Olivia Cohen, Editor-in-Chief (left); Ruth Johnson, Managing Editor & Designer (center); and Elizabeth Rymut, Managing Editor (right). | Columbia Chronicle
Olivia Cohen, Editor-in-Chief (left); Ruth Johnson, Managing Editor & Designer (center); and Elizabeth Rymut, Managing Editor (right). | Columbia Chronicle
The Editorial Board of the Columbia Chronicle at Columbia College Chicago wrote an inflammatory editorial noting 70% of those students dropping out of the school were students of color and it is due to the school having too many whites.
“[T]he answer is simple. Columbia is overwhelmingly white, and minority students do not feel comfortable, represented or heard,” the editorial board wrote.
“The real issue is that we have a predominantly white institution with an overwhelmingly white faculty. White professors cannot relate to the students of color they teach, and many carry their implicit biases into classrooms filled with white students.”
Among the issues outlined in the editorial include “a risk of indulging in microaggressions or more overt racism. A single Black student in a class can become the unofficial representative of an entire community, tokenized by the majority group who may have limited access to blackness.”
According to the National Center for Education Statistics, (NCES), Columbia College Chicago's Fall 2021 class was 47% white, 24% Hispanic, 15% black and 4% Asian.
NCES reports that Columbia Chicago's six-year graduation rate is 65% for Asians, 57% for whites, 41% for Hispanics and 38% for black students.
The “simple answer” offered by the Editorial Board overlooks historic failure rates of black students across the state.
According to a Prairie State Wire analysis of the U.S. Department of Education, data 62.5% of black students flunked out of Illinois’ state-subsidized four-year universities in 2017.
“Over the six-year period from 2011-17, only 37.5% of black students enrolled in Illinois’ four-year schools managed to successfully complete four years of coursework,” the analysis reads.
As of 2019, only three schools graduated more black students than those who could not perform to standard. Those schools include the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (78% graduation rate), the University of Illinois at Springfield (59%) and Illinois State University (52%).
At Northeastern Illinois University (NEIU) in Chicago (8% graduation rate) and Chicago State University (11%) 9 of 10 black students who enrolled flunked out.
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