The Admissions Office invited five high school students from a reservation in South Dakota to partake in a Native American weekend. High school junior Helene Quiver took her first plane ride last week, flying from her Native American reservation in South Dakota to Penn Thursday. In an effort to recruit more Native American students, the Admissions Office invited Quiver and four other female high school students to its new "Native American Weekend." "This targeted pilot program represents the start of reaching out to Native American students," Admissions Dean Lee Stetson said. "We thought these five students had enough goals and direction that would make them want to attend school on the Eastern seaboard," he added. The students and their counselors had the full University experience this weekend, eating their first Philadelphia cheesesteaks, touring the campus and city and cheering at the men's basketball game against Cornell Friday night. At a meeting with faculty and admissions officers Friday afternoon, one of the students introduced herself by saying, "My name is Tamera Miyasato, and I really love this school." The other students also said they recognized the benefits of attending a prestigious university, although they expressed fears about the limited Native American representation on campus. "It's frightening to me that people still think all Native Americans live in teepees and go around scalping people," high school senior Cedar Lone Hill said. "But I realize that after college I can go back to the reservation and help other [Native American] students graduate and go on and succeed as I have," she added. Stetson said the University has enrolled 21 Native Americans over the last four years and is planning to expand its recruitment program to New York, New Mexico, Arizona, Oklahoma and North Carolina. "Native Americans have been the most disadvantaged and underrepresented in higher ed institutions in general," Stetson said. "I think we have a chance of enrolling a few of these women," he added. "But Dartmouth has always had an active Native American recruitment program which goes back for many years." Ken Stands, a faculty member at Oglala Lakota College in South Dakota, accompanied the students on their trip to Penn. He expressed concern that the University lacks a prominent Native American community and that the students might experience culture shock after the move from a reservation to an urban institution. And he asked how the University -- faced with these difficulties -- expects to offer students a suitable environment. "I know that, as a faculty member, I willingly put in time with students who need more help, but it does take student initiative as well," Anthropology Professor Melvyn Hammarberg answered. The two counselors who accompanied the students to Penn, Oolie Frie, of South Dakota's Little Wound High School, and Lamoine Pulliam, from the state's Pine Ridge High School, also voiced concerns about the students' academic survival at Penn. "I'm so convinced that our students can live up to any of the students [at the University], but their SAT scores will not reflect that," Frie said. Stetson explained that differences in heritage do not necessarily mean that the students will enter the school academically inferior to other students. "This is a building process and it has to start somewhere," he said. "This is only the beginning." Stetson said the high school students' response to the weekend was "positive" and he is "expecting -- not hoping -- to continue and expand this program."
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