Do NOT send your kids to Elon

I understand completely what you are saying. My point is that its difficult to determine who needs the help and who doesn’t. Should they have forewarned you of this program? Yes, but to say that its racist seems unfair. As I mentioned before I know of kids who would give their left arm to have these programs available to them. I also know kids who have welcomed programs like this one with open arms. Evidently you didn’t need it. But others do. For URM who are first generation college students, whose parents barely speak english and/or have no idea how to navigate the college system, this is a fantastic program. Programs, such is this one, are automatically implemented, not to demean the student but to facilitate them through the process. You would be very surprised how many URM students would turn down the program if it was simply offered. They would be very skeptical and intimidated. They would question if it was ‘truly’ free. I have spent hours upon hours trying to making students and their families understand the gift that their kid is getting by being an active participant in these kinds of programs. And, fortunately I can attest to their overall success. When the right student uses the program, in the right way, that students is almost guaranteed success. Your D is not truly a URM, as you mentioned, but you filed her as such, so the school has to go according to that.

As for the whole athlete comparison, its just to state that they are a group of kids who are mandated to do things theat they may not have signed up for either, but when they signed on as athletes then it came with the program. Your D signed on as a URM, consequently it came with the program too.

What do you mean, my daughter “signed on” as an underrepresented minority? All she did was check “ASIAN” when the forms asked her race. I am guessing you are meaning to say that she knew Elon was mostly very white, middle class kids of privilege, and she matriculated there anyway. That is true. She just didn’t expect to be the first non-white person that some of these kids (apparently) had been exposed to. She grew up in a white family in a very diverse East Coast city where she went to school with kids of many different hues and socioeconomic groups (she attended a public arts high school that is about 50% white and 50% kids of color, and has kids who are from mansions and great wealth and kids from public housing projects and everything in between, like us!) My friends who have kids who are college athletes KNOW going in that they will have certain obligations as far as where they live, with whom they live, practices, a certain GPA they must meet, etc. My daughter just signed on as a regular college student. There is NO comparison between non-white students coming into a college and athletes coming in. Period. Except maybe the minority kids get as worn out emotionally from the BS they have to put up with from the majority as the athletes get worn out physically

At the end of the day the Ethnicity questions, I believe, are still optional. So when one completes them they should assume that schools will use that information. That’s apparently what happened in the case of your D. One other question, did your D receive any diversity mail prior to attending that informed you of the fact that they viewed her as such? (I’m not trying to be rude. I know that most schools do. If Elon didn’t then that is a big mistake and again they have a transparency issue. That way you could have explained that you didn’t want any special treatment for your D or that you didn’t want her viewed as a URM.)

But at the end of the day, I really can’t agree that this program is racist. Can they do things better? Yes! Nothing is perfect. But to call it racist, seems extreme. I am sorry that your D encountered such ignorance from her peers. The racial slurs are disgusting and those students should be punished. But these programs are very important and do work well for many students.

As for the comparison to the Athletes, we can agree to disagree. I view this situation very similarly. When you answer an optional question on ethnicity you choose to label yourself, just as a student who comes in as an athlete, now is labelled. Unfortunately, for both groups with those labels there are pros and cons. Of course in your case there were no pros and that’s why there should have been more transparency.

My son experienced some of the same annoying labeling and assumption-making at his college. However, Dungareedoll is absolutely correct. If you check the optional box, which many parents in situations like yours and mine do in the hopes of a possible admission advantage, then you get what you get and can’t get upset. Like your D, my son did not share any of the typical disadvantages associated with being a URM other than possible prejudice due to his appearance. He had a middle class upbringing, a two-parent household, English was spoken at home, and he attended a good suburban school. Thus he needed no special social or academic accommodations, but the college tried to force them down his throat all the same. He just kept politely declining, and that was that. It doesn’t change the fact that he received an excellent education from an excellent school. And it seems to me Elon is a very good school too. Furthermore, dungareedoll is also spot on to say that there would be an outcry and accusation of elitism, inaccessibility or even racism if Elon didn’t offer these sorts of programs to under-represented minorities.

PS. My D was a Div. 1 athlete at Stanford. She clearly was a highly motivated person with top notch academics or she wouldn’t have been admitted (no need to boost kids for non-revenue sports and less need if they’re female). But she was still required to participate in this special academic counseling for athletes to make sure she was making progress toward her degree etc. etc. Totally unnecessary for someone like her, but she had to do it anyway.

