A YouTube video created by students at the University of California, Los Angeles, has garnered massive online attention and is sparking debate across the nation about race at institutions of higher education.
The Black Bruins, an African-American student organization at UCLA, posted the video last week to voice complaints about their university’s low minority enrollment.
Junior and group leader Sy Stokes narrates the video with a spoken word poem addressing the school’s statistical gap in minority enrollment, saying only 3.3 percent of the school’s male student body is African-American. Of the male African-Americans students at UCLA, about 65 percent are undergraduate student-athletes, Stokes noted.
“When we have more national championships than we do black male freshman, it proves that our only purpose here is to improve your winning percentage,” Stokes said in the video. “This school is not diverse just because you put it on a pamphlet.”
At the University, African-American students comprise about 6.5 percent of the student population. Of this percentage, it is estimated that about 85.7 percent will walk the Lawn at Final Exercises, giving the University one of the highest African-American graduation rates for public institutions in the country.
Third-year Batten undergraduate Eden Zekarias, political action chair of the Black Student Alliance, said in an email that the video highlights troubling nation-wide trends in the public school system.
“As a black student, knowing I comprise 6.5 percent of the University’s 14,641 students is angering,” Zekarias said. “Knowing cuts to financial aid will make this number smaller is worse.”
Fourth-year College student Haya Yaish, chair of the Minority Rights Coalition echoed these sentiments, praising the video for opening a racial dialogue.
“What many people underestimate is how important diversity is for the entire community and the learning experience as a whole,” Yaish said. “The University is not about the classes we take. Meeting people who aren’t Middle Eastern has been the most important part of my experience here.”
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