<p>Or is it symptomatic of a more deep rooted insensitivity towards minorities? I am concerned about this issue because I am a minority myself and may apply to the UofC.</p>
<p>U</a>. of C. frat controversy leads to apology, dean?s rebuke - Chicago Sun-Times</p>
<p>My understanding of this campus community, having lived there for 6 weeks during assorted summers and talking a lot about the school to my mother, who attended (a while ago, however), is that it isn’t quite as progressive as it seems in a number of ways, including cultural sensitivity. Administration has a pretty terrible relationship with the adjoining Woodlawn neighborhood as well (the poorer one; not Hyde Park/where Obama lives), because they’ve consistently bought up and encroached upon their land, leading to displacement and the more unfortunate type of gentrification. The rhetoric surrounding locals is often objectionable to the sensitive ear: safety talks led by campus police suggest the poorer minority groups are more dangerous, and there’s a pretty well-recognized us-them dichotomy with the non-intellectual elite in the area. If a crime occurs at night in the dark, someone from outside is ALWAYS suspected first, even if it turns out to be another college student (this isn’t to say that when it’s found not to be a neighborhood person students of color on the inside are suspected next at all – I don’t even know what happens then, suspicion about outsiders is just what students notice and talk about a lot)</p>
<p>That said, it’s hard to find a city university which doesn’t get into property squabbles with those around them (I can think of Harvard, which recently invaded college student Allston, and Columbia - in Morningside Heights there’s a huge black sign telling the college to stop disenfranchising them). The type of racism that happens at U of C is masked in practicality and often deontological in nature; hearing students in the “Overheard at UChicago group” talk about how when a public area high school brought kids to tour one day, a black undergrad was told to get back in formation and accused of lying when he said he went to school at Chicago makes you feel icky inside and you wouldn’t want it to happen to you, but it’s not some kind of physical hate crime, or a comment likely to lead to one, you know? Another word about that – “students of color” statistics at every place you apply are going to be hugely inflated by the counting of asian students, who are minorities, but don’t face nearly the same kind of discrimination that people of color who are the minority in society and also in power positions (including academia, where Asians/Indians are very respected). The amount of black and hispanic students at UChicago is low percentage wise, and the discrepancy between their total number which counts wealthy international students and students for whom the “of color” designation means more and has more ramifications is high.</p>
<p>That being said, in terms of admissions Chicago really does care about recruiting minority and low-income students. They have a strong partnership with Questbridge and the first piece of literature they send to prospies, that huge poster with the four panels on student life, also has opening flips which feature ~20 minority students and only one white kid. They’re clearly trying to increase minority representation on campus, which speaks to the university philosophy and priorities, which should reassure you. The fact that this was a frat thing divorces it from student life as a whole, since the Greek system is so small at the school that it’s basically negligible and you can just ignore it. I’d also say that, regardless of the number of black/Latino students, the ones they do have are integrated fairly well socially – all the black kids don’t sit together at a table alone, if you know what I mean, which can be the case even when there are tons numbers-wise. I’d say this is a more important indicator in considering what things are like day-to-day for students of color, and that what was written about in that article shouldn’t deter you from applying.</p>
<p>I’d also suggest that, if you’re accepted, you speak to some students of your race at a revisit day and ask them for the honest truth – they have no investment in the yield and will be happy to tell you. You could also seek the advice of someone on these forums who’s been at UChicago for longer and/or more recently than the 1980s.</p>
<p>dynamic, I think your assessment is a little unfair to the school. The truth is that the South Side is an unsafe area of Chicago, and that it is predominately black. The university’s actions don’t necessarily have to do with racism.</p>
<p>Also, Chicago’s student demographics aren’t significantly different than many other top schools’. And even if there are fewer black/Hispanic students (again, not by that much), remember that the midwest is probably the most homogeneously white part of the US, and that region is the most-represented in Chicago’s applicant pool.</p>
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<p>dynamicsemantics, this is a terrible misrepresentation of what actually occurred on the Overheard FB discussion. The original post was by an African American first year student who was confronted by a high school teacher leading a group of visiting area high school students. The high school teacher, for whatever reason, assumed the UChicago student was a part of the high school tour group. Again, the teacher had absolutely no connection to the university and the FB group was overwhelmingly supportive of the UChicago student, although it did veer off into a weird exchange over the need to dress “better”.</p>
<p>Please parse your comments more carefully in the future and use better judgement before posting on such a sensitive topic.</p>
<p>I don’t really think racism is a widespread problem at UChicago. In fact, it’s the first time I heard about some serious controversy and even then I thought it was blown up a bit. It was probably just frat boys trying to mess with the pledges in any way they can think of.</p>
<p>“a black undergrad was told to get back in formation and accused of lying when he said he went to school at Chicago”</p>
<p>Ahahaha I know who that is, he’s in my fraternity. 
