Black Students Seek Cohesive Voice

Three days a week, freshman Arthur Jackson sits in a lecture hall with 200 other students. But it is not until he returns to the African American theme floor in Unit 1 that he feels at home.

In his hometown of Oakland, Jackson was one student in a high school that was 80 percent black.

But Berkeley is a different world. Out of a class of 3,700, Jackson is one of 109 black freshmen-a number that fills about 10 rows in a lecture hall.

And that number is falling. Black enrollment plummeted to an all-time low this fall, continuing a downward trend since the affirmative action ban took effect in the fall of 1998.

That year, UC Berkeley enrolled 122 black freshmen, down from 252 in 1997.

This seven-year dropoff in numbers has led the black student community to learn how to cope with increasing strains on their student groups and how to face the campus at large-issues they revisited during this week's Kappa events, which were meant to draw awareness to the black student community.

Students echoed several concerns about building a cohesive voice among a dwindling number of students and increasing black representation on campus throughout the week's events, including a debate Wednesday night.

"Those who care and want to make change lack a collective vision," says UC Berkeley senior LaSaunda Yvette Tate. "(The Black Recruitment and Retention Center), the fraternities, the sororities-they're great avenues for change, but there is no collectivity in educating the public."

UC Berkeley student Arlena Ann Ford disagrees, saying that it would lend weight to misconceptions about black students.

"A united black community perpetuates stereotypes," she says. "People are told that they're not black enough or that they're too black."

Indeed, black students say it becomes harder to fight stereotypes with less enrollment each year.

"As a black student, lots of people automatically assume that you're either militant and against everything else going on at Cal, or that you're a student athlete," says Obi Amajoyi, coordinator of Kappa Alpha Psi, a black fraternity which organized the week's events.

Earlier this semester, Jackson was with a group of friends at an off-campus party when he said a white female turned to his friend and said, "We don't dance with your kind."

Jackson says this is not an

uncommon event, and that he often feels overlooked as part of the small number of black students on campus.

"Lots of times you're walking down Sproul and people don't hand you flyers that they are handing other people, or you walk into the res halls and people look at you like you don't go here," Jackson says. "It takes a lot to get past that."

With the classroom comes expectations that all black students will represent the viewpoints of the black community. As the only black student in her anthropology section, UC Berkeley senior Josie Hyman felt a huge burden to be a standard-bearer for her race, as her GSI tossed around the N-word in discussions about graffiti and marginalized communities.

"She turned to me to say sorry, but now that's a lot more pressure on me to account for her ignorance," Hyman says. "It's kind of like working two jobs -it's that in addition to worrying about the class and the work."

Although this year represents the lowest black student enrollment in at least the last two decades, students turned a hopeful eye toward the future.

Amajoyi says Kappa week was organized in part to help dispel stereotypes, but more so to communicate to the public that the voice of the black community, although smaller, will not be muffled.

"It is our duty and responsibility to reach out to current students and give back," says senior Teyren Brown. "It's not enough to excel while we're here, we need to look to the past and the future."

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