Multicultural center keeps eye on grades
Medill junior Delena Turman went home after her freshman year feeling satisfied with her grades, until she received an e-mail the next fall that made her think otherwise.
The sender of the e-mail expressed concern about her grades and offered academic support, she said.
Turman said she was confused, especially because the e-mail was sent by an adviser at 1914 Sheridan Rd., also known as the Black House. Turman, who is black, had spoken before with the adviser, African American Student Affairs Director Shawna Cooper-Gibson.
But she never realized Cooper-Gibson had access to her grades.
The Office of the Registrar had already fixed a mistake on Turman’s transcript, but because Cooper-Gibson had an outdated copy of her grades, she had contacted Turman.
All NU students who identify themselves as minorities have their grades sent automatically to Multicultural Student Affairs advisers, MSA Executive Director Carretta Cooke said.
“The Registrar’s Office sends us grades of students of color,” she said. “Each director then receives the grade reports of the students on a quarterly basis.”
On its Web site, MSA defines part of its academic responsibility briefly under “Academic Assistance.”
“Through collaborative efforts with academic departments and advising staff, Multicultural Student Affairs assists students with achieving success in the classroom,” the site reads. “Program plans and progress reports assist students in meeting and achieving their academic goals.”
Advisers would not comment on the specifics of their work with students.
Still, most students said they were not aware of MSA’s policy.
“I don’t know how people would feel if they did make more of an effort to advertise it,” said Weinberg senior Nishant Goyal, a former MSA programming assistant. “It might be kind of singling them out in a way they don’t appreciate.”
African American Student Affairs was established in 1968 after black students staged a sit-in at the Bursar’s Office. But whether this policy has been around since then is unclear. Cooke said it existed when she began working at NU in 2000.
After other student demonstrations, Northwestern created Hispanic/Latino Student Affairs in 2000 and Asian/Asian American Student Affairs in 2001. In 2004, the MSA was formed to oversee all three student services.
Recently students formed a petition to improve MSA, calling it “hastily formed … with no central plan, mission, or program goals.”
“If MSA is deemed necessary for the Northwestern multicultural community, the (Multicultural Student Affairs) Task Force must improve MSA transparency, accountability, and student involvement,” the petition says. About 30 students have signed it so far, including current and past leaders of major multicultural student groups, such as FMO, Alianza, South Asian Students Alliance and Asian Pacific American Coalition.
MSA’s advisers differ from academic school advisers, MSA Assistant Director Elaine Joy Basa said.
“I am not an academic adviser,” she said. “I coordinate the resources provided by MSA that are academically related.”
Both Basa and Cooke said MSA focuses on academic success.
“Traditionally, most programs started out heavily on the retention side,” Cooke said. “It became an issue – if schools wanted to keep students, they had to reach out. Northwestern does not have a retention issue now. Admission standards have changed. We are getting students who are the best and brightest.”
Retention is not calculated by ethnicity, the Registrar’s Office said. About 96 percent of students in the class of 2010 returned for their sophomore years, according to the Office of Undergraduate Admission.
Cooke declined to comment on why MSA continues to review grade reports when a retention problem no longer exists.
MSA does not disperse grade reports, Basa said. Goyal confirmed the records are kept private from most MSA employees.
“The only thing I ever had access to was which rooms people were reserving for meetings, studying, whatever it may be,” he said. “I had no access to any student information at all.”
Some peer institutions like Georgetown University, which has a Center for Minority Educational Affairs, review student grade reports to analyze retention rates and study academic disparities among students of color.
“When students apply, they have the option of indicating their race or ethnicity,” Center Director Dennis A. Williams said. “When they do that, it is coded in the registrar’s system. There is no automatic list that comes to our office, but what happens is that we request reports annually.”
Duke University also has a multicultural center but, according to Assistant Director Linda Capers, “we typically don’t request grade reports.”
And Washington University in St. Louis does not have a multicultural center, said Naomi Daradar Sigg, the school’s student involvement and multicultural leadership coordinator.
Instead, the university offers students several departments, staff members and student groups with a multicultural focus, she said, adding that only the offices of undergraduate admissions and student records can access grades.
Weinberg senior Sterling Williams, who is on the men’s basketball team, said he does not think it is invasive that MSA looks at minority students’ grades.
“With basketball, I know there are people who look at my grades who I don’t even know, somewhere in the administration, up in the top of a building somewhere, so I mean it’s not that big of a deal,” Williams said. “I am not that alarmed by it.”
For Members Only Vice Coordinator of Programming Jesse Yang agreed.
“I definitely think it’s a great policy,” the Weinberg junior said. “I don’t find it discriminatory. It’s just helping a group that may have disadvantages.”
But Turman said she thinks the policy assumes “all minority students are going to have some form of academic difficulty and need to be monitored by their respective ethnic representatives. I think that’s discrimination.”
“The saddest thing about it is that there’s a simple, simple solution,” she said. “You tell students when they arrive at Northwestern about this system or you stop doing it.”
