Soundslides Project

This is a soundslides project me and my partner did for a journalism class. It is about minority admission and retention at UT, Enjoy!

The Fear of Being a Minority

 Being an African American student at the University of Texas at Austin (UT) is more of a dilemma that should be addressed rather than a subset group that contributes to a diversified group.  African Americans only make up approximately 4 percent of the population, and ironically remains at the percentage consecutively each year. The University of Texas has long praised itself on their commitment to educating a diverse population, but fails to attract black students outside of the strategically established confinements that only hold that 4 percent mentioned previously. We delve into the issue of black admission and retention, and were not too surprised by the results.  Matthew Ealy and Alisa Semiens, current African American students at UT, shared with us why they came to the university and why their counterparts opted not to.

The Supreme Court case that has thrusted UT in the spotlight involves Abigal Fischer, a white woman who claimed she was denied admission into the university because of her race. This has caused a lot of questions regarding the University of Texas' policy on diversity, but has also drudged up memories of times when organizations and people like Hemean Sweatt and the NAACP fought to put the policies in place that we have now, which promotes diversity. If she wins her case, this could have various implications on UT's policy of diversity.

This could possibly counteract the benefits of an ethnically diverse population, but only time will tell. Because of UT's long tradition of being a predominantly white institution, the percentage of African Americans who apply decrease by the year the reason being could be because of the lack of funding and black high school graduates may feel they can not handle the strenuous curiculum.