U. works to attract Latino students

While recent U.S. Census Bureau statistics show that at 13 percent of the population, Latinos have surpassed blacks to become the largest minority in the country, the group currently makes up only 6.4 percent of Penn undergraduate students. "The numbers are not equal," pointed out Maritza Santiago-Torres, an administration assistant at Penn's Latino resource center La Casa Latina. Latinos "are the top minority so the University should be more sensitive," Santiago-Torres said. "The place to start is with admissions." And the Undergraduate Admissions Office seems to know it. Through vigorous recruitment, a Multicultural Open House program in the fall and a three-day Minority Scholars Weekend in the spring, there is an "emphasis that Penn is putting on attracting Latino candidates," Canh Oxelson, director of Multicultural Recruitment Programs in Undergraduate Admissions wrote in an e-mail. Each of these programs continues to be revised in order to better entice minority students, including Latinos. Last fall, the Open House program was held earlier in the year to encourage students to apply for early decision, and the upcoming Minority Scholars Weekend was changed to allow students to meet with minority faculty. Yet for some, including Latino Coalition Spokesman and College junior Nico Rodriguez, there is still an uphill battle left to be fought. Although Rodriguez said, "It's tough to say" why the percentage of Latinos at Penn is half that of the nation as a whole, he considers insufficient recruitment measures to be a significant part of the problem. Penn ranks consistently with other Ivies in terms of Latino populations -- the Class of 2006 at Penn is 6.7 percent Latino while the numbers at Yale and Brown universities and Dartmouth College all range from 6 to 7 percent. "Penn has done well in recruiting Latino students," Oxelson wrote in the e-mail. "We are competing with other Ivy League institutions, well-known state universities and Hispanic-Serving Institutions for these great candidates, and yet the number of Hispanic students who applied and were accepted through early decision continued to rise this year." Admissions credits this increase to perseverance and the implementation of its new programs. "The Undergraduate Office of Admissions is very aggressive in its recruitment of Latino students," Oxelson wrote. Upon locating individuals who Oxelson described as "Latino candidates who are especially strong," Penn officials say they do their best to entice them. "We began wooing those students in November and will continue to stay in contact with them throughout the application process to May 1," Oxelson continued. Acknowledging these efforts, Director La Casa Latina, Anamaria Cobo was confident about prospects for the future. "As Latinos at Penn, we are fortunate to have a president, provost and vice provost for University Life who are committed to seeing the Latino/Hispanic population grow," Cobo wrote in an e-mail statement. Many see the national trends as an indication of how the issue of racial diversity is changing. According to Rodriguez, the "way of the future [for diversity] is no longer just a two-way street."

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