Walking across campus for the first time, Darryl David '09 heard the whispers of his white peers penetrate his headphones. "Wow, there's a black kid," one said. Surrounded by a sea of high-achieving white women in her freshman year, Claudia Martinez '07 felt overwhelmingly inferior, triggering what she described as a three-year isolation from the larger campus, one she did not break out of until her final year at Brandeis.

And Ria Roberts '10, who is afraid to sit among the largely white crowds in a University dining hall, usually eats by herself in her room. "I guess I'm used to being alone," she said.

These stories lean to the extreme, but they underscore the feelings of isolation and marginalization that many racial-minority students say dominate their experiences at Brandeis. To their small numbers, racial tension, generally driven by socioeconomic forces, lingers barely visible beneath the surface of the campus' social fabric.

This tension is faint, racial-minority students say, but apparent in the strange looks, subtle remarks and misconceptions they often encounter. Surrounded by white students who usually come from more affluent backgrounds, confronted with the campus' overwhelming Jewish identity and usually lacking peers and role models with whom to identify, these students say they often feel like outsiders.

"Sometimes, I feel like we're not part of the Brandeis community, because we're so afraid of being rejected that we stick to ourselves," said G. Athena Oliver-Osbourne '10, a dark-skinned student of Caribbean descent who says white students always assume she is black.

Mingh Daniel '10, a black student from the Bronx, said, "I feel like there are two Brandeises going on at Brandeis, two experiences that are missing each other."

At the same time, however, racial-minority students achieve high levels of academic success here compared to peer institutions. A plethora of resources, support structures and student clubs help the growing number of minority students overcome the intimidation they initially experience, with many of them eventually feeling grateful for their time at Brandeis.

"This year has been really good," said Martinez, who will graduate in May. "I learned to value and accept myself, not as inferior but as different."

About 15.6 percent of undergraduates here identify themselves as racial minorities, a modest increase from 14.4 percent seven years ago, according to University enrollment data. Blacks and Hispanics matriculate in particularly small numbers-2005 was the first year since 1991 and only the second year on record that enrollment of either group exceeded 100 students.

As the University acknowledged in a recent self study, gains in minority enrollment here have lagged behind peer institutions. But like the rest of the higher-education world, Brandeis is in a competitive frenzy to recruit more minority students.[See sidebar.]

As that enrollment grows slowly, minority students here continue to experience a strange dichotomy borne by their small numbers: The same academic and cultural resources at Brandeis that help them be successful also serve to isolate and segregate them further from the campus.

"The way our campus is, people that are not of the majority feel like they need to find their own community because they don't fit in," said Christina Khemraj '09, the Student Union's senator for racial-minority students.

Look a little deeper, and it becomes clear that a conversation about breaking that pattern has been brewing on campus. But it's a conversation some minority students say is absent of their white peers and only seems to capture the campus' attention when racial tension hidden beneath the surface occasionally boils over. [See sidebar.]

The nature of that conversation is a matter of dispute among many students of color and white students. And that the Jewish majority at Brandeis is far more accustomed to life as a religious minority complicates matters further.

"For many people, Brandeis University is the most Jewish place they've ever been," Rabbi Allan Lehmann, the Jewish chaplain, said in a phone interview. "People who are used to living as a minority, who find themselves in a majority, it may not be easy or obvious to figure out what kind of adjustments to make."

Lonely in small numbers

Darryl David '09 was born in Guyana, a small country in South America. Amanda Okafor '09 was born in Nigeria. Both moved to the United States at a young age and essentially grew up as Americans. David, raised by a struggling single mother, grew up in some of the poorest neighborhoods in Brooklyn, where gangs and drug-dealing were the norm. Okafor, born to a lawyer and a hotel entrepreneur, moved to an affluent suburb of Los Angeles.

Their skin is the same color: black. But the ways they have each experienced Brandeis could hardly differ more, a disparity that underscores the central role that socioeconomic background plays in determining how students fit into the campus' social makeup.

Like many racial minorities, David largely sticks with other minorities. Not that he wanted it that way, he said. As a former president of the Brandeis Black Students Organization, he tried reaching out to other student groups made up of his white peers. But those attempts, he said, were largely spurned.

"I don't want to say it's because I'm black and I wear the do-rag, but maybe they are scared away by my image," he said.

But for Okafor, Brandeis hardly required an adjustment. She grew up surrounded largely by white friends. Now, she's the only black member of the campus' social programming group, Student Events.

