By Yamiche Alcindor

In the 1970s, a racially discriminatory sign aired Georgetown’s race relation problems. Now, thirty years later, as the university celebrates several strides toward racial equality and acceptance, blacks and whites agree that the school’s student racial groups remain divided.

Valerie Lancaster Beal will never forget the dark sign hanging on the auditorium of Georgetown University’s McDonough gym that read “N***er Coach Go Home.” It was the 1970s and Georgetown’s majority black basketball team and black head coach made it an anomaly among other universities.

To Beal, then a young African America woman sporting an afro, the sign was a testament to the separation and racial tensions on campus.  “It was a very separate but equal type of environment,” said Beal of the Georgetown she remembers. “They [whites] did their own things and we [blacks] did their own thing.”
Now more than  30 years later, despite significant academic and institutional gains, students, current and past, say  students  remain self-segregated.

 Scott Steadman, a white male, is a senior at Georgetown.  “My first impression was that relations were not very well established between the two groups [black and whites], though they were not hostile,” Steadman said of his freshman year. He now serves as an executive board member of the Student Commission for Unity, a research project that presents recommendations to Georgetown University’s Student Association and to the administration to increase diversity on campus. 

 “I have never witnessed any blatant discrimination against black students in any of my classes,” said Steadman, “although to be fair I am a math major, and there are no black math majors in my year.”
Despite Steadman and Beal’s feelings, Georgetown is institutionally a much different university than it was 30 years ago. Today, the institution has an African American Studies minor; African History counts toward the university’s graduation requirements, and black authors speak and teach at the university. All are achievements that Beal said she remembers unsuccessfully fighting for while a student at the university.
 When Professor John C. Pfordresher began teaching at Georgetown in 1973, it was one of hundreds changing its admission policies to include women and minorities students.

 “The university in general has undergone a transformation and all of it for the better,” Pfordresher said. “One sees it simply walking across campus. Students, faculty, [and] staff are from virtually every imaginable ethnic background and from all over the world. I think that by-in-large attitudes are of respect, openness, and a pride that the university is the kind of world institution that it now is.”

Once an institution populated by only white upper class northern America males, each Georgetown class is now home to an average 90 blacks out of   about 1,500 students. Beale was one of the nearly 50 black students in her graduating class of Georgetown in 1976, she recalled.  

In 2001,  Black Enterprise Magazine listed Georgetown as the ninth  best college for black students. Other schools that   list of “Top 50 Colleges for Black Students,” included number seven Stanford University with 6.9 percent black students, number eight Colombia University with 7 percent black, and number 12 Duke University with 10 percent black. The top six schools, including nearby Howard University, were all historically black schools.

However, while no racially charged signs hang outside McDonough these days and the number of undergraduate black students has doubled from 200 to roughly 400 in the last 30  years, Beal and others believe that Georgetown’s student relations are still in need of social integration.
“The relationship between blacks and whites [at Georgetown] has not changed in 30 years,” Beal said. “Then again, I don’t find that society is very integrated.”

Back then, Beal was on her way to becoming the second African American to graduate from Georgetown with a bachelor’s degree in economics.

Now an investment banker and educational consultant, Beal still remembers the disappointment she felt when her professors and students would be surprised at her intelligence. “The whole surprise that I was smart was pretty pervasive,” she said of what she felt was common reaction of her professors and classmates that a black woman could do well in economics.

Professor Pfordresher, now a Georgetown English professor, recalled his days as a student at Georgetown in the 1960s. “I recall a student body, for the college, which was entirely white male,” he said. “The university still felt like an institution of the South.  People who clean up, who cooked, who did yard work were all black and in cheap uniforms.  There were women who washed the blackboards in the classroom between class sessions . . .  in this kind of context the idea of black students would have seemed strange.”

However, a decade later, the idea of black students attending Georgetown was still foreign to some.

 Whites “were as shocked to see us as we were to see them,” Beal said of the Georgetown she remembers. “White students would say that the only black people they knew were their domestics who worked in their homes.”

In the past three decades, as blacks have become part of the student population rather than just the university’s workforce, the number of blacks attending Georgetown  has climbed. Around the 1980s the percentage of blacks peaked at between  6 and  7 percent and has remained consistent since. According to Professor Raymond Kemp, a professor of theology at Georgetown who teaches about religion and race, the number of blacks has fluctuated from 6.5-6.7percent of the school’s population in the fifteen years he’s been here.

 Rosemary Kilkenny, Georgetown’s Vice President of Institutional Diversity and Affirmation Action, said that during the same time the percentages of Asians has consistently risen while the percentage of Latinos has fluctuated.

