On Race Relations, Colleges Are Learning Hard Lessons : Education: Schools try to meet needs of minorities, but some fear multiculturalism is going too far.

Multiculturalism. Political correctness. Affirmative action. Ethnic studies. Diversity. Separatism. Harassment. The Western tradition.

Just the mention of those buzzwords is likely to provoke emotional and divisive debates at most colleges. But behind the arguments is a deeper dilemma--how to ensure minorities access to higher education while promoting ethnic harmony on campuses--and a deepening reality--that universities have become a focal point for the nation’s racial tensions.

With the strength of numbers behind them at many schools, minority students are demanding--and getting--reforms in admissions policies, financial aid, student services, faculty hiring and the handling of complaints about racism. In addition, the multicultural movement, which is aimed at incorporating more non-Western, non-traditional texts and courses into studies, is gaining ground.

But a backlash of sorts has been spawned among some white students, who resent special admissions policies for minorities, and some faculty members, who charge that the ethnic-oriented curricula undermine the foundations of a common, Western culture.

The experience has been unsettling for campuses that like to portray themselves as immune to many ills plaguing the society outside their walls.

In a survey last year by the Carnegie Foundation, about one-fourth of all university and college presidents said racial tensions were a moderate to major problem on their campuses. Some experts insist that actual harassment of minority students has increased in recent years. The National Institute Against Prejudice and Violence, a Baltimore-based think tank, estimates that about 20% to 25% of students at U.S. colleges experience some form of ethnic or religious prejudice.

Glenn Ricketts, research director of the National Assn. of Scholars, a conservative organization based in Princeton, N.J., blames the multicultural movement. “It’s just made people more race-conscious and sets up group differences that might not be there otherwise,” he said.

Ricketts and others said those differences are accentuated by the proliferation of ethnic clubs on many campuses, amounting to self-segregation.

However, Troy Duster, a sociology professor and director of UC Berkeley’s Institute for the Study of Social Change, contended that minority students have always grouped together for self-affirmation and discovery of their heritages--as well as in reaction to exclusion from Establishment clubs.

“What ultimately bothers today’s critics most is not the racial or ethnic segregation of students’ social lives, but the challenges that the growing numbers of Asian, Latino and African-American students pose to the faculty once they find their ancestors’ histories and contributions largely ignored in the classroom,” he said.

“In the past, what we had were campuses that were basically white, essentially monocultural,” said Jeffrey A. Ross, national campus affairs director for the Anti-Defamation League of B’nai B’rith. “They have become diverse, but the arrival of diversity provides opportunities and challenges. It provides for a social richness, an enriched cultural mix. It also presents dangers of a withdrawal into group enclaves. Rather than a cosmopolitan atmosphere, we could create a series of ghettos.”

To provide a closer look at how the issues of diversity and multiculturalism are being played out on college campuses today, The Times sent reporters to four different campuses: UCLA and San Francisco State, two large state universities in California with exceedingly diverse populations; the University of Wisconsin in Madison, a large state university with a relatively small minority student population; and Wesleyan University, an elite, private liberal arts college in Connecticut where minorities make up almost one-third of the students.

Here are the campus portraits of the “new diversity.”

UCLA

UCLA’s Bruin Walk, the hillside thoroughfare at the heart of the Westwood campus, was once lined with recruiting tables for sports and political groups. Now ethnic organizations dominate: a black sorority, a Vietnamese student group, organizations for students from India, for Jewish students, for American-born Chinese, for mainly foreign-born Chinese, for Mexican-Americans.

“UCLA’s very diverse, but it’s also really segregated,” said Jimmy Hsie, an official of the Chinese Student Assn. “It’s good in that you learn a lot about your own identity. It can be bad because you don’t learn enough about other people, and that’s when the stereotypes begin to fly.”

