Yes - This is where they put their best foot forward. And they have just about talked your son out of the school. Not the outcome they were going for.
Enjoythejourney, if you have to type the words “what upset us the most” then clearly something needs to be addressed. At best you find out that the guy reallllly had to use the restroom. At worst, your concerns aren’t resolved and you have to make another choice. Sometimes things are just things, but no one has to tell you that sometimes things are racism. In your professional life, if someone respectfully brought such a situation to your attention, wouldn’t you be glad they did and eager to make things right? There have been multiple stories about academics recently who were inappropriate with women, so it stands to reason that there are jerks everywhere. If you do a little sleuthing you might be able to learn if this guy is a problem or is a saint who was probably having a bad day. This is your son, you don’t owe anyone the benefit of the doubt if they upset him.
I wondered if the assistant dean/academic advisor immediately left the room or stayed around and chatted with other students. If he left, then maybe he had a meeting (and very poor people skills). If he stayed and chatted with others, ugh, that’s another data point about the college. That would make me do the research you did and possibly move the college down the list (maybe off the list). It could be a reason why the school has <2% “unhooked” minority.
I know it will be hard for your son to bounce back from this, but I think you owe it to yourselves to try. I teach at a small college, and I can think of many faculty members and administrators who would do a terrible job representing the school. Yet we are highly ranked, and our students really love it here. So I also encourage you to reserve judgment until your son is admitted and has a chance to visit again, under different circumstances.
I have to agree with momofthreeboys. I think it’s likely the person at the session didn’t realize you were out of earshot of the previous discussion. For all you know he was tired after a long day, felt you should have heard the previous discussion, and maybe he was trying to get through quickly because he wanted to use the bathroom or something. He may not have handled the situation well but I wouldn’t dream of letting this little slight get in the way of considerations that are important to your son, such as watching his toddler sister grow up. I mean seriously, imagine this: “Bro, why did you miss all my birthday parties when I was young?” “I really wanted to be there with you, that was really important to me, but there was this man and he was a little abrupt with me one time when I asked a question…”.
Racial tensions on campus are another story, but I surely wouldn’t let this one small interaction deter your son from applying if the school is otherwise good for him.
I think the most important thing is whether your son has the answer to the question by now or not. Also, is the answer to the question is really critical to your son’s decision? Can your son call the admission office to ask that question again next week? Also, it’s possible the question is important to your son but it’s not really important to the admission process.
The issue isn’t whether the man was abrupt. The issue is whether it is indicative of anything else, and I think the OP has a responsibility to conduct her due diligence on that. As I said earlier, some things are just things, but sometimes there are racial issues in schools or departments, and the parents of children for whom that is relevant must know if they are sending their kids into situations with known racial issues. At the very least, I would google and ratemyteacher this guy to see if there have ever been racial issues with him.
@zoosermom LOL! “realllly had to use the bathroom”. I know I needed to!
I think that at this point, I’m advising my son to just leave the flag sticking out. Any thoughts he’d had of applying ED is gone now so non-restrictive EA is what he’s going with. I believe the most prudent thing to do is just to stay the course & apply & wait to get an acceptance letter in hand & see how the scholarships end up. And of course, see if we even want to bother with their offer.
Then, if he’s still interested, he can do an overnight & we can tactfully, respectfully approach the diversity office or even the associate dean himself to get explanations. Basically get invited to the dance before we ask them to dance for us to prove why we should go with them instead of our other suitors <- to put it comically!
Oh, and because of his diversity scholarship involvement, application fees are waived so we wouldn’t be out that $.
If anyone strongly feels it’s better not to wait it out for now, I’d love to hear your thoughts.
Even then, if this one person is a racist, which I highly doubt, then it is worth looking at the entire college or uni to determine if this is something that is more important than all other factors. Being a WASP I certainly can’t stand in someone’s shoes who categorizes themselves as a “minority” although soon it will be a minority according to government statistics…but it also sometimes feels like that could be come a “reason” for things that have nothing to do with the minority status. Obviously the OP will need to parse that situation out.
“an associate dean who was also an academic advisor for the department that’s pertinent to the major being considered.”
“As a representative of the college, at an event intending to get the attendees to apply & theoretically come to the school, it’s their job to answer questions. Even the same one a hundred times. If they aren’t prepared to do what every person involved with admissions takes as part of the job, they shouldn’t be part of the event.”
