Might I remind members of the forum rules: “Our forum is expected to be a friendly and welcoming place, and one in which members can post without their motives, intelligence, or other personal characteristics being questioned by others."
and
“College Confidential forums exist to discuss college admission and other topics of interest. It is not a place for contentious debate. If you find yourself repeating talking points, it might be time to step away and do something else… If a thread starts to get heated, it might be closed or heavily moderated.”
Since the flags are already flying on this thread and it’s early in the day, I’m putting this on slow mode. If we can’t get back to the original poster’s question, this thread will be closed.
I’m might be time to wind this puppy down. I think the OP has received a lot of good input. At the end of the day though, nothing will substitute for walking on campus and talking to students and faculty.
Good luck to your student in their quest to find the right school for them!
I’m white and my husband is not. We lived in SLO for about two years several years ago. He says to this day that he never experienced as much racism (especially micro aggressions) anywhere else in the state. He hated the entire Central Coast. I, however, loved it there.
I recently visited SLO with my family, my son is accepted for this upcoming year.
I cannot speak for incidents per se, but I will say that at the start of our tour, our tour guide announced to our group that SLO is a “PWI” and if that made us uncomfortable we should look elsewhere. Someone it the group asked what was PWI and she responded Predominantly White Institution, she said it will be very obvious as we walk around the campus and see the student body.
I will say that if she had not mentioned that, I would not have noticed. I don’t go around looking at color either way but of course after mentioning it, I did pay attention and sure enough.
Living/working/studying/belonging to a PWI would not make me uncomfortable but the fact that she had to go out of her way to say it, said more to me about them than anything else.
Sounds like the tour guide needs some training in how to appropriately discuss a PWI campus. I would probably call the welcome center and let them know your experience so re-training can take place. Yes, they need to address it but how he/she approached it just sounds off pudding and would make everyone uncomfortable no matter your race/background. On our campus tour it was addressed but much more professionally.
I know California is less white than, for example, Georgia, but still 53% white is considered predominant? UGA is 68% white in a state that’s about 50% white. Just a little confused.
SLO has a beautiful campus, excellent programs, etc., but it’s a bit concerning when a student is using the term “PWI” to describe a public institution in CA. I live in CA and had never heard this term prior to reading this. Something to think about, but I don’t think it should discourage anyone from applying or attending, I would encourage more students of all backgrounds to apply.
It really is a strange thing for a tour guide to say. I am not in California so looked up current demographics. I was expecting to see the school was going to be 70 or 80 percent white based on these statements. The school is 53% white but California itself is only 34.7 % white. So, whites are overrepresented and that seems to be the main complaint?
Still, sounds like a very strange thing for a tour guide to say or put in the way it was put and it sounds like this tour guide does need some guidance.
I just ran the NYT Build Your Own College Ranking. I dragged High Earnings, Low Sticker Price, and Racially Diverse all the way to the right and left the rest of the sliders untouched. Cal Poly came up #6 in the nation. Berkley is #4 and UCLA is #7. It may have the highest percentage on Caucasian students of all the CA publics. That doesn’t mean there’s no diversity. There are multiple schools in Wisconsin and Michigan that are 90% white.
Not sure why “PWI” or “P[any]I” would have to be mentioned in any college tour, since if students on the tour care about such a characteristic, they can kind of see for themselves on the tour (or they may have looked it up beforehand).
It seems to be more common in areas where there are public HBCUs as a legacy of segregation, and the HWCUs and other non-HBCUs in those areas are commonly called PWIs to distinguish them from HBCUs (although the term PWI is not really an exact opposite of HBCU and is not necessarily an accurate descriptor for all non-HBCUs).