LOL! I am not sure how our conversation ended up focused on the SMART Mentoring program exclusively, but you make fair points, even though I don’t agree with them. My take is that Elon surely should OFFER the academic support program to all minority students, and perhaps automatically enroll only those who they know (by their test scores, transcripts and application materials) may have had a weaker academic record coming in. The practice of slapping a brightly colored sign that says “SMART MENTORING PROGRAM WELCOMES XXXX” on dorm doors should probably be done away with. Before this conversation, I never truly gave any thought to the option of students not checking any box when a form asks their race, but sure, my daughter could have done that. I haven’t asked her, but I don’t think she thought that being Asian would help her get in anywhere; like me, she has read news articles about how some schools expect Asians to have extremely high SAT scores and grades – higher than high achieving white students. Of course, that wasn’t the situation at Elon, which is not a high enough level school academically to attract a critical mass of Asian students (not like Berkeley, or Stanford, or Hopkins, MIT etc.) As to whether Elon is a “very good” school academically, well, my kid experienced a very mixed bag there academically. Her statistics teacher was very weak – spent a lot of time taking cellphone calls from her children during class, and was seldom well prepared. Her foreign language teacher quit the third week and they got a new teacher, who hardly spoke any English. That teacher was well intentioned and focused, but had difficulty controlling the class as well as difficulty explaining concepts in English. (My kid took a language class in the same language at our local state U this fall, and was the worst prepared student in the Intermediate I class. She had earned an A in that language at Elon and hardly learned anything. Fortunately, at our local university, she worked her butt off and caught up, with a lot of help from the teacher and extra tutoring.) Nevertheless, we know that many students have a terrific experience there and love the school, and I am not discounting their experiences. We have many friends who went there and loved it, and remain loyal to the school to this day. (Again, those kids are mostly actors and dancers, and the vibe in those departments is very, very different.) Elon was not a fit for my daughter, and she is in the process of choosing where to go next fall. We will be visiting other programs (mostly on either coast, and mostly larger institutions) and then she will make her decision. I truly hope that every student is happy at his or her school and makes the most of it and I do appreciate the individuals at Elon (especially my daughter’s freshman advisor, and the folks at the multicultural and diversity office) who were extremely supportive.

If a college is seen as having a huge (greater than average) discrepancy in graduation rates when students are sorted by racial/ethnic background, why would it be an issue to try to solve the problem by offering extra tutoring and a support program.

However, putting signs on someone’s door essentially identifying them by race/ethnicity is REALLY stupid. Yet I bet it was well-intentioned (like the road to heck is paved with kind).

Elon was added to my list and left my list based on heavy marketing way back in the 80s.

Some comments:

  1. Oh my goodness, a professor who didn’t speak English! At a university! This goes along with “oh my goodness, college students drinking!”. The situation is not uncommon, and the incident noted about a professor using a cell phone is not uncommon either: HOWEVER: students have the RIGHT and some would even say, if their parents pay and they do not, the RESPONSIBILITY to contact the administration, perhaps first the department and then the dean, about professors not doing their jobs. If however, Elon was told about the professors providing subpar experiences, and they did nothing, that is different. Unfortunately, on occasion professors do quit and on occasion professors have family issues. We do our best to cover for professors who quit, and we do our best to handle our family issues outside of class time (sometimes it is hard - probably once or twice per semester I get a phone call from my children’s school, and I need to take it so I excuse myself and walk outside for a minute or two). It is almost impossible, by the way, for colleges to know what is going on in every classroom every day. The dean doesn’t sit in on every class. The administration depends on students or other professors to let them know if someone is not doing their job.

  2. Elon isn’t the right fit, and your son has figured this out quickly. Good for him. He should already have transfer applications in the works. Some advice - look for a college with 10% or less in the Greek system, that decreases drinking and drugs (sadly, because the Greek system is a good thing otherwise), or maybe even one that bans the Greek system and social clubs. Look for a college that has a strict substance abuse policy, partiers will avoid that kind of college. Smaller colleges also tend to have less of a party lifestyle, it’s harder to hide things from the administration. Perhaps a college that has a strong service (as in volunteerism and community work) focus would be good.

Good luck on him finding a new school. But I don’t think your experience is the rule based on what others have said and what I know of Elon.

