Diversity Scam: Selling the Farm and Livestock to Pay the Mortgage and Bills

Having turned itself into a Hispanic-Serving Institution, Whittier College must maintain a minimum 25% Hispanic enrollment, and fully one-half of these Hispanic students must be from families living below the official poverty level, to receive millions in largely unrestricted federal Title V funding.

This website has learned of working poor Hispanic students recruited by Whittier College, who drop out after an academic year or two, saddled with student loans that thwart attempts to complete their higher education. But Whittier College, whether such students succeed or not, so long as new students can be recruited to take the place of the most recent diversity scam victims, will receive student loan and Title V monies.

From MySpace:

"The first thing i noticed when i started [at Whittier College]...is that there is not to many hispanics even though [the College] insists there is. The majority of the school is White. There is hispanics but i honestly haven't seen to many."

To whittiergate:

"Most...Hispanic kids at Whittier...are pretty white-washed and are nowhere near the poverty level."

From whittiergate Conversation with Bart Brown:

whittiergate 2: "Rogelio Chavez entered Whittier College, and Roger Lodge left Whittier"

More to whittiergate:

"...a mexican girl on my (Whittier College dorm) floor was thrilled when she saw the word 'spic' written on her door."

"as most Hispanic kids saw how Whittier sucked, they transferred out"

"Study abroad? Only 10% of Whittier students studying abroad are Hispanic."

"poor kids feel alienated, have a hard time adjusting and end up transferring out"

Whittier College graduates, according to U. S. News, carry with them, along with their diploma, the 3rd highest debt burden of all liberal arts colleges in the United States. The logical pursuit of higher education by Hispanic and all working poor students, is to adjust to the demands of college and satisfy required courses at a community college, work and save money, then transfer to either subsidized state or public ivy universities to complete their higher education.

By practically reinventing itself as a Hispanic-Serving Institution, Whittier College has placed itself in the company of not first or even second tier private liberal arts colleges, much less of public ivy, but rather of state universities and

even community colleges. Looking at a self-reported application acceptance rate of practically 80%, and a retention rate Whittier College refers to as an area in which it’s improving, diversity recruitment appears to be a short-term business decision in neither students’ nor the College’s long-term best interests. Obviously, the self-created need to now maintain a fixed percentage of Hispanic and poor Hispanic students at Whittier College, puts pressures on the College to be less than objective about either such students’ best interests or academic and other standards.

Not surprisingly, Whittier College President Sharon Herzberger talks, when SAT test scores at the College are relatively low, about measures other than standardized testing to gauge a student’s probability of success in college, and diversity is not only promoted by but is woven into the very philosophy, and financial planning, of Whittier College.

To whittiergate:

"[My] class had the lowest high school gpa's... making the campus more diverse."

From studentsreview.com:

"Although [Whittier College] prides itself on diversity, there is a feeling that it is crammed down the throats of its students."

"Academic achievement is not a big factor in getting accepted (into Whittier College)."

"...everyone knows that Whittier isn't as hard to get into as a lot of other schools."

This website has learned of white middle class student families, living in predominantly Hispanic communities, being told by Whittier College spokespersons that their child would be classified as a diversity student by the College. Evidently, racial quotas pose threats to not only standards, but also to ethics.

The original issue giving rise to what the federal government has now responded to with a half-billion dollars and counting spending spree on Hispanic-Serving Institutions, is so far removed from Whittier College's exploitation of Hispanic students that the College's ethics have been brought into question from the moment the decision was made to reinvent Whittier as a H-S I.

In a case before the Texas Supreme Court, MALDEF represented the petitioners in LULAC, Et Al v. Richards, Et Al (1987). MALDEF failed to convince the Court that the State had discriminated against border area colleges. This initial defeat, however, was only one, and a seminal, battle.

Vice-President for Policy and Research for Excellence in Education, Deborah A. Santiago, explains that "...the invention of Hispanic-Serving Institutions as an institutional classification is fairly recent. In the mid-80's, educational leaders and policymakers saw value in identifying institutions that enrolled large concentrations of Latino students." The purposes of H-S I's Santiago emphasizes are to target funding to improve the quality of education at those schools with "large concentrations" of Hispanic students, and to make H-S I's more affordable than other similar institutions. Clearly, at Whittier College, the purposes of
H-S I's have less to do with Hispanic student and society's interests than with the College's bottom line. Whittier College doesn't even recommend student loans with the lowest interest rates to its student families.

From MySpace:

"...i have never heard of H-S I. as far as i know i didn't get accepted into Whittier because of that. i decided to come to Whittier because since it is a private school they help a lot more with financial aid"

To whittiergate:

"[Whittier College] would give [ethnic students] an endowment... The students would think it was a good thing, more free money, but...they only make things worse" "Say you got $15,000 from Whittier, and happened to get another 15k from somewhere else...Whittier will retract their scholarship"

"parents call [Whittier College Financial Aid] crying"

"...parents like mine" are "clueless of which loan to take out," they don't "know anything about...interest rates..."

