Rasheena Howard hosts visiting minority recruits and attends college fairs to help increase diversity at UNH. Photo by Gary Samson

The notion that diversity is an issue that is only of concern to minority students makes Richmond despair. And she is not alone. Ernest, the coordinator for the African American Studies minor, sees a similar attitude in academics. "There's a misperception that African American Studies are only or primarily for African American students. But African American studies have everything to do with white history and white identity," says Ernest, who is white. He says that the minor, now five years old, is "really the bare bones of a program." Only two of 10 professors teaching courses in the African American Studies minor are black -- a percentage so low that it's hard to attract top black scholars. "We've lacked the funding and the faculty to match what students can expect from most other prominent universities," Ernest wrote in a recent report.

Certainly, many department heads feel they could use more money and support. But Ernest argues that students are entering a world in which racial and ethnic issues are at the forefront of concern. More exposure to greater diversity is not a luxury, but a matter of a proper education. "We are undereducating our students because of this," says Ernest. Until state funding increases, at UNH, "it will always be this instead of that or at the expense of something else. But I don't see that as an excuse."

For Richmond, the lack of exposure to different cultures and ideas is evidenced in comments made by fellow students and the commonplace stereotyping of minorities in class discussions. "There is no way that you can be a student of color on this campus and not feel angry. My first class this morning was a race and ethnicity class. All these middle class white males said that immigrants do not belong here because they are taking up all their resources," says Richmond, who was born in Jamaica.

"I had to let them know: How many middle class white men are janitors? When I walk into these classes and hear these men who are going to make decisions that people who look like myself will not be making, I am worried. I worry about myself. I worry about the future of my children. I worry about my parents. I worry about all the people of color. I worry about them [the white males]. They are in an environment where they could see, where they could learn. They leave class and they still have these views. Where does the change come?"

Where, indeed, does the change come? If diversity is to become a reality instead of a goal at UNH, what needs to happen?

Leila Moore, vice president for student affairs, says UNH needs a "critical mass" of minority students. "Six to 9 percent is when you can walk across campus and notice the presence of that population," she says. Achieving that percentage would not make UNH resemble an urban campus, but it would be a significant increase. According to a November 1999 study by the National Center for Education Statistics, New Hampshire's public four-year institutions have the lowest percentage of minority enrollments in the country, below even such predominantly white states as Maine or Vermont.

Some change has begun. As Leitzel noted, UNH has started to become a more welcoming place for minorities. Beattie says in the nine years he's been at UNH, he's seen "appreciable progress. In 1991, I was it (in minority recruitment). Now there's a nucleus of people who are working very hard not only to recruit minority students and staff, but to also retain them."

Right now, however, with so few of them on campus, minority students say that their race becomes the focus of their college experience. "There is not a day that goes by that I do not talk about it -- for my own reasons or because I'm made to talk about it," says Laura Dabao Akeley, a junior and president of the United Asian Coalition. "I am used to being an individual, and here, I am a person of color. I am forced to be a representative for a whole class, a whole race of people."

The numbers are so low that students with a range of identities based on race, ethnicity and sexual orientation readily discard differences to speak with a single Minority Voice, presumably because that's the only way to be heard. Yet, of course, a Latino student whose skin is so light he appears Caucasian faces distinct challenges from a dark-skinned African American or a student, like Akeley, from the Philippines.