(many campuses have a weeklong spring celebration - be on the look out for other colleges having annual “fun events” that can devolve into drinking parties.)

Well said rhandco. MY S goes to Stanford. As parents we love the school. It was the perfect fit for him. He never second guessed his decision to attend. He will undoubtedly tell you it was the perfect fit for him. But I have raised my kids to understand that the sun doesn’t rise and set on them. When the going get rough they just need to buckle down. With that said he has had his fair share of bad teachers. As a matter of fact, I think my S would laugh if all he had to deal with was a teacher whose English was poor, or one who was on her cell phone. Those wouldn’t even register on his list of bad teachers. (Very sad. Nonetheless that’s life and nothing is perfect.)

Blueroses I got stuck on the whole SMART program idea because you called it racist. I feel like schools are damned if they do and damned if they don’t. If a school that is 82% Caucasian, like Elon, didn’t have a diversity program then sadly people would be complaining that that was racist too.

The whole race card only works when kids are going to a school where they ethnicity is underrepresented. So a Caucasian student wanting to go to Howard University would have an edge, just like the Latino, African American and the Asian would have if they chose to apply to schools like Elon, or even Notre Dame ( a big name school that is extremely non-diverse) . The stereotype about Asians being expected to have higher scores etc. only works against them in the top top tier schools, like Stanford, Harvard, Columbia, Princeton etc. Why? Because those schools are extremely diverse and all ethnic backgrounds are well represented. So no one really gets an edge or bump. In actuality it works against them, because in those diverse settings, they have more competition. The schools have to be fair and represent all groups equally, so in effect certain populations of students begin to kill each other, for a lack of a better term. These schools can afford to be picky and chose the cream of the crop for their student pool. So its not really unfair, its just more competitive.

rhandco, perhaps one reason for the discrepancy between the graduation rates of white kids and those of color is not just lack of academic support: maybe it is the environment there, which does not feel super welcoming to some kids who are not white. As I said in an earlier post (I am not the OP, by the way: it seems your post was responding to the OP and to me, who posted most recently), it is not a great sign when, during the first month, a Black girl and her Jewish roommate wake to find a swastika and “KKK” scrawled on their dorm room door whiteboard. Or when your boyfriend is called the “N” word in the dorm hallway by an inebriated white frat boy. Or when your daughter, who is not white, is warned by some girls that she might not be welcome at some parties, due to her skin color. Or when my daughter overhears some white girls talking about how relieved they are not to have gotten Black girls as roommates, as they wouldn’t have (they said) known how to talk to them.

The “race card”? REALLY? What “edge” are you talking about? My daughter did not apply to Elon because she thought her race (Asian) would give her a bump in admissions. She applied to Elon and decided to go there because she is the kind of kid who goes there (usually): smart and a good student, but a person who likes experiences outside the classroom as much as she likes studying/inside classroom experiences. Elon’s whole thing is “engaged learning,” which appealed to her. It also was billed, frankly (by people she knows that went there) as a place where you can get solid academics without devoting your whole life to studying and academics. In other words, you can go there and get a decent education and still have a life in which you go out socially, are involved in clubs and volunteer work, etc.

By the way, I didn’t mean to imply that the SMART program is racist because it is geared to supporting racial minorities. I get that it is important for schools with very few minority students to provide emotional and social and cultural support to those students. What I found racist, though, was that they automatically assume that you need an academic mentor/guardian figure to help you deal with your academics. Why not just look at the transcripts of the minority students coming in and offer those who have weaker backgrounds and a lack of experiences the academic mentoring? The part I found offensive was the automatic assumption that if your skin has more melanin, you must have lower academic scores and less preparation. I also think putting the signs on the minority kids’ dorm doors is stupid, but not worth complaining to the school about.

But the RACE CARD? Wow … just can’t believe you said that. So insensitive.

This discussion is further evidence that our country needs to just stop putting people into race categories for admissions purposes. People are individuals and it’s impossible to extrapolate any characteristics about a person from outward appearance. Is a child of Asian birth who is adopted by Caucasian American parents and raised in Oklahoma culturally Asian such that it “counts” for diversity? What race is the child with a Hispanic mom and white dad? Not all minorities are disadvantaged. In fact, where I live the exact opposite is true. We Americans are a melting pot, or should be. All the race stuff is crazy!

