The Climate for Underrepresented Groups and Diversity on Campus

With the 2008 election of President Barack Obama, there has been some debate about whether the nation is now in a postracial era in which race no longer influences Americans’ thinking and experiences.1 However, surveys of college students indicate that race is still a significant issue and that the underrepresentation of Black, Latina/o, and Native American students only serves to reinforce stereotyping and discrimination in college environments. The Cooperative Institutional Research Program’s (CIRP) Freshman Survey data indicate that 25% of all entering freshmen at fouryear colleges and universities currently believe that racial discrimination is no longer a major problem in America.2 At the same time, a number of highly publicized race-related incidents were recently reported across college campuses, ranging from the appearance of nooses hanging from campus trees, symbolically reflecting lynching of Blacks, to verbal comments and other acts of harassment directed at specific individuals.3 These data and incidents indicate that the “postracial” era brings new challenges with changing