Native American students face big hurdles

While Penn seeks to boost applications from Native Americans, campus issues complicate the problem. Both the Admissions Office and the University's tiny Native American population face the challenge of attracting more Native American students to Penn. But once such students arrive at Penn, many of them choose not to identify themselves with the Native American community. In fact, the campus' only Native American organization, the undergraduate group Six Directions, is "not 100 percent functional" due to a lack of participation, according to United Minorities Council Chairperson Temitope Koledoye. Native Americans make up 0.7 percent of the U.S. population but hold only 0.4 percent of all degrees in higher education. But of the 21,643 undergraduate and graduate students at Penn, only 55 -- or 0.0025 percent -- identify themselves as Native American. Many of these students will have no ties to their ethnic heritage, according to sixth-year Education graduate student Bryan Brayboy, a Native American who is completing a dissertation on Native Americans in higher education. "If things hold true, maybe half of these people are those who have cultural ties to being American Indians," he said. Brayboy led Six Directions until last year, when the bulk of the members graduated. There is some good news for Native Americans, however. According to a 1993 National Collegiate Athletic Association report on graduation rates at Penn, nine out of 10 such students successfully completed a degree at the University between 1984 and 1988. During the same period, other schools with larger Native American populations, such as Dartmouth College and Cornell University, have faced high Native American drop-out rates. The low number of Native Americans on campus contributed to the breakdown of Six Directions, according to Brayboy. But the lack of a collective identity keeps Native Americans from forming such coalitions, he added. "I think African Americans believe in what's uniquely African-American, Brayboy said. "They can agree on that. But not for Native Americans. Things that seem uniquely Indian often aren't." There are more than 500 tribes in the United States. Native Americans strongly identify with their own tribe, rather than the entire community. Such issues were typified by an event early last semester. The UMC and the Greenfield Intercultural Center invited all self-identified Native American freshmen to a luncheon. No one showed up. Native American students said few of them have strong ties to their culture. College freshman Sunshine Archambault, who comes from the Pine Ridge reservation in South Dakota, said she knows of only two people at Penn -- herself and Brayboy -- who "have grown up with the Indian ways and know the cultural ways, mannerisms." "People claim Native American ancestry, but it's not their religion, it's not their culture," she said. To increase Native American awareness, however, there's only one solution, Brayboy said: "Numbers must increase." The Admissions Office expanded its Native American recruitment program last year with a target pilot program inviting five high school students -- including Archambault -- and their guidance counselors from Pine Ridge. Last March, Admissions Dean Lee Stetson said the University will expand its recruitment program for Native Americans to New York, New Mexico, Arizona, Oklahoma and North Carolina. This year, Admissions targeted a new reservation in South Dakota and added five more high schools to the recruiting list, according to Regional Director of Admissions Leslie Smith. Smith described this recruiting expansion as the beginning of "our efforts in building a Native American community at Penn." "It's a real hand-hold approach, continually talking to students one-on-one, encouraging them to apply," Smith said.

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