"UB Is Diverse, But Is it Integrated?"

The four students seated at a table in the Student Union looked as though they could be brother and sisters.

Gisell Carpio, Indira Zapata, Maribel Paz and Jacob Cespedes are all of Latin descent and shared similar features and mannerisms.

Another look around the Student Union in the late afternoon revealed that most students who sat eating or socializing sat in ethnically homogenous groups.

"In classrooms there's a lot of integration but in social cliques, no - usually Hispanics hang out with Hispanics, Asians with Asians and so on," said Victor Pichardo, a freshman communication major.

With UB being voted the 10th most diverse university by the Princeton Review Board, it might be impossible to avoid integration in a typical classroom. However, some students believe that when social circles are formed outside of the classrooms the group tends to become more homogenized.

Carpio and her friends said this was most likely not due to any conscious decision to stay racially uniformed.

"The unity comes from regional (ties) instead of ethnicity," said Carpio, a sophomore international business major, of why she believes most people at the tables were so similar. "We share the same culture, style and customs. We can relate to each more because of the environment we are exposed to."

Statistics from the Office of Institutional Analysis lends validity to most students' claims of UB's ethnic diversity. For the 2003-04 school year, of the 17,818 undergraduate students enrolled 11,658 were white; 1,261 were black; 609 were Hispanic; 1,555 were Asian; 58 were Native American; 1,052 registered as international students; and 1,625 students registered under unknown ethnicity.

Some organizations and programs within the community are dedicated to promoting diversity awareness and organizing culturally based programs where students are encouraged to celebrate their own culture and learn more about others.

The Office of Student Multicultural Affairs with its diversity advocates and diversity committee tries to keep abreast with the cultural happenings in student life.

UB - with its many cultural awareness programs and its high-ranking diversity - sits right in the middle of a region that rates high on the nations list of most segregated cities.

According to Karen DePalma, project manager for State of the Region Project, whites and blacks in the Buffalo/Niagara region are eighth most segregated in the nation; blacks and Hispanics the 18th most segregated; and Hispanics and whites are the 28th most segregated.

Established by UB's Institute for Local Governance and Regional Growth in 1998, the project gathers data that is used to measure the performance of the Buffalo-Niagara region. According to DePalma, the projects mission is not to make a statement on the social practices of the Buffalo/Niagara region.

"We get the best information, compile it and analyze it and give it to the community, we don't make policy," she said. "We hold up a mirror and say 'Buffalo/Niagara this is what we look like. Do you like what you see?' It's what the region thinks and if enough people look at this data and say 'we don't like what we see and we need to make a change' ...then it puts the burden on all of us."

Haemin Park, a senior management major, said UB is the perfect setting for those willing to begin learning about other cultures on their own time.

"(The level of) integration is minor but you can't expect people to start hanging out with each other all of a sudden," said Park. "You have to start somewhere."