Whenever a significant event or planning session is underway and under-attended, one question floats through the crowd and is voiced by the organizers. “Where is our community?” Where are all the Black students that we pass on the green, see in the PO, the Ratty, the dorms, but not in the TWC, Salomon, and Petterutti? The answer lies in a single word. Practice.

The Black community at Brown has its human resources, and thereby its political potential is heavily taxed by athletics. This is not to say that students are involuntarily being required to participate in athletics. Nor is it to say that only Black students have their time dominated by athletic activity. But it is to say that the Black community is hit especially hard by the schedules and demands of organized sports at Brown. At a community level, this phenomenon is attributable not only to the individual choices of Black students, but also quite specifically to which Black students are here making choices.

Put simply, no other racial group on campus is made up so extensively of recruited athletes. The reliance of the Admissions Department upon athletic recruiting to bring in a “suitable” number of Black students is, at the very least, lamentable. Such a policy harms the Black community by ensuring that year after year the makeup of the community will be such that the Black community’s viable political capital is significantly lower than any comparably sized community.

The admissions department must step up its recruitment efforts and must begin securing a far greater number of Black applicants who have devoted themselves to activities off the playing field. This must happen not because athletic excellence is of a character less than political activism (the author himself has devoted ample time to competition at both the varsity and club level while at Brown), but because we recognize the crucial value of diversity to any group. A community that specializes is one that leaves itself reliant on others to provide those attributes that it lacks. However, that the Black population should rely on others to represent our political voice while we excel in other areas, whether sports, business, art or medicine, is a dangerous notion. While we continue to petition for an increase in the number of TW students recruited to the university, we cannot close our eyes to the ways the administration attempts to meet these demands. It is not acceptable that our numbers continue to be made up so extensively of students who must devote themselves to the single area of athletics. While we continue to strengthen and diversify the school, we must demand that the school allow our population to strengthen and diversify itself.
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