Ithaca College Quarterly, 2002/No. 1

Adding Color

Past Imperfect

The Climate Today

CRE and Curricular Initiatives

Student Recruitment

Affirmative Action

Office of Multicultural Affairs

What's Next

Past Imperfect

Right around the same time that Alex Haley’s mother was taking piano lessons at the Ithaca Conservatory of Music, the neophyte Ithaca School of Physical Education, one of the eight schools affiliated with the conservatory, included an interesting addendum in its catalog. The 1922 catalog’s "Standard of the School" section listed the following school policy: Registration is open to both sexes, but no colored pupils are admitted. While this restriction did not appear for any of the other catalogs of schools associated with the conservatory, the ISPE maintained this ruling in its catalog until 1931, the year the institution was chartered as a college.

Yet, though all schools of the College were now open to all students regardless of race, enrollment of students of color remained low. Nearly four decades later, in the late 1960s, students of color still represented less than 3 percent of the entire student body. While students at several of the country’s universities were being met with billy clubs and tear gas at campus race riots, Ithaca College remained relatively quiet, the highly charged issues of civil rights and racial equality only just beginning to become part of the campus psyche. In the Ithacan there was an occasional article on campus race relations, sometimes flanked by photos of the "campus king" and "campus queen" nominees or game scores of the varsity athletic teams.

"I think this is a good college for minorities who are strong willed and politically aware --- noisemakers. If we have a lot of quiet, go-with-the-flow minorities, I don't think the College will change."

--- LaToia Hosey '04

In January 1969 a sociology major, Ronnie White ’72, conducted a survey of 12 Ithaca College African American students, publishing his results in the Ithacan. He concluded that they saw the College as "the classic Ivory Tower, built with the suburban middle class in mind. . . . The College lacks the element of conflict and controversy, the essence of which would generate and mobilize serious . . . actions."

That element of conflict finally erupted three months later when the recently formed Afro-American Society and the Students for a Democratic Society burned an effigy of an unnamed College administrator in a rally to protest the College’s small number of African American students and faculty and the alleged mishandling of the College’s Educational Opportunity Program finances, as well to advocate for the establishment of a black studies program. The rally seemed to galvanize the campus, and hard on its heels 900 members of the IC community attended an all-day teach-in with race relations as part of its agenda.

The following semester, fall 1969, a white freshman attacked an African American member of the football team, who was in a leg cast at the time. The beating, accompanied by racial epithets, was widely decried by both students and administrators, and in response the Campus Life Committee set up a new Board on Racism in November 1969. The committee, composed of students, faculty, and staff, adjudicated all cases of racism and made recommendations to campus organizations on ways to alleviate racial tension.

By the mid-1970s and into the ’80s the Ithaca College administration was making nascent attempts to promote diversity on campus. Black history and minority relations courses were offered, numerous African American speakers and artists, such as poet Nikki Giovanni, were brought to campus, and the foundations of an affirmative action program were laid. Nevertheless, diversity in terms of the population of faculty and students of color was barely budging. In 1974 there were 200 students of color enrolled in the College out of a total enrollment of 4,235 (4.7 percent) and one African American out of 275 full-time faculty members (.36 percent). In 1986 there were 206 students of color out of a total of 5,768 (3.6 percent), and in 1987 there were 17 faculty of color, 5 of whom were African American (4.4 percent and 1.3 percent, respectively, of a total 384 full-time faculty members). Today, more than 30 years after the Afro-American Society rallied to bring more students and faculty of color to the Ithaca College campus, ALANA students still represent only 7.8 percent of the entire student body and there are 7 African American full-time faculty members. Left hovering between resolution and actualization, Ithaca College is now taking aggressive measures to prove that its dedication to diversity is more than just rhetoric.

A. Ozolins, Ithaca College Office of Publications, 5 August, 2002