Nekeda Morrow sits in her bedroom on Chicago’s Westside, wondering if she should leave the city and try college in rural Illinois one more time.

Morrow didn’t enjoy living in Garner Hall her first semester at the University. She was the only black woman on her floor, a fact that added to the isolation Morrow already felt as one of 2,522 blacks on a campus of 38,000 people.

She said she often wishes she had been placed in Pennsylvania Avenue Residence Hall on the west side of campus instead. The tall, close-set building to Florida Avenue Residence Hall was home to so many black students that Morrow and her friends jokingly called the dorm “the projects.”

The next semester, Morrow said her grades began to slip. She didn’t know where to go for help. Frustrated and defeated, she said she went home at Christmas break and stayed.

“I felt like there was no one there that I could relate to,” Morrow said.

She is not alone. Four-year universities across the country graduated about four in 10 African American students in 2003, compared to eight in 10 whites. The University did a little better, graduating six in 10 African Americans.

Still, at a University where administrators are publicly fretting about the declining number of black and other minority applicants, many students say more could be done to support – and keep – those black students already here.

Dinah Armstead, assistant to the director at the University’s Office of Minority Student Affairs, said her office works with units across campus to make sure all students are successful.

Still, Armstead said she wonders if there is more the University can do to make minorities comfortable. She said that each year she hears from handfuls of students who say they just don’t feel welcomed here.

“We as a campus need to make a concerned effort, that from every direction, minority students get encouragement and not discouragement,” Armstead said.

Many University counselors believe that minority students have a harder time adjusting to the University and are more distracted from their schoolwork by issues back home.

Many students agree, but say the University doesn’t provide enough academic advising, helpful professors or an atmosphere where minorities are completely accepted

Urias Escobar, another OMSA assistant, said many white students have the same issues, but said it might be easier for them to cope because they aren’t surrounded by another race that may not entirely accept them.

Class discussion about race relations can be especially hard because black students often feel pressure to speak for minorities everywhere, Escobar said. Freshmen, especially, can get overwhelmed.

“It’s really hard for them to be in situations like that,” Escobar said.

Martha Wilkins, sophomore in education, has felt the pressure many times. As a student at racially mixed schools her entire life, she said she worried about reinforcing stereotypes. She said she wants to be honest in her response, but worries about offending people and not further degrading her race.

“No one wants to feel like that,” she said.

Nameka Bates, the assistant director of the University’s African American Cultural Programming Office, said her office provides tutoring services and creates activities to help black students succeed and feel connected to the University.

AACP focuses on black theater, dance, song and other social activities that aren’t generally offered at the University – the kinds of things they might do with friends and family back home.

“If they don’t grasp onto a social outlet (here), then it is very difficult to for them to feel that they belong here,” Bates said.

Big classes can be especially daunting. Most students have a hard time adjusting to huge lecture halls where they lack individual student attention. But Bates said white students may feel more comfortable reaching out to their classmates for support.

White students generally come from better high schools than inner-city students, and this may also allow them to deal with the change easier. It’s the difference, she said, between “white students having to take one step up, versus black students having to climb a flight of stairs.”

“When you come to a place that you are not academically ready for, it’s harder to adapt when there is no support around you,” Bates said.

Wilkins said she agrees. As co-chair for the African American Homecoming Association, she said she appreciates that the University helps fund the annual event.

The dance and other weeklong activities are designed to appeal to black students specifically – a special thing, Wilkins said, on a campus where many activities have more appeal for whites.

For her part, Morrow has been attending Kennedy King College near her home this semester and getting almost straight A’s.

Morrow said she is considering enrolling at Northern Illinois University, but her time in Urbana-Champaign has made her think twice. She said she doesn’t know if she can handle living in a rural area, where she would have less cultural and academic support than she gets at Kennedy King.

Meanwhile, to help those University students who did make it to graduation, Bates is putting the final touches on this spring’s Black Congratulatory ceremony. The additional graduation ceremony for black students allows the students, their families and their friends to revel in a crowded room full of black students who made it.

Bates said she still remembers how the ceremony inspired her when she attended her uncle’s graduation as a child. She resolved that day to graduate from the University herself – which she did.

“We want people to visually see that we are graduating engineers, athletes … any major that you can think of, and hope that young black people in the audience will see that and say ‘I want to do that, too,'” Bates said.