Diversity at OU

Diversity at OU
By Dara Hollingsworth


I decided to look at diversity efforts in higher education. Most of us can probably agree the OU is not the most diverse school in the country. According to the Princeton Review, 74.4 percent of the student population at OU is Caucasian. By comparison, just 57.6 percent of students are Caucasian at Temple University which ranks Temple fifth in the diversity rankings of the Princeton Review.

I started to think that maybe the OU and Temple’s diversity numbers have something to do with the population of the states or cities they are located in. According to 2006 Census data, 78.3 percent of Oklahomans are white and 82. 4 percent of Norman residents are white. Temple is located in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. The census data says that 85.7 percent of Pennsylvania residents are white, but only 45 percent of Philadelphia residents are white.

This led me to start thinking about the public relations efforts of OU. I’m sure that I’m not the only one that has noticed that OU makes an effort to include minority students in the pictures on the Web site and in pictures in the information they distribute. OU’s prospective students Web site also has a page that is all about diversity at OU. The Web page talks about diversity enrichment programs at OU. I looked for a similar page about diversity on the Temple Web site, but I was unable to find anything. It seems that, by using some PR tactics, OU is making an effort to become more diverse, but when we’ll see the results of those tactics remains to be seen.