Today members of the Illinois Board of Higher Education will be on Eastern’s campus.

The members of the IBHE may notice a thin report buried in their informational packets. It will read, “Gateway to Success: Rethinking Access and Diversity for a New Century.”

Put simply, the report, compiled by the IBHE committee on access and diversity, states that Illinois institutions of higher learning need to do better job recruiting and retaining minority students.

And after the members peruse the report, it will be a good idea to take a walk around Eastern. It will then be a little easier to put all the facts, figures and conclusions into a human perspective.

Students at Eastern are suffering from a lack of diversity. Currently Eastern “boasts” a less than 10 percent minority population–9.62 percent to be exact.

While institution leaders may view the figures as significant progress, it is nothing to be happy about.

It is shameful.

The report states that as a learning environment, it is essential to expand the diversity of the student body as well as the diversity perspective of education in order to provide a complete learning experience.

The composition of Eastern’s student body does not reflect the working environments that graduates will be flung to.

Students will leave an island of 90 percent white students to float in a sea of different cultures, religions, races, ethnicities, sexual preferences and beliefs.

Eastern provides little of a life raft.

If they are looking for it, IBHE members will be able to see Eastern’s deficiencies in this arena as they walk around and observe.

In the interests of minority’s, whites and Illinois at large it is important to take this report seriously. Eastern, as well as many other universities, needs immediate action.