For more than two decades, Marquette has fought to recruit and retain more minority students. In the fall 2005 semester, minority numbers rose about 1.5 percent from previous numbers. This marks another year in which Marquette's diversity numbers remain stagnant.

Currently, non-white students represent 13.4 percent of the student body, according to a report released last month by the Office of the Registrar. Little change is evident for a school whose numbers have hovered at 12 percent for the previous four years.

This semester only 42 percent of black undergraduate applicants were accepted, the lowest acceptance rate among all the ethnic groups at Marquette. Even though 62 percent of freshman applicants with an American Indian or Alaskan Native background were accepted, only 5.9 percent of them chose to attend Marquette.

These numbers show a necessity for Marquette to reevaluate its recruitment strategy if it hopes to see numbers break through to a higher barrier.

Associate Provost for Diversity Keenan Grenell is drafting a Strategic Diversity Plan, which calls for more diverse faculty, more students of color and more cooperation with community leaders and businesses to improve Milwaukee's image and create an atmosphere inviting to minorities.

The university administration should support this plan but also look for more specific ways to make Marquette's campus more diverse. Marquette's Equal Educational Opportunity Program should start looking into more cities than Milwaukee for minority recruits. Chicago is only 90 miles south of Milwaukee and offers opportunities to reach out to minorities.

Howard Fuller, director of Marquette's Institute for the Transformation of Learning, worked closely with the EEOP in the 1980s. He said recruits look at a school's overall environment when they consider attending the school.

"It's not just the university that people look at. It's the entire surrounding," Fuller said. "Milwaukee is not a hotbed that (minorities) want to come to."

Jan Ford, director of the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee's Department of Recruitment and Outreach, also acknowledged UWM is constantly fighting an uphill battle in regard to Milwaukee's image.

Marquette must be applauded for taking crucial steps toward rectifying the situation. This year, the Office of Admissions surpassed its goal of retaining 260 students of color in the freshman class. Last spring, Grenell was hired to oversee the diversity initiatives. Initiatives like the EEOP, College Readiness 21 and the Freshman Frontier Program reach out to high school minority students, and those are good foundations on which to build.

But Marquette should not let all these efforts go to waste.

These are all progressive moves toward solving the lack of diversity on campus. However, if Marquette is to be successful in its initiative, it must be open to new strategies like Grenell's and work to implement them.