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About The Battalion. (College Station, Tex.) 1893-current | View Entire Issue (Nov. 19, 1987)
Q the minorities can have a part in the educational opportunities available at A&M. ” Brown hopes the outreach program will increase the pool of students eligible to attend college. And once there are more eligible students, the University can attract them through scholarships and retain them with the help of the Multicultural Services Center. C ven if the black and Hispanic students are qualified to attend A&M, they may not be able to afford higher education. For this reason certain scholarships are available solely to minority students. Koldus says the scholarships, the qualities of the academic program and the student life programs help attract students to A&M. Once the students are here they will recruit other students, he says. “The president and the institution have put more (University) money into scholarships for minority students,” Koldus says. “Also, the president morally and intellectually would like a greater number of minority students. ” Brown says more minority scholarships are available each year. The biggest state schools offer President’s Achievement Awards, which give qualified black and Hispanic students $2,500 per year for four years. These scholarships are only awarded to students after they have been accepted to the University. Connie Johnson, a senior journalism major, is one recipient of the scholarship. “Some students feel like we are given the money, ” Johnson says. “But I had the grades and a decent SAT score. I can say that all of us have earned it. ” It may appear that minority students are getting special attention, but Johnson believes A&M is making up for lost time. “We get special attention now because for so long we didn’t get anything,” Johnson says. & ophomore industrial engineering major Mario Castro was awarded the President’s Achievement Award and he chose A&M because of a Hispanic high school teacher. “I was going to go to the University of Texas at El Paso and I talked to my teacher, ” Castro says. “She told me there was discrimination here and that convinced me to come here more. I decided to come and try to change things. ” Castro has seen progress and is encouraging his sister to transfer here next year. He believes most minority students do not go to college because they have not taken the courses necessary to be accepted. “They may have only taken three English courses and then don’t meet the standards,” Castro says. “Even if they are really smart, they can’t get in.” Carlos Craig, a senior engineering technology major, was also awarded the President’s Achievement Award. He chose A&M because he wanted to attend a good engineering school and stay in Texas. Senior journalism major Anita Anderson was recruited from an inner-city black high school in Houston and came to A&M only because of the scholarship she was given. “A&M doesn’t offer anything socially, ” Anderson says. “It’s great if you like to drink beer, go to parties and watch football. The only reason I stayed was because I was on scholarship. ” Anderson entered A&M in 1982, before the implementation of the Texas Plan to increase the enrollment. Since that time, attempts have been made to improve the situation for the minorities who attend. / Vevin Carreathers, a former Student Activites adviser, along with Koldus and various students saw the need for a centralized office for minority students. The result of these efforts was the Multicultural Services Center, which just opened at the beginning of this semester. Carreathers now serves as coordinator of the center. “The best thing we do is provide an initial contact that the students can have to find out about everything else that takes place on campus, ” - Carreathers says. “Someone has mentioned that it is a home away from home for minority students. ” The main focus of the center is on the retention rather than the recruitment of minority students. The center is concerned with new student enrollment, but it concentrates most of its activities, which consist mainly of counseling and referral services, on the students who are already enrolled, Carreathers says. “Our little joke with the Office of School Relations is ‘if you bring them here, we’ll keep them here,’ ” he says. “We have a very small role in