Sterling Williams, a guard on Northwestern's basketball team, came to NU for the same reason as everyone else: a good education.
"I first visited at age 10 or 11," the Weinberg senior said. "My mom always talked about it, and the expectation was I would go to college and graduate."
Yet Williams and the other black male athletes at NU are at the center of a recent article by Inside Higher Education magazine, which found that athletes are a high proportion of black males on campus.
At Northwestern, during the 2005-06 academic year, 43black male athletes made up 26 percent of the 163 total black male undergraduate students.
NU's 124 white male athletes made up 5 percent of the 2,741 white male undergraduates.
NU officials and students spoke to the complexity of the issue, saying that though athletics offers opportunities to minority students, the disproportionate percentage of black male athletes at NU remains troubling.
NU's percentages are high, but within the range of other academically comparable universities, Vice President for University Relations Al Cubbage said.
"We're all in the same range of 18 to 25 percent," Cubbage said. "We were on the high end and other schools are on the lower end."
The numbers are indicative of the stalled level of black enrollment at NU, in turn driven by demographic trends, NU President Henry Bienen said. Proportional enrollment of black students has halved since 1976.
"It's no secret that the number of folks out there has not been growing, which says something about the public education system in the United States," Bienen said. "Athletics has been … something that has been attractive to a certain number of African-American males, but beyond that I don't know what to say."
Associate Provost Michael Mills said he feels the numbers, taken from the National Collegiate Athletic Association survey of graduation rates, might not be accurate. The survey only listed athletes who were receiving "athletics aid," and Mills said he was not sure whether the category included need-based aid.
Spring Break
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Viewing Comments 1 - 10 of 13
Joseph
posted 10/02/08 @ 3:17 PM CST
I really, really hate this article. It's a problem that Northwestern is making it easier for minorities to attend our school through athletic programs that provide - sometimes - athletic scholarships to inner city athletes who may not otherwise be able to attend a school like this? Yeah, I'm going to go ahead and feel REALLY guilty about that. (Continued…)
old guy
posted 10/02/08 @ 10:36 PM CST
What is the problem? Athletes, at least those who play football, tend to more than pay for their scholarships with the money brought in by those programs to the university coffers. (Continued…)
West of Weden
posted 10/04/08 @ 12:59 AM CST
Please correct me, Old Guy, if I'm misinformed, but I had heard that, at the bottom line, athletics at NU is a money-loser. I doubt that athletics at NU make money, when you consider the whole athletic budget. (Continued…)
fidel
posted 10/04/08 @ 2:45 PM CST
What point are you attempting to make in this article, if you have one? It seems as if the editor was asleep at the switch. The article is all over the map. (Continued…)
Janel M.
posted 12/01/08 @ 8:23 PM CST
I agree the intent of the article is unclear. I think one of the most important things to note from this article is the fact that the one athlete said they saw him play and then they asked him about his grades, which were good. (Continued…)
Jenn
posted 12/02/08 @ 8:20 AM CST
who cares. seriously. do we have to have a quota on athletics too, now?
LAG
posted 12/02/08 @ 2:55 PM CST
Put one more down, for not understanding the article. As far as i can gather, the implicit criticism, is that northwestern reaches out to black students if they can play a sport? Is that indeed the point? I simply don't agree with that theory. (Continued…)
Josh
posted 12/03/08 @ 3:23 AM CST
How about this?
To make it fair, we should recruit according to the demographics of the student population. Let's ask the coaches to spend 75% of their recruiting power outside of Illinois, because 75% of undergrad students are from out of state. (Continued…)
j hall
posted 12/03/08 @ 3:02 PM CST
There is nothing complex about the over-representation of athletes among the African American student body. NU is not Notre Dame or Brigham Young and should be ashamed of itself for allowing this situation to occur. (Continued…)
jbone
posted 12/03/08 @ 6:07 PM CST
i don't think the problem is the 43 black male athletes. i think it's the 120 non-athlete black male undergraduate students at northwestern, compared to 2,617 non-athlete white male undergraduate students. (Continued…)
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