<p>My good god, the president of Swarthmore died of a heart attack during negotiations? Thats so made for tv...</p>
<p>Yep. The Af-Am Student Society at Swarthmore had forcibly occupied the admissions office in 1969, presenting a list of demands to the administration. Most of the demands revolved around the Dean of Admissions who (trying to be as polite as a I can) was not a fan of campus diversity.</p>
<p>The forcible occupation and demands were particularly troublesome because they brought two aspects of the school's Quaker traditions into conflict. Because of the tradition of social justice, the student body voted to support the demands and the administration was inclined to move in that that direction. However, presenting a forced non-negotiable set of demands in that fashion ran counter to the Quaker tradition of calm concensus-building that had governed the school. So a dialog between the president and the student leaders stretched over several days to find a solution. A week into the takeover, the President climbed the steps to his office and dropped dead of a heart attack at his desk.</p>
<p>The campus, already on pins and needles, was rocked. The Af-Af students ended their takeover that day as a sign of their respect. And, over the course of the next several years, the administration began a series of steps to radically increase black enrollment and begin the process of hiring black faculty.</p>
<p>The event has been widely written about by many of the participants, most recently in a fascinating personal account by Clinton Ethridge, head of the Af-Am Students group at the time:</p>
<p>" I think that state of equilibrium is still below the levels they would like to see. But, it is also a very rigorous school and it doesn't really benefit anybody to accept students who can't handle it. From what I've seen, their accepted URM students have outstanding qualifications."</p>
<p>I think that ID's comment about how it does no good to accept students that can not handle the workload is lost in the discussion about admission rates. At Davidson-the administration states that it will not accept students that they believe will not be able to handle the rigorous workload-as a result, Davidson, as the JBE has noted in other articles, has one of the highest black student graduation rates >86%. Black students are accepted at a somewhat higher rate than others(as xiggi has noted above), but not at the expense of lowering academic standards.This has resulted in the high graduation rates among those who do matriculate. I wonder what the graduation rates are for black students at Williams and other rigorous elite LAC's who accept such high percentages of black applicants. Diversity, at the expense of maintaining academic standards, is a tough trade-off.</p>
<p>The Af-Am Graduation rates at the top LACs range from 80% to 100% with quite a bit of year to year and male/female variation. Davidson's graduation rate is not out of the ordinary, especially when you consider the near relative lack of affirmative action.</p>
<p>One caution: the absolute raw numbers of Af-Am students are pretty small. We have to be very careful about picking single years and getting a misleading view from an overly small data set. At LACs, just a couple of students can skew the numbers. For example, among Af-Am males, Swarthmore had a six year grad rate of 100% one year and 60% the following year. Depending on the year, you would get widely differing impressions, with neither single year giving an accurate statistical view.</p>
<p>"I forgot the exact statistics that listed the numbers of black students who scored above 1450 on the SAT, but the number was very small and a very small fraction of the black students who score around 1250.
"
According to a Washington Post article, in 2003, 1992 blacks scored 1450 or higher on the SAT and "only 1,877 black students (about 1.5 percent of blacks who take the tests) scored higher than 1300 out of a possible 1600 on the SAT in 2003. Only 72 scored higher than 1500. </p>
<p>Among the overall student population, 148,024 (about 10 percent of test takers) scored higher than 1300, and 13,897 earned scores higher than 1500. "</p>
<p>According to the Journal of Blacks in Higher Education </p>
<p>Graduation rates play an important role in measuring the success of affirmative action programs. Many opponents of affirmative action assert, often without even looking at the actual data, that black student graduation rates are damaged by race-sensitive admissions. It is critical to review the statistics to see if this is true. For this reason, in this report we emphasize the graduation rates of black students at the nation's highest-ranked colleges and universities. Almost always these are the institutions that have the strongest commitment to race-sensitive admissions.</p>
<p>Academically selective institutions are almost always strongly committed to affirmative action in admissions, yet at the same time they tend to deliver a high black student graduation rate. Obviously, this undercuts the assertion made by many conservatives that black students admitted to our most prestigious colleges and universities under race-conscious admissions programs are incapable of competing with their white peers and should instead seek admissions at less academically rigorous schools. </p>
<p>Nearly 19 out of every 20 black students who enter the highly competitive academic environment of Harvard, Princeton, Haverford, and Amherst go on to earn their diplomas. Other academically demanding colleges do very well, although not as well as these four. </p>
<p>Sixteen other highly competitive colleges and universities turn in black student graduation rates of 85 percent or more. They are Wellesley College, Williams College, Brown University, Davidson College, Colgate University, Duke University, Northwestern University, Swarthmore College, Wesleyan University, Yale University, Georgetown University, Stanford University, Washington University, Dartmouth College, Columbia University, and the University of Virginia</p>
<p>Northstarmom, do you mean 1992 or 192? (Sorry, just a little confused :))</p>
<p>Thanks for the questin filmxoxo17. I meant to write that there were only 192 blacks who scored 1450 or higher on the SAT in 2003.</p>
<p>does any one have a updated chart of the jbhe thing.</p>
<p>Check the original source.</p>
<p>[The</a> Journal of Blacks in Higher Education](<a href=“http://www.jbhe.com%5DThe”>http://www.jbhe.com)</p>
<p>Northstarmom, your statistic is so maddening. It doesn’t show their intelligence, it shows how distorted/biased these tests are. Living in a poor city and rarely having the means to explore the world, my young students are limited to what they see around them (projects, deaths, welfare, fights, church, and basketball).</p>
<p>The other day, the students (all a year and a half below grade level) were given a passage to read and answer questions. How were they expected to read about a boy’s “canoe” when they’ve never seen one?</p>
<p>“The concern with Harvard wasn’t about foreign students, I thought, but rather the backgrounds of “domestic” black/african-american students (whether their families were recent arrivals from Caribbean countries, or had been subject to the conditions of American race relations for generations).”</p>
<p>The cohorts may be very different school to school, H. being the extreme. H. has fewer than 6% of students on Pell Grants. So the number of URMs who are also low-income is very, very low.</p>
<p>Something else I want to add regarding these admissions rates is that many times the same student has been admitted to multiple schools. One of my kids (AA, Pell grant recipient) really wanted to attend a small, selective LAC and applied to 8 of them-- was admitted to 7 and denied at one (was also admitted at several universities). So 8 lacs had the one kid on the admissions list but, obviously, only one could include in the enrolled category.</p>
<p>And, while we’re on this thread, where is Northstarmom? I miss her wisdom and knowledge.</p>
<p>"Northstarmom, your statistic is so maddening. "</p>
<p>Very old thread. I haven’t seen Northstarmom in a very long time.</p>
<p>Came back, Northstarmom.!</p>
<p>“Something else I want to add regarding these admissions rates is that many times the same student has been admitted to multiple schools.”</p>
<p>Yes! Yes! A thousand times yes! The same kids at all the “diversity events.”</p>
<p>"Swarthmore began a very aggressive affirmative action effort in 1969 (following a series of events known as “The Crisis” – the takeover of the admissions office by the Af-Am Student Society and the heart attack death of the President during the negotiations).</p>
<p>"Clinton Ethridge, head of the Af-Am Students group at the time:</p>
<p>Holy cow!!! Sounds like a screenplay to me!</p>
<p>Bookmark.</p>