Jared Brown, Class of 2013

Over the past several years, the University of Virginia has witnessed a significant dip in African American undergraduate enrollment.  Thanks in large part to a coalition of committed students, faculty, and administrators, African Americans constituted 12% of the undergraduate population at UVA in 1990. Today, that percentage stands at 6.5%.  Two students–Lauren Colemen (AAS and English double major) and Elizabeth Webb (recent grad from the Department of Art) recently put together a short video in which they reflect on the current issue of race and the politics of enrollment.

“It does not matter what oppressors say or do or what they try to make us out to be. We know that we have a freedom not made with human hands. It is faith that defines our person, and thus enables black people to sing when the world says that we have nothing to sing about, to pray when prayer seems useless to theologians and philosophers, and to preach when the world will not listen.” James Cone, The God of the Oppressed