RISING FRESHMAN STARS:
Three athletes set the stage in their first season on the field and in the pool. See story on pages 6-7. MARGARET DISTLER / THE DEPAUW
FEBRUARY 24, 2012
Indiana’s Oldest College Newspaper
VOL. 160, ISSUE 32
Empowering community Six-year-old initiative seeks to improve retention of African American males By MATTHEW CECIL news@thedepauw.com
Keith Stanford, senior associate director of admission, shares interviewing advice with students, faculty and staff during a meeting of the Black Male Initiative on Thursday afternoon in Reese Hall Lobby. The initiative, which was established six years ago to increase retention rates of African American males, offers professional, financial and academic advice to students in monthly meetings. EMILY GREEN / THE DEPAUW
Jordan Davis plans on taking over DePauw. And he wants other African-American males to have no excuse not to do the same. “I wanted to make sure African American men, specifically the men in my class, stayed on campus,” Davis said. To accomplish that task, the current sophomore started attending meetings of the Black Male Initiative his first semester on campus. Last spring, he became a member of the initiative’s planning committee. Aliya Beavers, coordinator of multicultural recruitment and a member of the planning committee, said the initiative began over six years ago to improve the retention rates of African American males at DePauw. “It was a way for them to bring men of the community together to talk about any concerns or issues that they may be having and try to figure out how to support better so more students would be retained on campus,” Beavers said. Since then, the population of international students and domestic students of color has doubled. That population now composes 27 percent of the student body with domestic students of color making up 17 percent. Hermen Diaz, who joins Beavers on the committee and also serves as assistant director of multicultural student services, couldn’t find the actual percentage of black males that have graduated
from DePauw over the last several years, but he said retention rates among them have risen. “I think at DePauw we started to utilize some resources and push some new initiatives to try to help that (retention),” Diaz said. “I think that we at DePauw do a good job and a much better job than I would say most institutions do at focusing on specific populations that have historically been retained at a really poor level.” But Davis says many of his friends haven’t been so lucky. The Indianapolis native said several of his friends from home have already dropped out of college.
‘NO EXCUSES’
When searching for colleges, Davis said he wanted a small student body and small class sizes. He also wanted to attend a school with a high retention rate for African American males. “It’s (retention of black males) always been a big problem that I heard about when I was in high school,” he said. “When I came to college, I knew, I wasn’t going to drop out.” Davis heard about the Black Male Initiative from friends who went to DePauw while he was still at Charles A. Tindley Accelerated School, a small charter school in Indianapolis with the motto “College or Die.”
Retention | continued on page 3