And ILoveUofC, if we’re talking about the same thing, he was a third year at the time, not a first year.</p>
<p>Hey HonorsCentaur,</p>
<p>Yah, my bad. </p>
<p>Btw, which fraternity are you in? Mine is (was) the one between Fiji and alpha del.</p>
<p>With regards to the frat incident, that seemed pretty isolated, as that was the first time I’d ever heard about that kind of behavior by a campus group, or even by individuals on campus. </p>
<p>This is somewhat of a tangent, but the university does have a pretty tenuous relationship with the surrounding community, although for the most part it’s the administration making all of these decisions regarding development (case in point, the millions of dollars from TIF going to Harper Court… Really?). And while there are plenty of students who don’t really care too much about the South Side and never go past 60th street, there are quite a few who are actively engaged with the community as well.</p>
<p>My dd14 is considering application to this school next fall. I am glad that this thread was started by OP. As a mother from CT, I feel it important to get the views of students who are currently enrolled. I have heard wonderful things about the school but also want to know about the down/dirty side as well. I am a bit older than you guys (just a bit :)) and I have come to realize that racism/stereotypes/prejudice exists everywhere and it can’t be escaped. </p>
<p>I am a nurse and when working on a unit, its always assumed that I am either a nurses aid or the housekeeper. LOL Even while standing at the medication cart dispensing meds! LOL It used to hurt alot when I was younger, but now I just laugh it off.</p>
<p>Good luck to you all. We will be visiting UofChicago next spring(when the weather breaks) and hope to have a great tour/visit.</p>
<p>@Fickle: Fair point in the second paragraph (I still agree with that pragmatism-focus address in the first one, and regardless of the reasons, I think bad relationships with your home neighborhood AND with minorities is bad).</p>
<p>@ILoveUofC: I never implied that the tour person was from the university, nor that, even if he or she had been, that it wasn’t someone else who made the comments. If it had been, that would have been much worse – my framing of the incident as something fairly ramificationless indicates, in fact, that it was someone outside. The point relevant to race relations, one which you haven’t actually disagreed with, is that Chicago is perceived as a place so lacking in black students that a random person of color walking on campus would more likely be thought not to attend (this is the real “whatever reason”). The comments on that Overheard thread don’t indicate that much surprise at these goings-on, which I also think is noteworthy in terms of the prevalence of similar events.</p>
<p>Also, however, I said that the numbers don’t matter when it comes to actual student life and participation, which seems fine/even better than several of the Ivies I can think of offhand. I wrote four paragraphs which employed cultural, statistical, anecdotal, and policy analysis perspectives because I do realize this is a sensitive question. If it’s one you care about, you should probably contribute something better than inflammatory rhetoric and a minor clarification that didn’t necessarily need clarifying.</p>
<p>ILoveUofC,
No big deal. I’m in one of the newer fraternities. So you were in Phi Delt? Or Psi U? </p>
<p>Also, dynamicsemantics, it’s not necessarily the skin color that leads people to believe they don’t attend, but (not to overgeneralize or stereotype, blah blah blah) usually their demeanor. I think that most students at University of Chicago are decorous in action and speech, and when you see a person walking around campus in raggedy clothing, behaving extremely obnoxiously, swearing profusely, etc. it’s usually a good sign that person does not attend UChicago, regardless of whether he or she is black, white, green, blue, or orange.</p>
<p>HonorsCentaur,</p>
<p>I’m a Psi U. How many “new” fraternities are there at UChicago now? Do you guys have a permanent home yet? That’s got to be insanely expensive in this day and age…</p>
<p>In terms of U of C attitudes, the frat incident was definitely isolated. I don’t think it’s any secret that frats at every school tend to foster environments in which even well-meaning people come together as a group to do some pretty heinous things–racial or otherwise (see recent incidents at Yale; <a href=“http://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/18/education/18yale.html[/url]”>http://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/18/education/18yale.html</a>, and this account of practices at Dartmouth and other elite schools: [Confessions</a> of an Ivy League Frat Boy: Inside Dartmouth’s Hazing Abuses | Culture News | Rolling Stone](<a href=“http://www.rollingstone.com/culture/news/confessions-of-an-ivy-league-frat-boy-inside-dartmouths-hazing-abuses-20120328]Confessions”>Dartmouth’s Hazing Abuses: Confessions of an Ivy League Frat Boy – Rolling Stone)). I don’t mean to dismiss the Alpha Delt incident–it was obviously disgusting–but I don’t think it indicates any degree of difference between U of C students and students elsewhere. I agree with NewHavenCTmom that “racism/stereotypes/prejudice exists everywhere and it can’t be escaped,” at least not fully.</p>
<p>I think a similar conclusion can be drawn from the other racially questionable aspects you might hear about Chicago. It’s true that the university has a tenuous relationship with the surrounding community. It’s no secret that there have been a history of problems with Woodlawn, and even most of (non-university affiliated) Hyde Park opposes the ongoing development at Harper Court (though this is more of an economic thing). U of C racism is probably at its worst in the implicit attitudes many members of the university take towards the overwhelmingly black surrounding South Side, often stoking fear, segregation, and sensationalism beyond what is practically called for by safety concerns. But I don’t think any of these factors are limited to Chicago alone; as with the fraternity incident, they’re characteristic of all urban universities that bring in kids from outside the neighborhood. Harvard, Yale, Penn, etc. are no different, nor are the student bodies of their more isolated rural or suburban peers–places like Williams, Amherst, and Duke. </p>
<p>The bottom line is that racism, discrimination, and harassment can and do take place at the U of C. When you notice such incidents, you’ll be ashamed. But these incidents don’t say anything about the U of C in particular, and they’re no reason to differentiate between any of your prospective schools.</p>