"I look for friends," she said matter-of-factly. "I look for people who are like me, and more in their interests than what they look like."

With many racial-minority students coming from socioeconomic backgrounds more similar to David's than Okafor's, it's no surprise that in interviews with dozens of both current and former minority students, experiences like David's are far more common.

A 2001 senior survey puts some numbers to that gap. Only 34 percent of nonwhite students considered the statement, "I feel treated equally by others," to be "very true"-compared to 58 percent of white students-in the survey, cited in a 2002 Coexistence at Brandeis study. Similarly, only 42 percent of nonwhite seniors said they felt comfortable expressing their true identities, compared with 62 percent of whites.

For Martinez, those results would come as little surprise. Before she came to Brandeis, her SAT scores were a source of pride for her, she said. She had broken 1,000 on the test, a rarity in her neighborhood of Queens. Little did she know that the average SAT score among her entering classmates here was 1,342, and when early in her first year she overheard a group of white students complain about scoring in the 1,300s, she felt that pride-both in her SAT scores and her culture-shrink.

"From that moment on, I thought they were smarter than me and had a better sense of the world," said Martinez, who was born in Guatemala but grew up in Queens. "I took it as, 'They're better than me, and I need to be more like them.'"

Echoing a complaint of many minority students, she found few role models on campus.

"I don't see myself anywhere on this campus except in the custodial staff," she said. "And that does something to you."

The shell she retreated into and the time it took her to emerge is similar to-though a more extreme example of-the progression many minority students experience over their years here. Many seem to divide their own college experiences into three phases: They initially feel somewhat alienated; they surround themselves largely with other minority students; and eventually, most find some level of comfort and leave Brandeis with positive feelings about their college experience.

Adriani Leon '08 considered herself very talkative growing up in the Washington Heights neighborhood of Manhattan. But she felt the subtle looks from white students that many minorities describe-"What are you doing here?" is how she interpreted them-and being the only student of color in a classroom full of "private school kids" made raising her hand out of the question.

"I would not speak because I was afraid of sounding stupid. . Immediately, I knew that's not who I was," said Leon, a native of the Dominican Republic.

Like dozens of minorities, she found shelter at the Intercultural Center, exploring her own roots with other Hispanic students, despite coming to college with the intention of leaving those roots behind, she said. This year, after organizing the main event for Hispanic Heritage Month, she gained a surge of confidence when she realized she could have an impact on campus, "if only I would speak up."

Sitting in his room in Ridgewood, a flag of his native country of Guyana on the wall and a big tank housing a small bearded dragon on his shelf, David seemed to think that for all its challenges, Brandeis was worth it, if only because of the people here who did care about him-largely the various staff and faculty who have helped him at every turn.

"I've had the opportunity to live in a bad neighborhood, to see death, to see drugs and then to come here and be appreciated," he said.

It is much harder to draw generalizations about students of Asian descent here, primarily because they are enrolled in far greater numbers than blacks and Hispanics-in recent years, by as much as four to one. Asian Americans enroll in large numbers throughout higher education in this country, to the point that they are now considered to be overrepresented in student bodies, according to Dean of Admissions Gil Vilanueva and higher education experts.

Asian students here have greater strength in those numbers, some black and Hispanic students say. And while some Asian students actually relate experiences of isolation strikingly similar to those of their more underrepresented peers, many others-often those from higher socioeconomic backgrounds-give some credence to the strength-in-numbers argument.

"I don't think I classify myself as a minority," said Prerna Bhargava '07, an Indian student who grew up in Connecticut and is a co-chair of the Intercultural Center's programming board.

But one unique aspect of campus life here leads to some degree of alienation for nearly all racial-minority students: Brandeis' Jewish identity. From the very first day, minority students say, it lies at the center of their impressions of the University. Many were unaware of the extent to which Jewish culture dominates the campus before arriving. Even more were unfamiliar with Jewish practices.

"I didn't know Brandeis was a Jewish school until I got here," said Melissa Howard '10, a black student from Queens. Needless to say, it didn't take long for her to figure that out. Soon, she accompanied a friend to a Shabbat dinner on campus. But feeling the looks of white students surprised at seeing a person of color at Shabbat dinner, she said, made her feel uncomfortable enough that she hasn't attended another.

"I was sort of let down by the fact that there weren't many opportunities for me to get acquainted with Jewish culture," said Daniel, the black student from the Bronx.

