Word: amherst
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...Foundation debate took place in the context of growing fear among Third World students. Cross burnings at nearby Williams and Amherst Colleges occurred last fall; a new president perceived as a threat to affirmative action was elected; and events at Harvard aggravated the tension. In mid-October, a preliminary report on Harvard admissions prepared by an assistant to Bok was disclosed. The report said that high test scores often overpredict the academic performance of women and minorities at schools like Harvard, a finding which Third World students called "invalid" and "racist." In early November, the president of the Black Students...
...events at Williams virtually mirrored those which had taken place the year before at Amherst College. Before a cross-burning occurred there in 1979, Amherst was accustomed to enrolling between 25 and 30 Black students in each class (the class size at Amherst is about 385). After the incident, the figure dropped to 13 in the class...
...example, race-related problems have had very visible results at Amherst and Williams, both small, highly selective, northeastern schools. After a cross-burning occurred at Williams College last fall, admissions officials there saw Black applications drop significantly. Only 100 Blacks applied for their class of '85, compared with 170 for the previous class. Some Blacks even pulled out of their supposedly binding early-decision contracts. Philip Smith, director of admissions at Williams, attributes the declines to "the massive publicity surrounding the cross-burning." The press often covered the situation inaccurately, Smith says, citing one example where a newspaper...
Like Williams, Amherst eventually began again to attract its customary number of minority students. Amy Johnson, an Amherst admissions officer, says the college's admissions staff informed secondary-school counselors of Amherst's interest in Blacks and used the College Board's student search much more extensively than before. Those efforts, along with active involvement by Amherst's Black students, helped bring the number of Blacks back up to 27 for the Class of '85, she says...
Race-related incidents at Cornell don't seem to have affected that school's minority admissions nearly as severely as they did at Amherst and Williams. Last fall, after some threats of violence against Blacks and a robbery from Ujamaa Hall, a Black studies house, the university made a strong and apparently effective statement to show people that such events would not be tolerated, James Scannell, Cornell's dean of admissions and financial aid, says. The racial incidents neither elicited substantial concern from Black applicants nor affected the number of Blacks applying for and enrolling in Cornell's class...