WHAT PART OF DIVERSITY DOES THE UNIVERSITY NOT UNDERSTAND?

By Bidal Agüero

Our new pulse of the Hispanic Community question of the week asked about recently named Texas Tech Chancellor Kent Hance and his concern or lack of concern for the Hispanic Community. The question pointed out that “To date, Chancellor Kent Hance has not had any type of special meeting with Lubbock Hispanics to discuss any special needs or to investigate ways to address special problems that Hispanic students encounter at Tech.”

We asked “Do you feel this shows a lack of concern from Texas Tech and what do you think should happen”

Texas Tech presently has a student enrollment of 28,007. Of these only 3,217 or 4.7% is Hispanic.

When we asked the University’s to tell about their efforts in the Hispanic community. In their response we were surprised to find out that in reality the Chancellor’s office is apparently misinformed about the percentage of Hispanics that attend Tech.

The office claims, “the Hispanic student population is 11.49% of the total student population. In the Fall 06 semester, there were 3217 Hispanic students enrolled, an increase of 4.69% from Fall 2005. There has been an increase in Hispanic student enrollment at Texas Tech every year since 1999.”

Despite this inaccuracy claiming an 11.49% Hispanic enrollment, the Chancellor’s office claims various efforts to increase enrollment. They say, “the number of Hispanic students that are retained has improved steadily over the last few years as has the number of Hispanic faculty. In fact, Hispanic faculty hold Chair positions in Academic Departments, Associate Deans positions, and are represented in the President and Provost offices.”

The Chancellor’s office states that “there are several ongoing initiatives to further ...