Support in rough waters

Indeed, though many racial minorities describe tumultuous tenures here, 84 percent of them graduate within six years, according to The Education Trust, a Washington-based education advocacy group. The University's overall six-year graduation rate is just over 88 percent, making for less than a 5-percent gap between minorities and the greater campus. In contrast, the graduation rate for minority students at Tufts University is almost 10 percent lower than that of its general student population, according to The Education Trust.

Indeed, the gap in graduation rates between minority students and the campus at large is smaller than at most of Brandeis' peer institutions, according to Kati Haycock, the group's president.

Not that Brandeis isn't academically challenging for racial-minority students. About 26 percent of them during the last three years have come before the Committee on Academic Standing, which monitors students struggling academically, according to the recent University self study, compared with only 9.5 percent of all students. But the Committee's actions resulted in the withdrawal of only two percent of the minority students that came before it, a rate similar to that of men and athletes.

So how can one explain the anomaly that compared to other schools, racial minorities achieve success here, yet still feel isolated and out-of-place?

One answer could be the Intercultural Center, which-quite literally-sits in a hole. The Center lies in East residence quad, which is something of a deep basin on Brandeis' hilly campus. The building's physical isolation underscores its potential to further separate students of color from the greater campus.

But that isolation also can hide how the ICC and other resources serve as invaluable beacons of peer support for minorities.

The ICC is essentially a meeting place for the many cultural clubs under its umbrella. With the support of each other and an administrative director, the clubs provide programming to educate one another and the greater campus about the different cultures at Brandeis. But psychologically, it can be much more than that: As one Indian student described it, it is "a safe haven."

"It was just like a big family," said the student, Arjan Singh Flora '07.

Other resources include three recruitment programs that yield a high proportion of the racial-minority students here, including the vast majority of black students; an academic support service for first-generation college students; and a newly established administrative position to monitor issues relating to diversity, now filled by Jamele Adams. The three prominent recruitment programs are the Transitional Year Program, a partnership with the Posse Foundation and the Martin Luther King Jr. full-ride scholarship.

None of these are race-based programs, and white students do matriculate through them. But such an overwhelming proportion of the students who enter Brandeis through these programs are minorities that black and Hispanic students often complain they are automatically associated with the programs by whites.

Indeed, a vast majority of black students are drawn from the three programs, according to Robert Andrews, a recruiter in the Office of Admissions. (Determining the proportion of Hispanic students brought in by the programs is difficult, he said, because many white students with marginal Hispanic roots identify themselves as such in admission applications.)

The Transitional Year Program recruits students from educationally underserved areas who would benefit from extra academic preparation before college. Of about 200 applicants every year, the 20 who are admitted spend two semesters in first-year housing, taking a combination of undergraduate classes and courses designed specifically for TYP students.

The longest-running program of its kind in the country, about 80 percent of its students go on to matriculate at Brandeis, and a vast majority eventually earn a Bachelor's degree somewhere, according to the program's director, Erika Smith. TYP is not technically a scholarship, but rather a University-funded program that guarantees money for only the transitional year.

TYP alumni, both graduates and those currently enrolled in degree-granting programs, credit the program for their success in college.

"If I wasn't in TYP, I don't think I would be in college," said Howard, an alumna of the program.

The Posse Foundation has provided what is largely a leadership scholarship to over 1,500 students enrolled in its various college and university partners since it was founded by a Brandeis alumna, Deborah Bial '87, in 1990. When Bial, who is white, asked college dropouts what had gone wrong, one told her he wouldn't have dropped out if he had had his "posse" with him.

So every year, groups of students from public high schools are sent to college together as a pre-existing support network for each other. The program is not actually race-related. But its scholars are expected to promote cross-cultural dialogue, and with Brandeis drawing 10 students a year from the foundation's New York branch, nearly all of them tend to be racial minorities.

Expected by the foundation to take up leadership positions across campus, the scholars do just that-from serving as board members in ICC clubs to running dialogue-oriented events to maintaining an almost dynastical control of the student-run Shapiro Campus Center staff.

Many minority students also credit the Student Support Services Program, a federally financed mentorship service for first-generation college students-one of few such programs at top-tier universities-with helping them handle the academic challenges here.

And then there's Jamele Adams. Clean-shaven in the spring, thickly bearded in the winter, the assistant dean of student life in support of diversity has quickly made himself one of the most popular administrators among students, minority or otherwise, in the two years since his arrival.

