Students at the University of Virginia in Charlottesville have rallied together to demand that their school's administration increase the number of minorities enrolled at the university the USA Today reports.
“I don’t want people to think that a passive attitude about race is going to fix white supremacy,” said UVA Black Student Alliance secretary Devin Willis.
While the rally was mostly made up of black protesters, white and non-black minority students also joined in demanding that university officials make more of an effort to increase the school's diversity.
”There needs to be something that the administration can do and something that the students need to take part in and talk,” said Yaselly Sanchez, an engineering student in her fourth year. “Communication is key.”
UVA's vice president and chief officer of diversity Marcus Martin responded to the student's protest with the following:
"Significant progress has been made with African American student recruitment and enrollment and the graduation rate for African American students has been the highest for a public institution for more than two decades. There has been a 45 percent increase in first-year African American student enrollment in the past five years compared to an 8 percent increase for the total class during this period."
However, the students do not consider that to be enough.
They want a greater percentage of the overall student body to be of diverse backgrounds.
UVA's student body is currently 6.4 percent black. Charlottesville itself is 12 percent black.
A second-year economic and public policy student, Corey Runkeo said, “I’m against the university’s continuing subjugation of unrepresentative communities in Charlottesville. I’d like to see the population of black students be increased.”
All in all, around 300 students attended the rally. Beyond wanting their school to be more diverse, protesters also called for more nuance about both slavery and race in their courses.
“A friend told me that equality is not a straight path and right now we are really on the winding road," said Sanchez, "But hopefully, we will be able to get through."