Demographic shifts at UCLA have been dramatic in the last decade. The percentage of Anglos among the nearly 24,000 undergraduates has dropped from 70% to 44%. Asian-American and Filipino representation has zoomed from 17% to nearly 32%, and Latinos increased from 6.5% to 16.6%; black percentages grew only slightly from about 5% to 6.3%. Among new freshmen this year, Asian-Americans outnumber Anglos by 36.9% to 34.2%, officials reported.

“I think students here are ultra-sensitive and very culturally aware,” said Jennifer Garson, an Anglo senior who is majoring in Spanish literature. “I think we have a lot less racial tension here than in the average city. I may be idealistic, but I really feel it’s not a constant, every-day war.”

Representing the cross-cultural cooperation stressed by many UCLA students, the president of the undergraduate student body is a black woman and the graduate student president is an Asian man.

But there have been incidents. For example, NOMMO, a campus magazine for black students, last spring printed what many Jewish students and the UCLA administration deemed to be anti-Semitic remarks. In an effort to cool tempers, student journalists from various UCLA publications for minorities attended a summer workshop during which they worked together on a multicultural magazine.

“We’re not trained to settle interethnic conflicts. So rather than attacking things head-on, the idea was to provide people an opportunity to get to know each other by working toward a common goal. Hopefully that would increase understanding,” said Terence Hsiao, publications director for student government. He said he hopes there is less chance that a racist or anti-Semitic article will be printed now but conceded: “I don’t think the underlying issues have been resolved.”

Less overt are ill-feelings surrounding admissions. Latino and black students with outstanding high school records said some Anglos view them with suspicion as undeserving beneficiaries of affirmative action.

Some Asian-Americans, who allege that anti-Asian quotas existed only a few years ago, now say they fear that their vastly increased numbers and academic success could provoke a backlash. A few Anglo students nervously joke that UCLA stands for “United Caucasians Living among Asians.”

A federal investigation last year found past anti-Asian bias in admissions to UCLA’s graduate math program; results of a similar inquiry into undergraduate admissions have not been announced.

Meanwhile, pressure is increasing for the hiring of more minorities in faculty and administrative positions. (Anglos now make up about 86% of the permanent faculty.) And efforts to make the curriculum more multicultural are being debated. For example, a controversial campaign by Latino activists to elevate Chicano studies from an interdepartmental program to a separate department remains unresolved. And UCLA’s Academic Senate is developing a plan to require all undergraduates to take a course on ethnic diversity in American culture.

Allen Yarnell, assistant vice chancellor for student life, said some ethnic self-segregation is expected, given human nature and efforts to find common interests on a huge campus. “Is there tension?” he said. “Yes. Is it widespread and affecting every aspect of UCLA life? No.”

San Francisco State

When Prof. Robert C. Smith offered a course in black politics at San Francisco State University last year, ethnic studies professors complained that it duplicated one of their own and would undermine their school. Black students disrupted and then boycotted Smith’s class, leaving the black instructor to teach his course to five whites.

This fall, Smith taught a similar course that was changed slightly in an effort to achieve campus peace, and he said there were three blacks among the course’s 32 students. But the wider issues his class raised are now being debated by San Francisco State’s faculty: Shouldn’t an extremely diverse student body learn more about other cultures and ethnic groups in an effort to promote harmony? Who should do that teaching and in which academic division? What should be taught?

“This is emotionally charged. It raises issues of territory and defensiveness and justification of being,” declared Gail Whitaker, the physical education professor who is head of the school’s Faculty Senate.

That such a debate is occurring at San Francisco State may seem ironic to some observers. After all, a faculty and student strike in 1969 led to the creation of ethnic studies courses at the school, and a radical heritage remains. “In certain ways, this place is the capital of political correctness,” remarked one professor, referring to the contention that liberal ideology dominates American academia.

Years ahead of other universities, the school already requires all students who enter as freshmen to take two courses touching on issues of ethnic minorities and “cultural, ethnic and social diversity.” Among the many courses that fit the requirement: “Literature by U.S. Women of Color,” “Latin American Relations,” “Homophobia and Coming Out” and “Asian-American Culture.”

