Outreach projects reach near, not far enough

Thursday, November 12, 1998

Outreach projects reach near, not far enough

DIVERSITY: Students’ struggles

to overcome adversity unnoticed by current university
programs

By Zuhairah Scott

Over the weekend I went to visit Shataka, my best friend since
the seventh grade. During my stay we reminisced about how Shataka
and I had our first kiss on the same night, and how we used to make
demo tapes with her boom box in hopes that one day we would be
discovered as the next Whitney Houston and Janet Jackson.

We laughed and talked for hours, although when it was time for
me to go back to UCLA, an uncomfortable feeling came over me and a
million questions plagued my mind. Why was I the only
African-American student from my high school that came to UCLA? Why
didn’t Shataka go on to attend a University of California
school?

I couldn’t dismiss these mental quandaries by simply stating
that she did not have the academic ability or desire to achieve at
a school like UCLA.

Although Shataka was not in the honors program, she could
articulate and critique any argument posited, and she read more
books in her spare time than I did in all my high school years. The
barriers to her academic success had less to do with her individual
academic capabilities and more to do with social and political
environment and the inherent inequities embedded within the public
educational system.

The fact that Shataka’s mother never went to college and that
she was discouraged by college counselors to even consider the
thought of college played more of a role in explaining her level of
academic attainment than her own intellectual limitations.

The barriers that prevented Shataka from coming to a school like
UCLA are the same barriers that prevent hundreds of students of
color from achieving this goal. Unfortunately, it is often assumed
that students who do not make it to "elite" universities like UCLA
only fail to do so because of some deficiency in their academic
preparedness or ability. One seldom looks at the plethora of
social, political and economic factors that hinder and discourage
the academic achievement of disadvantaged students.

Tracking, testing bias, low parental educational attainment and
socioeconomic status often come in second when considering the
academic ability, desire and potential to achieve that a student
possesses.

For years, UCLA has reinforced this flawed reasoning by
attempting to address the lack of academic success in disadvantaged
communities with a unilateral approach to outreach that solely
focuses on improving the information provided to students about the
admissions process and the requirements needed to become eligible
for admissions.

This year UCLA’s approach to outreach has been somewhat
broadened for an "elite" select group of students. These students
are provided with more individual assistance than others with
mediocre grade point averages.

All of these approaches fail to address accurately the root of
the problem. None of them even consider or mention the vast amount
of social, political and personal dilemmas that contribute to the
lack of academic success within disadvantaged communities.

The level of academic achievement among marginalized students is
a multifaceted problem that can only effectively be addressed by
using a holistic approach to outreach in which all students who
have the desire and potential to achieve are provided with the
opportunity and resources to do so.

A holistic approach is one that empowers students to increase
their academic, social, personal, political and community
development by challenging them to take a self-determinant approach
to all aspects of their education. The use of a holistic approach
originated with the student-initiated retention projects within the
Student Retention Center (SRC).

Currently, student-initiated outreach projects within the
Community Programs Office (CPO) utilize this holistic approach to
outreach to serve disadvantaged students. These projects have also
begun to establish collaborative efforts with the communities that
they serve to incorporate them in the struggle to achieve academic
success. The CPO projects facilitate the implementation of this
holistic approach through peer counseling, tutoring and mentoring
­ none of which plays an integral or collaborative role in the
university’s outreach efforts.

Despite this fact, the university has failed to see the value of
this type of approach to outreach and has significantly underfunded
and delegitamized the success of these projects.

Instead of building upon outreach projects such as the African
Education Project (AEP), which has provided Saturday School courses
to poor children within Compton for the past 25 years, the
university has developed new programs targeted toward an "elite"
group of students. In order to participate in these programs,
students must have a certain GPA and be enrolled in certain
courses.

This outreach approach is hierarchical and exclusive in the
sense that it provides more services and assistance to students
with high GPAs and mere informational services for students with
mediocre GPAs. This form of outreach is not only antithetical to
the term "outreach" itself, but it is also detrimental to the
students that outreach programs are designed to serve. This speaks
to the university’s failure to effectively address and understand
the problem of educational equality and the barriers to higher
education that disadvantaged students face.

The university does include some means of addressing the
systematic and institutional problems (such as tracking) that
hinder the academic success of students. But because of the
complexity of educational inequality within the public school
system, this type of school-centered reform will take years before
it can substantively increase the students of color within the UC
system.

Nowhere in UCLA’s immediate approach to outreach is there
mention of providing a holistic approach nor is there evidence of
an approach that effectively serves all students who have the
desire to participate.

The fact that the student-initiated outreach programs within the
Community Programs Office (CPO) provide the university with the
opportunity to achieve these goals, yet have received less than 1
percent of the over $7 million in public funding allocated to UCLA
for outreach efforts, speaks to the university’s commitment to
providing equal educational opportunity to all students who desire
to achieve a higher education.

As a publicly funded university, UCLA has the responsibility to
develop outreach programs that effectively address and strengthen
the students and the communities in which they live.

In order to most successfully serve disadvantaged students and
achieve equality in educational opportunity, outreach efforts must
focus on each aspect of the student’s experience that effect their
academic success and must ensure that all students with the desire
and potential to achieve a higher education also have the
opportunity.

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