OP- the person your son wanted to talk to was NOT an admissions officer- he is Senior faculty who was likely trotted out for a limited time as part of the whole admissions event. I have never seen any non admissions officers stay around to answer all questions from any and all HS students. That sort of expectation is just not realistic.
The deans job is not to talk to any and all HS students who have questions. Thats the admissions officers jobs.
So take his disappointing act with a huge grain of salt. He probably was scheduled to be somewhere else on campus in short order.
Let your DS apply- If he is accepted-then THAT is when the most important visit should occur - when the college is actively wooing HIM and he can then spend some time meeting with various faculty.
see above for this comment from Wasatchwriter -
"So I also encourage you to reserve judgment until your son is admitted and has a chance to visit again, under different circumstances. "
Oh! Great idea to check ratemyteacher! Yet another case where I’m too close to see the obvious & why these sort of boards are a good idea. Thank you!
Ratemyprofessor - and maybe students review dot. Just be aware that some kids come on with an axe to grind. You look for general patterns.
I would bet that if you poke around, your concerns would be eased, but just in case they aren’t, I don’t think the mom of a young minority man should ever be told to ignore her intuition in something like this. It’s not like racism is unheard of.
Remember, this college (probably an LAC) has very few Asians, which is why the OP’s son gets a diversity boost there. But that makes it pretty unlikely that any online student survey is going to produce reliable information about a particular teacher’s racism or not towards Asians of whatever variety the OP’s kid is (since we all know “Asian” isn’t a single category to which people respond).
This really points up a constant problem with visiting colleges: You get a limited amount of almost random information through meeting a handful of people, often in an artificial setting, and you tend to generalize that furiously to the entire institution. And it’s true, if the college is putting on a recruitment event, it’s asking to be judged by its representatives there, and you would think it would be taking care to put its best foot forward. But, as @WasatchWriter implies, it’s a bad idea to assume that one brief exchange with a grumpy, maladroit administrator tells you anything meaningful about the college as a whole or the educational experience available there.
It’s even possible that the OP’s son’s question was legitimately an annoying one, one that would probably draw a gruff response from anyone on his way to the bathroom. “How many of your students get accepted to medical school?”
Best to follow up with email with your question. Give him a chance to prove his m.o. toward prospective students.
Is the Associate Dean the person who will be making admissions and scholarship decisions? Because if he isn’t, then applying EA makes sense. This person is one person at the school. He may represent his school, but just isn’t that good at it. As others mentioned, it may be he had some other sort of reason that if you knew what it was you would excuse the behavior (as the aforementioned need to use the facilites).
But if he is just kind of a jerk, there is a whole faculty and staff (and student body) at the university who have their own perspectives. If your S attended this school, would he ever need to see this Dean again? If not, then it really is not a problem.
I think if your S wanted to apply EA, don’t let this incident get in the way. But go for a second visit - and look carefully.
Let’s consider two facts.
- This college has a low share of ORMs at large at about 1/3 of the share in the general population.
- An ORM student gets brushed off by a school representative.
Imagine if an African American student got brushed off at a school with very low African American participation? What would the general reaction be?
Minority parent, with Minority HS senior and a Minority professor with several diversity day visits under our belt. Absolutely, send an email, not the angry one you were going to send, but one that recounts what happened and posing the question again. CC the dean. You can also include in the email a request for information about the climate for unhooked minorities. You may have to go through 2-3 drafts of the email before it is ready to send. Your goal is to find out if this campus, this department is a good fit for your student. Was your experience the norm, or an outlier? You need to know this information so you and your child can make an informed decision, And quite honestly, the university wants to know what they need to do better to attract students like your son.
An administrator who is also a faculty advisor is often the person least likely to know how a particularly major works as they are not in the department on a day to day basis.
