Is SSU too white and wealthy?

<p>No one's denying the nub of a report roiling the political waters on Sonoma State University's tidy, green campus: The 48-year-old state school has become a Wine Country destination for well-to-do white students, many of them women from Southern California.</p><p>But the report's conclusions and the intentions of its author, sociology professor and activist Peter Phillips, are at the center of a maelstrom set spinning two years ago when a 73 percent faculty majority approved a vote of no-confidence in Ruben Armiñana, SSU's president since 1992.</p><p>Key issues in that declaration were the faculty allegation that Armiñana fails to consult with them over budget matters, and concern that the Green Music Center, a $110 million project, will divert resources from academics.</p><p>In the new report Phillips, a vocal critic of Armiñana's administration and a 15-year faculty veteran, holds the president and the California State University's top leadership responsible for policies that Phillips maintains made SSU the "whitest and likely the richest" school in the 23-campus CSU system.</p><p>Students say the evidence of Phillips' report -- a 37-page paper by his investigative sociology class -- is right before their eyes on the 269-acre campus, which has developed into an educational oasis on the Rohnert Park flatlands.</p><p>"Minorities are few and far between," said Mel Arbues, a junior and a Latina from Yorba Linda in Orange County. Diversity is an educational asset, she said: "It opens people's minds to things they're not used to."</p><p>Ian Marlowe, a sixth-year student from racially mixed Fairfield, said he joined the campus Hip Hop Club -- where he is the only white member -- to find diversity.</p><p>"You see a lot more kids riding around in BMWs and Lexuses," he said.</p><p>Citing CSU system data, Phillips' report says SSU's 8,900-member student body in 2007 was 78 percent white, 12 percent Latino, 6 percent Asian and 3 percent black.</p><p>The report calls SSU the whitest of the CSU campuses, which overall are 44 percent white, 28 percent Latino, 21 percent Asian and 7 percent black.</p><p>Eduardo Ochoa, SSU's provost, offered a "minor quibble" with Phillips' data, contending that Chico State and Humboldt State are essentially just as white as SSU. But Ochoa acknowledged that the three state universities, located in predominantly white areas, "have trouble achieving a diverse student body."</p><p>California's master plan for higher education requires that minority enrollment reflect the population at large. The CSU system comes close; SSU does not, with Latinos, Asians and blacks under-represented.</p><p>Regarding student wealth, Phillips said the data is only strong enough to say that SSU is "most likely the richest" in the CSU system.</p><p>Nearly half (48.7 percent) of SSU's freshmen class comes from families with incomes of $100,000 or more in 2007, compared with 27.5 percent at Cal State Pomona and 33.3 percent at UC San Diego.</p><p>It's where the statistics end and the conclusions begin that Phillips and Ochoa sharply differ. Armiñana declined to be interviewed for this story.</p><p>Phillips contends that SSU's condition is the result of selective admissions and recruitment policies intended to develop a "public ivy," a school offering an ivy-league experience at a state college price.</p><p>By adopting higher academic standards for admission and by recruiting in upper-income areas, Phillips said, SSU has attracted an upscale, predominantly white student body.</p><p>Administrators may have thought the policies would produce diversity, but Phillips said they have instead frozen SSU's ethnic mix. SSU was 79 percent white in 1994, 1997 and 2004, and 78 percent in 2007.</p><p>Other state universities, including Chico and Humboldt, have become slightly more diverse since 1994, his report said.</p><p>"Any barrier to race, deliberate or not, is a form of institutional discrimination," Phillips said, describing himself as an affirmative action advocate since the 1970s.</p><p>Christina Albert, a senior business major from Oakland, said diversity is a "hot topic" of discussion on campus, but "there's no change."</p><p>Albert, who is black, said the school could easily draw minority students from the East Bay and San Francisco. "Sonoma State could be doing a lot more," she said.</p><p>Ochoa disputed virtually all of the conclusions in Phillips' report, calling them "completely off-base."</p><p>The admissions standards, requiring higher academic averages and test scores than the CSU system overall, are necessary because SSU receives a glut of applications, Ochoa said. The school gets about 12,000 applicants per year for a freshman class of about 1,600.</p><p>Ochoa, SSU's No. 2 administrator, also rejected allegations that school recruiters favor upper-income areas and that enrolling affluent students is an "insidious plot" to boost fund raising.</p><p>Most of SSU's financial support comes from wealthy local donors, not from alumni or students' families, Ochoa said.</p><p>As a residential campus, rather than one serving commuters, SSU is inherently more expensive than other state universities and thus "more of a stretch" for students from disadvantaged families, Ochoa said.</p><p>Mike Visser, an assistant economics professor, faulted Phillips' report as "bad science," contending that its conclusions are not supported by the data and instead are based on his own "personal agenda."</p><p>Responding to Visser's letter to the editor in the campus newspaper, Sonoma State Star, Phillips wrote: "We think the facts (in the report) speak for themselves." He also criticized Visser's letter as "an ad homonym (personal) attack."</p><p>Phillips acknowledged that Armiñana has established a new diversity council and that a series of open forums on diversity is under way. He also reiterated complaints that SSU's faculty-student ratio is rising, while the Green Music Center still needs $18 million to be completed.</p><p>Visser, who joined the faculty in 2005, said he is withholding judgment on whether SSU can make good on its intentions to improve diversity.</p><p>"It remains to be seen if it is just lip service," he said.</p><p>You can reach Staff Writer Guy Kovner at 521-5457 or guy.kovner@pressdemocrat.com.</p>