The wet Quad and scattered drops promised more rain to come and caused the Central Black Student Union’s (CBSU) minority enrollment rally to be postponed Tuesday at noon.

Nonetheless, sophomore Tasia Finley said Tuesday’s threat of rain would not prevent her committee from passing out fliers to raise awareness about the significant drop in minority enrollment at the University this year in hopes that others will respond by developing ideas to raise the numbers. This year, there was a 32 percent drop in black enrollment, a 24 percent drop in American Indian enrollment and a 4 percent drop in Hispanic enrollment.

CBSU is one of several groups assisting recruiters in their efforts to increase minority enrollment.

By sharing their own experiences as students of color in a school filled mostly with whites, volunteers in Project Youth and the Peer Recruitment Program go where the University admissions office cannot: into the minds of high school minority students intimidated by the dream of attending college. Both programs invite high school students to campus to help acquaint them with a college environment and inform them how to become a University student.

University Associate Provost Keith Marshall previously said the applications received by the University this year decreased by 14 percent overall, including a drop in minority students. Marshall could not be reached for comment for this story.

Eboni Caridine, junior in LAS and member of the Peer Recruitment Program (PRP), said this is probably the result of black students feeling incapable of attending college.

Patrick Jean-Jacques, president of Project Youth and junior in LAS, said Project Youth (PY) is a student-based organization that helps to “de-mystify” the college experience for inner-city high school students and show them that college is a realistic goal.

Volunteers with PY act as residence hall hosts for three days, allowing high school students from inner city Chicago to sleep in their residence hall rooms, attend actual classes and accompany them around campus. This year, 12 high school students participated in the free program.

PY prefers recruiting students for the University, but the main goal is to just encourage them to attend and graduate college, said PY adviser Chandra Gill, a University graduate student.

Gill said inner-city students’ experience in low-income neighborhoods – whether it be with issues such as poverty, gang affiliations and lack of encouragement from high schools and their neighborhoods – make them feel that attending college seems to be a far-fetched goal.

High school students who participated in the program said their experience with PY made them want to attend the University.

“I’m going home and filling out my University of Illinois application today,” said Curtis Birch, junior from Manley Academy on Chicago’s West Side, on his last day on the PY visit.

Birch said his community rarely talks about college, and it’s not common for minorities in the area to get an advanced degree. He said that, after actually talking with and being around successful black college students, he definitely considers the University as being an option for him.

Both PY and the PRP conduct panels to give high school students a chance to ask current minority University students about college life. During these panels, students can answer questions that counselors cannot answer, such as issues concerning racism and transitioning from an urban area to a more rural setting.

Caridine said she notices that when PRP brings inner-city high schools on campus visits, the student panels are the most effective in encouraging minority students to apply.

Once these students apply and are accepted, she said, there is still a need to encourage them and make them feel comfortable enough to actually come.

Earlier this semester, PRP students held telethons to call and congratulate high school minorities who were accepted by the University and welcome them to the school.

Danielle Banks and Najee Gay, juniors at Percy Julian High School on Chicago’s South Side, both agreed that before this weekend’s PY visit, they thought college was not for them. They figured it was too expensive and was not realistic for them to be accepted.

Banks said after learning what college is about and how financial aid can help her, she now feels obligated to attend.

“Project Youth has showed me that attending college is not a fairy tale, but it’s not as hard as we think. I feel like if I motivate myself, I can get here,” Gay said.

“Project Youth was a life-changing experience that gave me the passion to want to go to college and enroll at the University,” said Ronnie Pickett, freshman in LAS, now a Dean’s List member and a mentor after he participated in PY last year as a high school student at Westinghouse High School.

Pickett said he had been on many college tours, but nothing was as effective as PY because the group could relate to him on a minority-based level and showed him that he could be comfortable and successful at a Big Ten university.

Gregory Wilson, a senior in LAS who will soon be heading to law school, said he had a similar experience. Wilson said the University needs to start recruiting minority high school students from schools other than those that have minorities with the highest GPAs and ACT scores.

Wilson he attended Senn High School – one of the under-funded high schools that are not targeted by the University – and as a result he didn’t even consider applying here until after his PY visit.

“Brilliance is everywhere,” Wilson said.

He said groups such as PY and PRP understand this because they take an unconventional approach and target high schools that need information about college instead of those who already have it. He said it is not that these students don’t want to succeed, but that they just don’t understand the whole college process because there is no one there to explain it to them.

Birch said he now realizes he can succeed in college, because Project Youth “actually brought us down and showed us what the college experience is.”

Pacing back and forth through students passing by, Finley continued on Tuesday to pass out fliers about the decreasing numbers.

“Whether it’s cold, raining … the numbers are still low and people still need to know,” she said.