Other students complain that disciplines such as the sciences are not racially mixed. Gretchen Stanton, an African American chemistry major, says she sees few blacks in her classes.
"While it looks very diverse, people are in their own groups a lot of the time," she says.
For The Record
Los Angeles Times Tuesday January 16, 2007 Home Edition Main News Part A Page 2 National Desk 1 inches; 44 words Type of Material: Correction
UC diversity: An article in Monday's Section A about ethnic diversity at UC Riverside and the University of California reported that about 100 African Americans were admitted to last fall's freshman class at UCLA. UCLA admitted more than 200 African Americans; about 100 enrolled.
Another gap in diversifying the campus is the faculty. At 7.9%, Riverside ranked sixth among the nine undergraduate UC campuses in attracting members of underrepresented minorities.
Curry, the student who turned down Berkeley for the Inland Empire, said he first visited the Riverside campus during a summer program for high school students and it shaped his idea of what he wanted in a university. Ken Simons, the head of African Student Programs, actively recruited him.
Although Curry was accepted at Berkeley, he never toured the campus or heard from university recruiters. Already inclined to stay close to home, he couldn't say no to UC Riverside when it offered to pay his tuition in full.
He hopes to get into law school at UCLA or Georgetown and believes his exposure to different ethnic groups and viewpoints at Riverside has helped prepare him for a career in international or corporate law.
He has since visited Berkeley and concluded that he made the right choice.
"It was nice," he said. "It reminded me more of an East Coast school, with larger buildings and older structures. But I wasn't too impressed. It seemed like it had everything we had. It was just bigger and older."
richard.paddock@latimes.com
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Minorities at UC Riverside
The ethnic and racial diversity of the
undergraduate student body at UC Riverside increased over the last
decade despite the 1996 passage of Proposition 209, which banned
racial preferences in university admissions. A look at UC Riverside
compared with the state population:
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Racial/ethnic groups
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UC Riverside, 1996 | Asian: 39.2% | White:30.4% | Latino:19.5% | Black:5.7% | Others: 5.2%
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UC Riverside, 2006 | Asian:43.0% | White:18.7% | Latino:25.1% | Black: 7.1% | Others:6.1%
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California, 2005* | Asian: 12.2% | White: 43.3% | Latino: 35.5% | Black: 5.9% | Others 3.1%
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*Most recent statistics available.
Sources: UC Riverside, Census Bureau