Question: "So you're telling me that you left Whittier College after one academic year, and you owe Whittier College $10,000.00, plus interest, and you owe lenders $20,000.00, plus interest?"
Answer: "Yes" (H-S I student from Latino family living below poverty level)

"I was thinking of being a RA, so that my dorm fee of $10k would be reduced...but...Whittier would just deduct...10k from my other awards and I would still have to shell out the 10k somehow"

"She (a teaching credential program transfer student) was Hispanic...and...low income. ...Whittier didn't offer her any free money"

The separate and unequal Texas border schools' enrollments, giving rise to today's federal H-S I program, were above 60% Latino. The first federal H-S I eligibility rules required a minimum 40% Hispanic enrollment, with numerous additional provisions related to family income, being a first generation college student, and so on. As Latino political influence has waxed, the H-S I requirements have been "streamlined" so that now a just 25% Hispanic enrollment is deemed to constitute a "critical mass", indicating a school is in the process of becoming an institution with a large concentration of Hispanic students, and the earlier additional provisions have been largely deleted. It's at this point that it became feasible for Whittier College to reinvent itself as a H-S I, if Whittier's decision-makers put economic pressure before ethics.

whittiergate has confirmed that the percentage of Hispanics enrolled at Whittier College now and recently is significantly lower than it has been in the past. This fact flies in the face of the H-S I program's intentions: a 25% Hispanic enrollment is used to define the 'threshold' of a school in the process of becoming largely-Hispanic, does not define a largely-Hispanic school. When Whittier College's Hispanic enrollment as a percentage is significantly lower in 2007 than in 1997, then how can 25% now be accepted in Whittier's case as the required H-S I threshold?

According to Jane M. Rifkin, published in the May-October 1997 issue of Hispanic Times, Whittier College's Hispanic enrollment was 5.5% in 1970 (no Hispanic-Serving Institution money to be scammed), and 34% in 1997 (when Hispanic-Serving Institution money was available, and when Whittier College was trying hard to shake off the negative Watergate scandal-Nixon resignation era impact on enrollment, needed students, income). Evidently, once Whittier College realized it could get away with just the 25% threshold as a continuing H-S I-qualifying percentage, Whittier's Hispanic enrollment declined to as close to that percentage as possible on a continuing basis. The U. S. Department of Education puts Whittier College's self-reported 2005 Hispanic percentage of undergraduates at 26.67%.

The unwitting Tio Tomas in this history is Martin Ortiz, Director of the former Whittier College Center for Mexican-American Affairs. Mr. Ortiz suffered through a Whittier College program in 1948, when "no barber would touch his head, no restaurant would give him a table, no landlord would rent an apartment to Ortiz." On the Whittier College campus then, "...his skin color, his last name...kept him from being accepted by other students." Jane Rifkin wrote in 1997 that Ortiz had "recently lured 700 Latino students and their parents to Whittier College for an afternoon meeting and reception." The deluded believer leading lambs to slaughter. To judge by Whittier College's H-S I minimum requirement-skimming Hispanic enrollment percentage these days, or threshold fraud, Martin Ortiz was evidently held to be overzealous.

Why is Whittier College being granted H-S I Title V funding intended for schools becoming largely Hispanic, when Whittier College is not becoming largely Hispanic?

Whittier College is maintaining just the minimum 25% Hispanic enrollment necessary to receive federal
H-S I Title V funds. The average Hispanic enrollment at H-S I schools is over 50%. Meanwhile, HBCU's (Historically Black Colleges and Universities) and TCU's (Tribal Colleges and Universities) are not increasing in number, as H-S I's are, and face obstacles removed for H-S I's, nor are TCU's or HBCU's operated under Title V, further diminishing their relative impacts. The Los Angeles basin has large African- and Native American among many other ethnic student pools, but it's Hispanics for whom the federal government is opening the Title V spigot for now.

Robert Rodriguez wrote not long ago for the Los Angeles Times about multiculturalism in the U. K. Rodriguez quotes Trevor Philips, the son of Afro-Caribbean parents in the U. K. and Chairman of the Home Office-funded Commission For Racial Equality, “We have turned something very positive 20 to 25 years ago into something negative…that holds back the process of integration rather than encourages it.”

Multicultural models encourage separate cultures by “making it appear advantageous to stay different”, in reality pit ethnic groups against one another while making the white majority resentful.

When is Whittier College, the home of an annual Martin Luther King oratorical contest, going to get that it really isn’t the color of your skin but the content of your character that’s important?

Where do 'role models', like Tony Villaraigosa, go to school?

See the answer at Whittier College Diversity Scam Applied to Law School Backfires

Diversity? Bad science.

See why Stanford and Cal Tech among other better schools challenge the 'Statement on Diversity' issued by the WASC (Western Association of Schools and Colleges, the organization that accredits western U. S. schools, Whittier College among them)...

From the National Association of Scholars:
Is Campus Racial Diversity Correlated with Educational Benefits? http://www.nas.org/reports/umich_diversity/umich_uncorrelate.pdf

Affirmative Action and the Degradation of Academic Integrity
http://m3peeps.org/aadai.htm