Elon is a great school! I would not discount a school on 1 persons experience. My son is a senior at Elon. He does not drink. And most of his friends do not drink. He will graduate magna cum laude and already has a great job making over $60k. Students need to take responsibility for their education. And if they are going to party, there will plenty of opportunities at ANY school.

@blueroses123 - I applied and was accepted (with Presidential Scholarship) to Elon, but have elected to go elsewhere. I have continued to follow the Elon CC threads, mostly for curiousity as I awaited my other acceptances. For what it is worth from a Caucasion , upper middle class prospective student perspective, I agree 10000000% with BlueRoses123 reaction to the automatic enrollment in the mentoring program and “welcome” sign on the doors of minority students. I think that is absolutely horrible, racist and insulting to “assume” that every minority student “needs” the extra tutoring/mentoring. Yes, make it available, but to single out such students with a note on their door makes them appear “less” to the majority of the students - like a sign that "yes you got into Elon, but we know you are going to need “extra” help, oh, and by the way, we are going to let everyone else know ". I already made my decision to matriculate elsewhere, despite the scholarship offers, but had I not , the knowledge of this racist “profiling” would have most certainly changed my mind about attending Elon were I still considering it. So, just wanted to give you a prospective student perspective. As I said, I am a Caucasion , but have many friends who are of various ethnicities, and on their behalf I find Elon’s presumption that they need 'special ’ help to be successful at Elon incredibly insulting and racist.

For the record Elon no longer places the SMART sign on the door. In addition to that students are not automatically enrolled into the SMART program, they must choose it.

Also I just want to state that I agree 100% with THEGFG. People should just be people. No one should be looked at as a particular race, just a human being.

http://www.elon.edu/e-web/students/multicultural_resources/smartprog.xhtml

From the Elon web site:

There are complexities associated with being a diverse student in a new environment. According to research conducted at Elon and college campuses nationwide, students of diverse populations experience different challenges that may affect their sense of connectedness and belonging. These challenges may also negatively affect their academic and social experiences. The SMART program is designed to help first-year students of diverse communities address these challenges during this transformative time in their lives. For many students in these communities, intentional support through peer, faculty and staff mentoring is critical to their matriculation to graduation and success in their undergraduate career.

Students must submit a form to request to join the SMART program. SMART is not about tutoring, it is about mentoring. Two different aims. SMART does not say minority students are less capable - just that, in general, minority students may face different challenges and may benefit from peer and faculty mentors. I happen to see mentoring relationships as a positive, and really part of why you choose a school like Elon. Maybe there were issues with how it was initially implemented, but the program as it exists today seems to be to be a positive reason to attend.

InigoMontoya- Thank you very much. That was exactly the point I was trying to make all along.

Wilshire - why would you even bother coming on here to voice your opinion? - you have no real knowledge of the school or its on goings other than a possible tour and maybe one overnight. You honestly sound like a spoiled child that has had many opportunities handed too them. Making judgements on issues that do not pertain or effect you.

And a school like Emory has no issues at all - other than the school president having a rally against him for a racial article that he wrote…

It is good to hear that Elon no longer posts the SMART signs on the door - exactly my point, so apparently I was correct in my thinking since the school determined it was not appropriate. @mortgagebkr - not sure why the hostility. I stated exactly why I was posting my opinion - I believe that having a student perspective as to how other students would interpret those signs would be helpful for other parents and students. After all the students are the ones that are attending. You have absolutely no basis to say I sound like a “spoiled child”. or have no real knowledge about the school There is that unfortunate “profiling again”? Other than I stated I was a Caucasion upper middle class student, you know absolutely nothing about me, my family situation or background. I apparently hit a nerve with you or otherwise piqued your interest ,as you apparently went to view my profile (kind of creepy?) to know that I will be attending Emory Perhaps, then you also saw that I am from NC - so I actually DO have a lot of knowledge of the school and its goings on. I live fairly close, know many people who have attended there, (and a few who work there) and two of my friends will be attending in the fall. My “opinions” (which despite your reply I do have a right to voice ) are shared by my friends that will attending in the fall, as we discussed this and a lot of what we read on college confidential. I’m sorry if I hit a nerve or offended you; the reason I “bothered” as you put it to voice my opinion was to give a student perspective.
Oh - and making the statement about the Emory school President’s article, which has nothing at all do with the posts about Elon, strkes me as the “spoiled child” you labled me. I thought the posts about the SMART program were interesting and helpful, and it is certainly nice that Elon has made the change.