University of Mississippi administrators often talk about how much they value diversity, and the Orientation Leader Team for summer 2017 was selected earlier this year to represent the demographic makeup of the entire student body.
Martin Fisher, associate director of admissions, chose the current team after conducting a three part interviewing process.
“I know the breakdown of student demographics pretty well, and I want our team to represent that. It’s not perfect, but it is a factor that plays into our final decision making,” Fisher said.
Terrence Johnson, a junior journalism major and an African American, served as an orientation leader in 2016 and is now serving as an orientation coordinator for 2017.
“I feel that last year’s team was diverse. I believe that there were various differences between the people who were on the team among race, gender, sexuality, socioeconomic status, etc. However, I do believe that the team could have been more inclusive of those differences,” Johnson said.
Johnson would like to see even more emphasis on diversity.
“I do not believe that the entire team is completely representative of students here. I believe that there could have been more representation of minority students,” Johnson said.
Yet, according to the Office of Research, Effectiveness and Planning the Orientation Team for 2016 aligned almost exactly with the student race/ethnicity demographics of that year.
Daisy Martinez is a recent graduate who served as an orientation leader in 2016.
“Hispanics make up such a small percentage of the school anyway. So, I think Hispanics were represented ‘well’ for now or at least until more Hispanics enroll at Ole Miss, which I would love to see,” Martinez said.
Martinez was one of two Hispanic students on the 2016 Orientation Team.
Johnson believes that the number of Hispanic students, although representative of student body demographics, should be increased.
“The Hispanic/Latin American community is represented this year through one person out of roughly 40 students. Which may reflect the numbers, but still is an extremely small number,” Johnson said.
Johnson believes that the African-American student community is well represented on the 2017 Orientation Team.
The data for the 2014 – 2015 school year showed that roughly 77.2% of the student body was White, 13.99% was African American, 3.37% was Hispanic, and 1.97% was two or more races.
These demographic percentages are almost directly representative of the 2016 Orientation Team’s demographic makeup.
In fact, roughly 75% of the team was White, 18.18% was African American, 4.55% was Hispanic, and 2.27% was two or more races.
Diversity plays a role in the selection of the orientation leaders for each summer, but diversity is not limited to race. In fact, Fisher spends a lot of time trying to look for students from different backgrounds, majors, hometowns, gender and the list goes on.
“We look for leadership, interpersonal and communication skills in all our applicants, and of course, we want them to have a love for Ole Miss,” Fisher said.
“Almost every school or college is represented, we have a strong representation of transfer students, and we are in line demographically in almost every category with the student body,” Fisher added.
Johnson, Fisher and Martinez all stated that there is a strong need for diversity on the Orientation Leader Team.
“Diversity is extremely important because representation inspires. However, it is not more important than being inclusive,” Johnson said.
According to Fisher, “Just like a football or basketball coach needs athletes with different skills, we need a well-rounded team with members who each contribute something unique.”
“It’s important to have diversity because the orientation team is welcoming families from all over and from all walks of life. You can’t have forty clones, expressing the same things, looking the same way because there would be families who would doubt and worry that this university was not the place their child should be in,” Martinez added.
Fisher said that he is first and foremost looking for “servant leaders”, but the smaller role that diversity plays can impact incoming students and their families.
“We want the OL team to be representative of the student body. It’s my desire for every incoming student sitting in the crowd to see an OL that they can connect with, someone they can see and think, ‘If they can be successful here, so can I,’” Fisher said.
Story contributed by Meek School of Journalism & New Media student Taylor Lewis, tlbradf1@go.olemiss.edu.
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