We are actually a multi-ethnic family in that we have 3 different races/ethnicities but are almost always lumped into the least favorable group (for us) for admissions. I say we because I faced the same challenges way back when I applied as well. My son is actually a 2nd gen multiracial/multi ethnic applicant. Regardless of what’s put on official paperwork, it’s still apparent every day that we are just naturally lumped into the visual group people associate with our features although people who have been broadly exposed to many cultures & ethnicities clearly identify that we actually DON’T look like any 1 ethnicity when standing in a specific group. Another reason never to assume…
I suppose it was telling when I wrote 10-50+% at most other schools. Yes, we have Asian ancestry. But we also have Native American and Caucasian ancestry as well. Neither my son nor I look Asian, Native American, or Caucasian though. Most definitely a blend of all. However the Native American features melding with the Asian features, we are almost always referred to or assumed to be Asian.
I don’t even want to go into how much of a difference there is growing up as a single unified ethnicity than it is to grow up mixed, let alone mixed 3 ways. Filter that to a 2nd generation of mixing and… Suffice it to say there is much more solidarity felt w anyone of any ethnic mix (mixed race children in general) than that of any one of our individual ethnicities or races.
After reading @JHS 's comment, I realized what it was specifically that threw up my red flag about race on the first place. It’s the fact that, as I mention above, most people ASSUME my son is ‘just’ Asian although he is not.
The associate dean was in fact, standing up in front of the podium, not on his way out the door. He’d spoken with maybe 3-4 other students (or their parents) before my son who had lined up just as the presentation ended. The question my son asked was along the lines of ‘I’m wanting to major in the International Studies program here and would like to know who would be best to speak with about that and about honors/scholars opportunities there. I’m also interested in possibly minoring in a pre-med type situation and see that there’s a co-major for it but not a minor. Where would you point me to for International Studies answers?’
Because my son has consistently been thrown into pre-med things as soon as the words are out of his mouth, he’s made it a point to SPECIFICALLY say that it’s International Studies/Affairs that he’s interested in first & emphatically. Pre-med is just a side thought he doesn’t want to rule out because he’s just NOT committed to it like he is about IA. At the moment, he’s actually thinking of careers with the foreign service more than medicine.
The abrupt & brush off response was to (sigh) speak with the pre-med people. That’s it. My son again asked about IA & was told again to just go to the pre-med people. This didn’t make sense. So this is when I stepped in to clarify that he is wanting to speak with IA people as well & ask if he could point us to the appropriate person to see about getting IA questions answered. We were told there was no one set up for that. And that was all as he turned to go back to the podium. This struck me VERY ODD. Although people were in the schedule for questions on Study Abroad programs, that wasn’t even suggested as an alternative or possibility to get at least some answers on International Studies. All we took away from him was to go speak with the pre-med department.
Perhaps I’m being overly sensitive. After all, we all have a mama bear in us & the oddest thing can set her off! But in a nut shell, I’m feeling that because my son LOOKS Asian & the words pre-med came out of his mouth, he fell victim to racial stereotyping. Thus perhaps it was a mistaken eye roll type answer to an assumed question based off of appearances. Perhaps it wasn’t and he just didn’t realize how he was coming across unintentionally.
Regardless, my son didn’t get the answer to his question yesterday. We were worn out & tired too and after a quick visit to the pre-med & honors people, we decided to skip the study abroad people because we weren’t likely to get the questions about the academic curriculum for IA there anyways.
My son is in the process today of putting an email together to the IA advisors with all his questions & we’ll hopefully finally get them answered.
My original post wasn’t meant to spark racial issues in & of itself so I apologize if it came across that way. It was the only reason I could come up with that could possibly explain the response we got that concerned seriously concerned me. Socially inept faculty & professors don’t phase me & don’t cause me concern. They’re not there to befriend, but to pass on knowledge after all.
So I was just trying to get a feel for whether or not I should be concerned or even maybe do something about feeling snubbed in general, REGARDLESS OF THE REASON. After reading everyone’s appreciated responses, we’ve decided to let it ride until it needs to be addressed. And for now, it doesn’t need to be addressed, IMO. If, after acceptances are sent out, they are still a contender for my child, we will be addressing this. If they are not a contender, it’s not an issue & thus won’t need to even be addressed. Although I am likely to bring it to the attention of admissions for the benefit of future applicants.
I would have your son send the guy an email saying that he enjoyed the presentation and has a couple of follow up questions that he didn’t have the opportunity to ask at the time. Ask away and see what you get back. Don’t mention the “incident” or any disappointment just ask again and see what happens. Close with “Thank you so much for your time”.