Loyola Students, President Meet Over Bias Protest

In the wake of a student protest against alleged racism at Loyola Marymount University, President James N. Loughran met Thursday with minority students who one week earlier had taken over his office.

Although Loughran declined to comment Friday on his discussions with the students until he had issued a statement to the university community, he said Thursday’s meeting was mostly to confirm agreements made after the student takeover last month.

Loughran characterized both of his meetings with the students as “polite, civil and courteous.”

‘Insensitivities’ on Campus

In a statement issued last week, Loughran acknowledged that insensitivity toward minorities is an issue on the campus.

“There is no doubt in my mind that there exist on our campus misunderstandings and insensitivities that need to be addressed,” Loughran said in the statement. “I want to make recent events the beginning of that process.”

On April 27, five minority students arrived at Loughran’s office in St. Robert’s Hall at the end of the business day, demanding to discuss issues concerning minorities, including allegations of racism among administrators.

The students were members of the Concerned Student Union, a group formed last fall to promote equality for minorities among the university’s 3,773 undergraduates, said President Hugh Lowe.

During the nine-hour takeover, the students presented Loughran with a list of five demands, among them requests for a task force to investigate racism on campus and an increase in funding for minority student services, Lowe said.

The group also requested the resignation of Lane Bove, vice president of student affairs.

The students, who had met with Bove last fall, charged that she is particularly insensitive to minori ties, that minorities are underrepresented among students and faculty, and that a plan rumored to be under consideration by the student affairs office to merge minority student services with other offices would be unfair to minorities.

But Loughran indicated in his statement that Bove would remain at Loyola and would be working with students to ease their concerns.

“At no point in the confrontation/conversation was asking for Lane Bove’s resignation a possibility in my mind,” Loughran’s statement read. “Moreover, Lane Bove will obviously have to be a key player in resolving the issues before us.”

Loyola spokeswoman Rena Bloom said the university is considering a proposal to create the new position of an assistant vice president who would report to Bove and who would oversee the minority student services offices for Asians, blacks and Latinos. The offices of counseling, health and placement would also report to the new assistant vice president.

Some minority students, however, feared that the move would merge all the departments and dilute the importance of minority student services.

But university officials said the students’ concerns were unfounded.

“This is not a plan to have minority support services report to counseling,” Bloom said. “It is not a plan to merge them, and certainly it is not a plan to eliminate them.”

On the same day the group of five students met with Loughran, about 100 students and faculty members attended a Mass and candlelight vigil to protest racism. At the vigil, some students and professors complained that there are not enough minorities on the faculty.

Recruitment Efforts

But Loyola officials said the university has undertaken an increasingly assertive and successful campaign to recruit minority faculty and students.

About 31% of Loyola’s undergraduates are minorities, officials said. Of those, 14.6% or 531 are Latino, 11.5% or 423 are Asian-American, and 4.8% or 174 are black, Bloom said.

By comparison, at USC, 30.5% of the school’s 16,113 undergraduates are minorities, a school spokesman said. About 7.5% or 1,194 are Latino, 17.5% or 2,792 are Asian-American and about 5.5% or 878 are black.

At UCLA, which has an undergraduate population of 23,330, about 46.8% are minorities, according to spokesman Stuart Wolpert. About 15% or 3,500 are Latino, 19.4% or 4,525 are Asian-American, 7.3% or 1,705 are black, 4.2% or 980 are Filipino, and 0.9% or 210 are American Indian students, he said.

At Loyola, academic vice president Albert P. Koppes, who oversees minority recruitment, defended the school’s efforts to recruit and retain minority students.

“We have attempted to identify those students whose SATs are not truly indicative of their capabilities,” Koppes said. “We have a special faculty committee which looks into applicants with good school records but low SATs.”

For the 1989-90 school year, Loyola accepted 25 of the 46 minority candidates in that category “who would otherwise have been rejected,” Koppes said.

On the Loyola faculty, the number of minorities has increased from 7% in 1983 to 12% this year, Koppes said.

Koppes said the school advertises faculty openings in higher education periodicals targeted to minority groups and that preference among comparable candidates for open faculty positions is given to members of minority groups and women.

Minorities in Faculty

On the Loyola faculty, four of 19 tenure-track faculty members hired this year are minorities, which would bring the total number of minorities on the 208-member faculty to 24 next year, or about 12%, Koppes said.

By comparison UCLA has a similar number of minority faculty, about 12.2%, or 225 minorities among its faculty of 1,847, spokesman Wolpert said.

USC has 182 minorities on its 1,385-member faculty, or about 13%, a university spokesman said.

Loughran said Friday that he was optimistic that his discussions with students would lead to improved relations between minority students and the administration.

“We envision that a stronger university family will be the result,” he said.