration of money and effort.
Graduation needs to not be viewed as the exception, but the expectation. We can’t continue to let minority students fall through the cracks, excusing the unnatural phenomenon as inherent to the system.
Sydney McKinley, a junior majoring in sociology and political science, is a Hatchet opinions writer.