A campus study last year reported that students emerge from such courses with warmer feelings toward other ethnic groups or sexual orientations. However, some faculty and administrators said they sense a need to stress shared values more. “At some point in time, we need to capture the essence of the contributions of each group and the ability of the groups to work together as a society. If we don’t do that, we are going to end up with the factionalization we have in places like Yugoslavia,” said Erwin Seibel, dean of undergraduate studies.

Reflecting San Francisco’s polyglot nature, non-whites now make up a majority of undergraduates--35% Asian or Filipino, 9% Latino, 7.6% black and about 1% American Indian. A vast majority of the 28,000 students are commuters, juggling jobs and studies.

The survey found that about half of San Francisco State students and faculty think that students “spend too much time emphasizing their differences with students of other groups rather than exploring values and goals they have in common.” Still, 57% of students and 66% of the faculty said ethnic relations are better at the school than outside the main campus gate.

“Some people do stick together with their own race or ethnicity. I don’t see anything wrong with that,” said Clay Ordona, a leader of a Filipino student organization. “But I also see a lot of friendships between very different backgrounds.”

Black studies professor James Todd contended that the idea of self-segregation “is a political issue of the right, who would throw gasoline on a little cinder and make it flame. . . . People do like to be around people they like and understand. That doesn’t mean they don’t like other people.”

Wisconsin-Madison

The University of Wisconsin in Madison has 43,196 students, but only 3,047 of them are minorities--746 blacks, 732 Latinos, 1,378 Asian-Americans and 191 American Indians. Minority students said they often feel isolated, alienated and unwelcome in most campus settings other than the Multicultural Center in the Student Union. “If you’re black, you feel like a raisin in milk,” said Renda Harris, 22, a senior African-American studies major from Chicago.

The Multicultural Center, which opened in the fall of 1988, is part of a $4.7-million, multiyear plan adopted by the university to promote racial and ethnic diversity and to combat campus bigotry.

The so-called Madison Plan involves strategies ranging from boosting minority student enrollment and faculty hiring to increasing financial and scholarship aid and adding an ethnic studies requirement for all undergraduates.

“Just doing two or three things was not enough,” said Donna Shalala, who fashioned the blueprint shortly after taking over as chancellor at this hilly, lakeside campus in January, 1988. “We had to get out ahead of the issue.”

Since then, as even some of its most ardent critics concede, the plan has gone a long way toward easing racial tensions. “I’ve visited six universities in the Midwest recently, and they’re all much worse than this one,” said James Shigeo Dixon, co-president of the Asian-American Student Union.

But the plan has not been a panacea for all racial ills. As at virtually any majority-white institution, minority students here can recite a litany of almost everyday acts of subtle and sometimes not-so-subtle bigotry. Just seven months after the plan was introduced, for example, Zeta Beta Tau fraternity staged a mock slave auction with pledges in blackface and Afro wigs.

And the plan has spawned controversy of its own. Theodore S. Hamerow, a history professor who heads the campus branch of the National Assn. of Scholars, said the minority faculty hiring goals of the Madison Plan are “inherently unfair” because they make race or ethnic origin the prime consideration and not merit.

Hamerow also said he is deeply disturbed by the direction that efforts to promote diversity and multiculturalism seem to be taking. “I feel it’s a kind of resegregation of American education, with a program for blacks, a program for Asians and so forth,” he said. Some white students have taken up the cause. A conservative-oriented, independent student newspaper ran an editorial lambasting the texts used in various ethnic studies courses, calling them “Marxist drivel,” in particular the book, “Occupied America: A History of Chicanos,” by Cal State Northridge Chicano studies professor Rodolfo Acuna.

Mexican-Americans on campus were infuriated. “I’ve never seen such arrogance and insensitivity,” said Emiliano Compean, a sophomore English major from San Antonio.

