Study abroad statistics on minorities misleading

We believe that the percentage of black and Asian students who study abroad could be perceived as grossly misleading. First, study abroad is an individual decision, thus any reasons for the discrepancies on our part would merely be speculation. However, we find several of Associate Dean of Study Abroad Margaret Riley's comments in the Oct. 16 article "Study abroad statistics reveal gap in diversity" particularly concerning.

Regarding the "high percentage of diverse students who are basketball and football players," consider the following: Black students comprise approximately 11 percent of the undergraduate student population. If all 115 members of the Duke football and basketball teams were black, they would constitute 19.2 percent of that population. Such a minority within a minority could not have a drastic effect on the statistic presented in the article.

Furthermore, the comment that the "close-knit nature of traditionally black fraternities and sororities may make it more socially difficult for black students to leave," is simply not true. There are countless examples of students who are both greek and have studied abroad. In fact, to our knowledge, some of these same students have gone abroad on more than one occasion.

Although we appreciate the efforts by the Office of Study Abroad to increase their programs' diversity, claiming diverse representations in brochure images as one of the Office's initiatives to reach a broader base of students can be perceived as "tokenization," and thus be problematic. We encourage the Office of Study Abroad to continue to work with the Multicultural Center to further explore this issue.

Finally, we find it dangerous to use statistics to make sweeping generalizations about specific student groups. What the article failed to explore was the possible influence of outside variables. For example, these two demographics contain a high number of pre-professional students. The requirements with such tracks may limit the ability for students to study abroad. The number of international students within these populations may have also had an impact.

Malik Burnett

Kevin Fang

Sekhar Padmanabhan