Diversity at La Crosse
Thomas C. Reeves, The Wisconsin Policy Research Institute

The University of Wisconsin - La Crosse is part of a 13 campus complex offering undergraduate and postgraduate degrees under the umbrella of the University of Wisconsin System. The state gives the System about a billion dollars a year. Madison is the best known and best funded institution in the complex, and the Milwaukee campus has been trying to become a respectable number two institution. The other 11 campuses are “Master’s Universities,” largely serving undergraduates. In the 2007 U.S. News rankings, La Crosse had the highest score in the Master’s category, placing number 20 among the top schools. (Eau Claire was 26, Stevens Point 37, Whitewater 51, Platteville 55, River Falls 59, Stout 68, and Green Bay 70. Oshkosh and Superior were put in Tier 3, and Parkside was in Tier 4 -- the bottom.) The problem at La Crosse, in the eyes of the System’s Board of Regents, is that it has too few African-American students. Recently, the Board took a highly controversial step to correct that situation.

The slightly more than 9,000 member student body at La Crosse is 92.6 percent Caucasian. This largely reflects the campus location, in the largely rural, western central part of the state on the Mississippi River. Minorities include 2.5 percent Hispanic, 1.2 percent Asian, and 0.8 percent black. While educators very rarely consider intellectual diversity to be an important part of campus life (George Leef has written about the almost exclusively leftist “academic monoculture”), they are quick to object if a student body fails to meet racial diversity goals. Recent ACT scores point to the difficulty of meeting these goals: Only 3 percent of those Wisconsin African-Americans who took the test qualified as college ready, and all state and private colleges in Wisconsin, and many out of state, seek black students. The theory behind the pursuit follows the Brown v. Board of Education ruling of the Supreme Court in 1954: racial diversity is essential to learning. This is, of course, a statement of faith.

The Board of Regents proposal, which must be approved by the state legislature and the governor, would charge each student at La Crosse $1,320 over three years on top of annual tuition increases to expand and diversity the student body. A quarter of the $15 million generated would go toward financial aid, and half of 1,000 new students admitted would be minority or low income. More administrators would be hired to assist the project. In short, white students would be required to pay to recruit blacks. It seems that it is somehow their fault that African-Americans choose not to enroll at La Crosse.

Admission standards at La Crosse are fairly high; nearly 6,400 applicants vied for 1,750 spaces in the freshman class this year. Ronald Lostetter, a top campus administrator, told a reporter, "We want to increase quality for all students.” But the campus will surely be required to lower standards to fill the slots now to go exclusively to students “from the bottom two income quintiles and students of color."

The Board of Regents has declared that this pilot program may be expanded to include other campuses with an insufficient number of blacks. In public institutions in Wisconsin, it seems, the “color blind” environment once envisioned by civil rights activists has again been abandoned in favor of multicultural dogma.
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