"This is my field," he said over lunch recently. "This is what I'm built for, is to live and breathe and fuel the greatest attributes that diversity has to offer."

He doesn't just show up at student events; he gets his hands dirty. At an alternative, identity-focused performance of The Wizard of Oz in the Campus Center last year, his spoken word poetry-famous on campus-boomed from the second-floor balcony as the voice of the Wizard.

"He does so much," said Khemraj, the Student Union's senator for racial-minority students. "He's a confidante for a lot of students. When he speaks, people listen."

To understand the effects of these resources, look no further than Emilio Mendoza '09. A Posse scholar from the Dominican Republic, only two of his friends knew he was gay when he first came to Brandeis. But the support and acceptance he found in his Posse class, he said, gave him the confidence to come out to his parents.

"Even though I'm a racial minority, I don't see myself [as one] because I'm definitely done with the race issue," he said. "When I look at a person, all those layers melt away."

He describes being a minority as an advantage. But few minority students, if any, match his idealism.

Soft segregation

"The minorities stick with the minorities, and the majorities stick with the majorities."

That, put bluntly by Khemraj, is the flip side of minorities leaning so heavily on those support structures.

Take Posse, for example. A central purpose of the program is to create a small group of friends who know they can depend on one another, and every year, entering Posse scholars form what seems, at least from an outsider's perspective, to be a very close-knit clique. It is precisely that exclusivity that led several scholars to describe the comfort they draw from their "posse."

"If I didn't have Posse freshman year, it would have been rough," said Engy Lamour '07, a scholar from Haiti who grew up in Brooklyn. "I don't know if I would have made it."

Students recruited through the Transitional Year Program describe similar connections to the people with whom they first stepped on campus. So do students who have found their niche in ICC clubs, which include 15 of the campus' more than 200 student groups.

Student clubs are central to campus social life, and lines of social segregation form there, too. Pinning down causes or solutions to this is a daunting task. But there seems to be a level of discomfort, felt by all students, that makes it much more difficult for meshing to occur. And the clubs clearly act, to some extent, as a vehicle for fragmentation.

"Everyone is grouping together rather than jumping out to other groups," said David, the former BBSO president.

That grouping together starts early on and seems to be fueled not only by the natural tendency for people to associate with others like them, but also by the difference between culturally based groups and interest-based groups.

Because of their small numbers, many racial-minority students experience an intense personal conflict between pursuing their interests and building up their ethnic community through club activism. Many choose the latter, leaving fewer minority students to diversify other clubs, and fewer opportunities for different types of students to interact within that framework.

"Everyone wants diversity, but there's not enough of us to go around," Martinez said. After a couple years of working on a Hispanic student group, she has only recently devoted more time to her passion, organizing the play The Vagina Monologues.

Leon, who was long a student-leader in the same group, AHORA!, framed the conflict as an existential one.

"You worry that if you don't stay working on the club, then there might not be a club for your ethnicity," said Leon.

ICC clubs like AHORA! provide the great majority of diversity programming on campus, putting on shows that showcase the customs and rituals of different cultures.

A lack of white attendance at these events is becoming a growing issue for minorities, some of whom believe their white peers have an obligation to embrace the differences present on this campus by attending.

At the same time, it isn't common to see many minorities at the events and shows put on by white students, be they a cappella performances or undergraduate theater shows.

Many white students say they wouldn't expect anyone-minority or otherwise-to attend an event that didn't interest them. "I don't expect students to come who don't like theater," Lauren Becker '08, a white theater major from California, said of her own performances.

Likewise, most white students say they feel little obligation to attend the many events hosted by ICC groups that make up the bulk of the campus' cultural calendar.

"I don't think that it's necessary to go to an event, per se, to be a part of the diversity on campus," said Quincy Auger '10, a white student from New Jersey.

Though the reasons that white students give for not attending such events vary-busy scheduling is the most common-some white students avoid the events for the very same reasons that minority students avoid clubs that are predominantly white: Just like no one wants to be the only black person at a club meeting, no one wants to be the only white student at an ICC event.

"I don't really know anyone" in those groups, said one white student who did not want to be identified, explaining why she never goes to ICC events.

But on deeper probing, these complaints seem to be a symptom of a greater fear on the part of minority students that their community is going largely unacknowledged.

And hearing that white students don't attend events because they feel uncomfortable doesn't leave everyone satisfied.