From the point of view of minority students, the Madison Plan’s most serious shortcoming is in the recruiting of minority undergraduates. The goal is to have 522 minority students entering the university by 1993. After reaching 305 new undergraduates last year, the number fell by more than 17% this fall to 252, prompting minority student leaders to denounce the Madison Plan as the “Madison Sham.”

Shalala said minority recruitment is hampered by a number of factors, particularly the small pool of eligible applicants within the state, which is 93% white. But overall, “I think the plan has given the university a much-needed momentum for change,” Shalala said.

Wesleyan University

In the select world of elite, private New England colleges to which it belongs, Wesleyan University is popularly known as “Diversity U.”

And looking around this cozy, hillside campus in central Connecticut, it is easy to see why. Of the school’s 2,600 students, almost one-third are “students of color”--the preferred term here for minority students. The curriculum, with more than 1,000 different courses, is loaded with multicultural offerings, ranging from “African Religions in the New World” to “The Zionist Revolution.”

If you’re black and want to live in an all-black dorm, there’s the Malcolm X House, with room for 30 students. For Latinos, there’s the Latin House; for students of Asian descent, the Asian/Asian-American House. Widely varying minority student organizations include a group for mixed-race students calling itself Inter-racial Pride.

But even at Wesleyan, which accepted its first black student in 1836 and has been a pacesetter in opening educational opportunities for minorities, diversity has not necessarily meant harmony.

In the spring of 1990, minority student discontent over such issues as minority faculty hiring and retention, multicultural courses, financial aid and departmental status for the school’s African-American studies center erupted into weeks of bitter conflict.

This fall, in a stinging 31-page report, a campus commission on race relations accused the university of growing insensitivity and indifference toward racial issues.

“Wesleyan has lost ground in leadership of race relations and in the quality-of-life issues for people of color in educational environments; it cannot afford to lose further ground,” the report concluded.

And although fully a third of Wesleyan’s academic courses are multicultural or non-traditional in content, many minority students believe that not enough of these classes reflect their particular ethnic interests and that others are in danger of being eliminated.

“ ‘Asian-American History and Culture,’ funded on an ad hoc basis for the last two years due (only) to student pressure, may never be offered again,” lamented a report in the October issue of the Ankh, the minority student newspaper. “ ‘The Latino-American Experience in the U.S.’ is severely overbooked because it, too, is just a ‘one-shot deal’ that students fear may just disappear.”

But English Department Chairman Khachig Tololyan, like many administrators and faculty, said that he wonders if multiculturalism is becoming “a mechanism for multiplying differences” to absurd lengths.

“For example,” he said, “in multicultural discussions here, someone says: ‘Well, isn’t Group X a group that should be studied.’ And the next person says: ‘Yes, but don’t lesbians of that group have separate problems? Aren’t they different? Don’t lesbians of that group who are working class have even more separate problems.”

During the tumult of spring, 1990, the Argus, the campus newspaper, asked a question that still echoes throughout the university: “Is there anything that unites Wesleyan students today or has diversity gotten the best of us?”

Kristian Dahl, 21, a senior government major from Minnetonka, Minn., who also is editor of the Wesleyan Review, said: “The point of diversity is to have differing viewpoints play off one another in a kind of intellectual give-and-take that would benefit everybody. What you have (here) instead is an atmosphere of political correctness. . . .

“The classroom used to be the one place where anything went. There used to be a dialogue. If you said something ridiculous, people would take you apart on the merits of your argument. Now, the accusations are things like: ‘That’s typical white male thinking’ or ‘That’s racist’ or ‘That’s homophobic.’ ”

Yet despite all the ferment over diversity and multiculturalism, minority students at Wesleyan almost universally agree that there is no other college they would rather be attending.

“I’ll be honest,” said Lucinda Mendez, a senior psychology and sociology major from New York City and a leading campus activist. “I’m happy with my education. I’m happy with the friends I made here. I’ve learned a lot about how to be vocal and how to fight, although Wesleyan may not have intended to teach me that.”

Researcher Audrey Britton contributed to this story.