Princeton's freshman class has the highest percentage of black students in the Ivy League with 9.4 percent, just ahead of Harvard's 9.3 percent and Yale's 9.2 percent, the Journal of Blacks in Higher Education (JBHE) announced last week. Princeton also topped the journal's Ivy League list for the biggest increase in black student enrollment since last year, with a 38 percent jump.
"We had a larger and more diverse applicant pool last year than in other years ... and we were able to admit more black students," Dean of Admissions Janet Rapelye said in an email. "We also had more of the admitted students choosing Princeton last April. Each year is different, so we have no predictions for this year. One of our goals is to build a multicultural community, so we are currently recruiting a broad and deep applicant pool for 2010."
But leaders in the campus black community said Princeton could still be a much more comfortable environment for students of color, though they generally agreed that recent years have seen some progress.
"[The ranking] is surprising in one aspect in that there's not a lot of outreach for students of color in Princeton," Princeton Association of Black Women President Alice Abrokwa '08 said. "Princeton is slowly and surely realizing the need to diversify campus culture." She added that most of the improvement comes from "support garnered within the black community."
USG president Leslie-Bernard Joseph '06 agreed.
"Princeton can be unwelcoming to a lot of people, so I think we need to work on that. Things have gotten better, but there's still a long way to go," he said.
Joseph said Princeton could make further improvements by instituting a pre-freshman weekend for students of color, offering eating club financial aid and upgrading the African-American studies program to a department.
An earlier JBHE survey of the percentage of black faculty members cast Princeton in a much different light, ranking it below all other Ivy League schools. According to the survey, only three percent of Princeton's full-time faculty is black and none of the 34 department chairmen are. This low ranking comes despite a 50 percent increase in black Princeton faculty since 1999.
Six of the eight Ivy League schools registered an increase in the percentage of black freshman enrolled since a year ago, with only Brown University registering a decrease.
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