"That you have a choice is evidence of your privilege," Martinez said of white students. "I walked around this campus being uncomfortable for three years, and I never had a choice. Because you have that choice, that choice reflects privilege, and I think privilege is another word for responsibility."

Most minorities take an approach softer than Martinez's, agreeing that students shouldn't be forced into anything, but that they should simply be more open-minded to exploring differences in one-on-one settings.

"I can certainly understand the sentiment," said Nathan Kaplan '07, a white student from Massachusetts. "A lot of people here just don't have much interest. It sucks for [the ICC] groups."

But the assertion that white students have some sort of responsibility to minorities simply because they are part of a majority cuts to the heart of where white students and minority students depart, and it carries little weight among most white students.

Even minority students are hesitant to place responsibility before the feet of the entire majority, and many students, white and nonwhite, see it as an individual choice.

"It's hard to say an entire group has a responsibility to another group," said the white student who doesn't attend ICC events.

Bringing people together

If minorities are retreating into crowds of their own kind, they are hardly the only ones.

Many Jewish students come to Brandeis, at least in part, precisely because they want to be around others like them who share their religious and cultural experiences. That, some say, sets the stage for a campus more segregated than one with a heterogeneous population of white students.

And, it seems, any attempt to make white Jewish students more cognizant of the minority population on campus is complicated by the fact that they rarely think of themselves as a majority. In interviews, some Jewish students described how they used to be part of a minority, and ways in which they still felt like a minority.

"I'm a minority in that I'm from the West Coast," Becker said.

Nathaniel Mays, Adams' predecessor and now the dean of students at Lesley University in Cambridge, explained the complicated dynamic:

"Brandeis is unique in that there is a Jewish majority," he said in a phone interview. "But you walk out on South Street, and that majority immediately becomes a minority. You have a minority that's a minority no matter what. . You have a [white Christian] minority on campus that becomes a majority when they leave campus," he added. "So [reaching out is] everyone's responsibility because it's different for everyone."

The great majority of diversity programming on campus tends to focus on learning about the customs and rituals of different cultures, the 2002 study of campus coexistence noted. Fewer opportunities exist for discussing issues of painful history and exploring how those legacies affect experiences at Brandeis, the study lamented.

It is toward this end that conversations about diversity on campus have gradually turned. Following incidents of racial tension in 2002 and 2003, more and more programs, student-run or otherwise, aim to have people examine the dynamics of privilege, and how privilege is manifested.

"The privileged very seldom know they are privileged until that privilege is challenged," said Gabe Gaskin '08, a black-Hispanic Posse scholar from Brooklyn. "People in the majority ought to know that there is a minority, and we're different."

In the end, though, any conversation about diversity inevitably seems to butt heads with Brandeis' Jewish identity. Many minority students remain convinced that, for the University, that identity far outweighs in importance any commitment to diversity. Pointing to the Hebrew on the University's seal, the Kosher food in Sherman Dining Hall and implicit ways in which, they say, Brandeis seems to be a proponent of Israel above all else, they say it's clear Jewishness comes first.

"There's no real questioning that we're a Jewish university," said Blake Hyatt '08, one of currently two white Posse scholars.

Prof. Govind Sreenivanan (HIST), who has studied coexistence issues on campus as part of the Provost's steering committee on diversity, said that Brandeis' Jewish identity and its commitment to diversity can go hand-in-hand.

"One of the most unfortunate things that can happen to the diversity and coexistence conversation is when an obstacle is erected between the commitment to diversity and Brandeis' Jewish identity," he said.

History provides support for his assertion. American Jewish communities have long supported and had close ties to black communities. And the inclusive nature of Brandeis' founding and its focus on social justice, many administrators and professors argue, means a commitment to diversity is at the core of its mission.

"If we're committed to social justice, we also have to have the knowledge and understanding to be critical of those ways in which human differences are negotiated," Prof. Susan Lanser (ENG) said.

Skepticism from some students aside, there is almost universal agreement that Brandeis is serious about diversity, even if it's only because the business of higher education demands it.

"Systemically, the University is really trying to make this a welcoming place," Prof. Ibrahim Sundiata (HIST) said. "I'm convinced they're genuine."

And even if they didn't feel welcome at first, many minorities eventually come to agree with Sundiata, and appreciate their Brandeis experiences for both the good and the bad.

"It's hard and it's been a struggle," Martinez said. "But I have had many good experiences."

Dan Hirschhorn can be reached at danh215@gmail.com