Minding the Gap

“You know, the taco man. How do you adjust to not having one of those around?” Eliana C. Murillo ’10 asks with a slight accent, discussing the differences between Harvard and home. She sits beneath the austere façade of Winthrop House as students, clad in pastel Bermuda shorts, mingle and sip pink lemonade, enjoying one of the first days of spring.

Hispanics like Murillo now constitute 7.9 percent of the student body at Harvard. Although this statistic has grown in recent years, it still feels nothing like her home in Ventura County, Calif., where two-thirds of the population is of Hispanic descent.

The differences seemed almost too big two years ago, when Murillo was a high school senior deciding which college to attend. Murillo says it was the close bonds she formed with other Latino students at Pre-frosh Weekend that convinced her that coming to the College wouldn’t necessarily mean leaving her culture behind.

But as “Pre-frosh Weekend” approaches once again, many on campus say they fear that the event’s tendency to foster close cultural bonds might actually counteract its positive mission by promoting self-segregation in the face of Harvard’s drive to diversify.

PRE-FROSH WONDERERS

The College has been actively recruiting minority students since the 1970s. At the time, Harvard was well ahead of its peers. Dean of Admissions and Financial Aid William R. Fitzsimmons ’67 characterizes Harvard’s efforts as “pioneering” the focus on diversity in college admissions. He says there has always been a “very high correlation” between Harvard’s level of recruitment and the number of minority students who matriculate.

In order to officially spearhead the outreach to students, the College eventually created The Undergraduate Minority Recruitment Program (UMRP), which coordinates call-a-thons for minority outreach and admitted minority students. UMRP also orchestrates Pre-frosh weekend events that target minorities such as Murillo.

According to Diana C. Robles ’10, one of the UMRP’s 10 student coordinators, the program collects racial information from students’ applications and contacts recently admitted students. The program offers pre-frosh advice on the transition to Harvard and gives them the option of having a host of the same race.

AN “ABSOLUTELY CRITICAL” DIVIDE

Fitzsimmons says that the personal interactions encountered upon visiting are often “absolutely critical” to minority students’ decisions to attend Harvard. For these prospective students, the opportunity to view Harvard through the eyes of someone of their own racial group helps de-mystify the Ivy League experience.

“If they hadn’t introduced me to Harvard, I wouldn’t have come,” Murillo says of the UMRP’s recruiting efforts. She asserts that her Latina host helped her build a web of culturally-based friendships which have endured her two years at Harvard.

“We traveled as a pack,” says Murillo as she remembers Pre-frosh Weekend. Her mostly Latino group traipsed from one cultural event to the next. Murillo says many of her blockmates and linkmates are members of that original group.

Murillo’s story illustrates what some consider the paradox of minority recruiting: while the seemingly innumerable personal phone calls, cultural parties, and introductory meetings might help minority students choose Harvard, many wonder if these efforts unintentionally segregate them from the larger student body.

ALONE, TOGETHER

But not all minority students feel so quickly pulled from the larger Harvard community. A number of them remember their early contact with the College as somewhat amorphous. For their introduction to Harvard, race, age, sex, and socioeconomic status bled together into a nebulous search for friends.

“During Pre-frosh Weekend you go to everything you can,” remembers Nworah B. Ayogu ’10. “You don’t self-segregate. You’re running from one event to the other and you might end up at the [Hong] Kong [restaurant] with a group of people you met 10 minutes ago.”

Like Murillo, Ayogu is an active member of the College’s cultural scene and serves as political chair of the Black Men’s Forum (BMF). He also chairs the Student Advisory Committee of the Harvard Foundation for Intercultural and Race Relations. Similar to Murillo, Ayogu met one of his blockmates at a black student event when he was visiting as a newly admitted student.

But his blockmate is white.

A DIFFERENT KIND OF AMBITION

Ayogu believes the problem of self-segregation affects the entire Harvard population, positing that students driven to lead are bound to immerse themselves in their activities, be they cultural, political, musical, or otherwise. He says that this intense involvement inevitably bleeds over into students’ social lives. Self-segregation occurs, to some extent, within every student group—race based or otherwise.

This seems applicable to Murillo, who is very active in Harvard’s Latino community. Going by Ayogu’s observation, what might be mistaken for segregation in Murillo’s case may actually be a manifestation of the ambition that is characteristic of Harvard students of all ethnicities.

Although ethnicity plays a large role in Murillo’s life at Harvard, she appears at ease in the multicultural environs of the Winthrop courtyard. Finished discussing her background, Murillo says she’d like to join the rest of her Housemates, picks up her pink Blackberry Pearl, bids a professional adieu, and blends into the pastel-colored crowd.