According to undergraduate admissions at Boston University, the class of 2021 has 17.5% Asian Americans, 6.9% black/African Americans, 12% Hispanic Americans, 23% International, 36% White, and 4.6% other. ASO is the African Student Organization where the members make up most of the African American population at BU. ASO has been on campus for 25 years now.
For most members of ASO, it is a place where they can feel at home, learn about their own culture, or people of other ethnicities learn about African culture.
Josephine Amusa, Eunice Aworanti, and Lola Adeosun all joined ASO to be part of a community where people look like each other. They believe that there is diversity at BU but not outside of international students.
Coming to BU, Amusa, Aworanti, and Adeosun, hoped to find diversity and to find other people that looked like them. The members of ASO believe there is a lack of diversity but think they are improving and it is slowly growing.
Chika Okoye, a junior majoring in mechanical engineering said, “There is definitely a lack of diversity at BU, but I think they are doing a better job of bringing more diversity to BU but they should do an even better job.”
Sadiah Thompson, a senior majoring in Journalism thinks it is important to join and support cultural clubs where they can cater to her needs at a predominant white campus.
Thompson said “Even though I am an admissions ambassador, I am part of ASDB, which is the admission student diversity board. So we actually push for different things like this and having cultural clubs and events on campus. I definitely think there is a lack of diversity simply because we need to be able to implement more students of color on campus not just in regards to international students.”
Vivian Situ 