Dennis Williams, the director for Georgetown’s Center for Multicultural Equity and Access, pointed to the university’s finances to help understand Georgetown’s current 6.7 percent population of blacks.   He believes that Georgetown must admit a certain number of wealthy students in order to continue paying for the university’s expenses. Unlike universities like Princeton, Georgetown relies on the tuition of its students.
“If we don’t get X number of tuition payers, we can’t pay for things so Georgetown has to maintain a certain number of rich students,” he said.  The result of this financial dilemma, according to Williams: “Some of the snobbiness and elitism that happens at Georgetown is because we literally can’t afford to do better.” Williams also said that not all minorities who are admitted are lower  or middle class students.  
Students attending the university these days point to the self-segregation in Georgetown’s cafeteria, at Georgetown’s parties, and in the overall student life at the university as the deeper problem of race relations.
Carolyn Chambers, an African-American freshman, said she instantly felt the racial division when she entered campus last  fall.  “Some white people are a little standoffish,” she said. “It doesn’t really seem like they want to speak to you despite seeing you in class everyday and despite you making friendly gestures to them.”
 Despite the unspoken distance between blacks and whites described by Chambers, she said her first semester at the university was almost entirely free of discrimination.

Steadman, a white male, recalled his personal epiphany regarding race at Georgetown.
“My freshman year, I hosted a good friend of mine who had been accepted to GU and was trying to decide where to go for school,” he said. “He was black and was traveling to campus as part of Hoya Saxa Weekend a weekend where accepted minority students are brought up to spend a weekend as an introduction to campus life. My friend told me that the only time during the entire program in which he was exposed to white students on campus was when he was on my floor visiting with my predominantly white floor mates, and staying with my white roommate and I.

“It, for the first time, convinced me that there was institutional self-segregation of the black and Latino communities at GU because, from their first exposure to campus, they were put in an environment designed to help them create self-sustaining groups, rather than expose themselves and being forced to adapt.”
Chambers believes the future of Georgetown lies within the palms of its population.
  “If we could get the students and the faculty that we have now to change their ways of thinking as far as interacting with other races academically and socially that would be the ultimate goal," Chambers said. "Until then, I think that all other little changes won’t do much."

Steadman agrees. “I would like to see even more social opportunities for intermingling,” he said. “I think expanding programs such as YLEAD [Young Leaders For Diversity in Action], and pushing for white membership in organizations such as SOCA [Students of Color Alliance] and various cultural groups on campus could increase the dialogue between students, which will hopefully trickle down into personal relationships and effective group dynamic transformation.”

 Several faculty members have been charged with improving race relations and racial representation.
One is Father Ray Kemp. His course, “The Struggle,” asks students to speak openly and honestly about racial issues at Georgetown. “I think there’s a reason why the river that divided the union from the confederacy runs next to Georgetown,” he said.

“The aftereffects of slavery are still very much with us and anyone who knows DC feels it. It’s also still present on this campus.” To Kemp, Georgetown’s history, which includes the use of slaves, has left ghosts of racism that continue to impact the way blacks are viewed on campus.
One top administrator is a woman who was appointed in 2006 to  combat Georgetown’s 21st century issues of diversity. “I would say that my primary interest is ensuring that we have a diverse student body here at Georgetown in a variety of majors. We admit a lot more students that actually show up,” said Kilkenny whose position as vice president of diversity leaves her responsible for maintaining an open and integrated university.  “Second, I would like to see a campus climate where we have greater acceptance for all students so regardless of who you are, you are valued and considered to have a legitimate place in this institution.”
In reaction to student complaints of self segregation, Kilkenny proposed several initiatives. “Ideally students have to take ownership,” she said. “As administrators we can create opportunities for dialogues.  Ultimately, I think it’s going to take a concerted effort.”

”Were I a student though, I’d be looking for way to bring students together on the basis of shared interest rather than race,” said Pfordresher. “In this matter, I think it’s got in the end to be the black students who wish to be more completely integrated with others and perhaps this will take some time.”
As the years continue, Kilkenny believes Georgetown has the potential to be a model institution of diversity, she said.

 “My very positive assessment suggests that I think the university is doing quite a good job,” said Pfordresher.
Kemp agrees.  He believes that Georgetown President Jack DeGioia has made some good moves,, including  pushing Georgetown, once an institution maintained by slaves, to abandon its often racist attitudes, he said.

Some believe the institution’s future brightens with each class of student activists that asks the university to be better. During Beal’s days at Georgetown, she remembered a vibrant socially active student population.
“I led demonstrations,” Beal said. “We had huge demonstrations in Healy trying to get black authors. We had a sit-in about African history. Trying to get Georgetown’s curriculum to change has been a 30 year process.”
 Said Steadman: “Georgetown graduates are the type of people that change the world, but unless we are convinced that it needs changing, we cannot be proper and effective advocates for that change.”