Recently, I was reading through the Collegian’s Weekly Newsletter when I stumbled upon this graph. As someone passionate about strengthening pathways to and through college for Black students, this graph triggered ambivalent feelings in me. On the one hand, I like this graph because it confirmed one major thing for me. The graph confirmed that predominantly white institutions, like UR, must do better at supporting their Black student population, given that fewer Black students are attending UR and other higher educational institutions in general. Whether this is because of obstacles to access, such as affordability, or because our nation has yet to provide a more adequate education for all students from all backgrounds and identities, work needs to be done. And it needs to be done now.

On another note, I am curious about one particular detail of this graph. Even though it says that the graph represents domestic UR undergraduates who identify as Black and/or African American, I am curious to know the disaggregation of the sample used for this graph. More specifically, what did the researcher intend by the word “domestic?” For me, I interpret the results of this graph to represent the number of UR undergraduates who identify as Black and/or African American and who live reside in one of the fifty states in America. To that end, is it possible that UR undergraduates who identify as Black/African American yet do not reside in the United States are included in this graph? Questions like these definitely made evaluating statistics and graphs a bit more complicated yet necessary if one is making decisions that could have long-term consequences for our society.

The graph and the Collegian article that references it can be found here: https://www.thecollegianur.com/article/2021/03/percentage-of-black-students-at-ur-decreased-in-past-decade?ct=content_open&cv=cbox_featured