In the 1980s and 1990s, Brooklyn College started to become the hub of ethnicity that it is today. These were the decades where “a little bit of everything” was first represented at Brooklyn College. There were ethnic clubs and activities that were as diverse then as they are now. There were a large number of religious groups as well, just as there are today.
The most popular majors of the decades included Computer Science, Accounting and Business, and Psychology. For the most part, one of these three majors was the top major every year.
The following slides show the amount of degree seeking college students in Brooklyn College during the 1980s and 1990s, as well as the top five majors during those decades.
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Information about immigrants at Brooklyn College is skewed during this time period, because students were not asked whether or not they were born in America, and furthermore, students were not even required to give their ethnicity. In 1991, a little less than half of the student body chose not to give their ethnicity, which shows just how skewed the data may be.
The following charts were taken from Factbooks from the Brooklyn College Archives. They depict various headcounts by ethnicity from 1994 and 1995.
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The following pie graphs show representations of Brooklyn Borough demographics of the 1980s and the headcount by ethnicity of Brooklyn College students for each year during the 1990s.
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The following charts show the headcount by ethnicity of matriculated first time freshmen, the headcount of full-time faculty by rank and ethnicity, and the headcount of enrolled students by location of residence during the 1990s.
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There were studies conducted regarding the amount of immigrant students at Brooklyn College in the mid 1990s. In 1993, out of a total of 11,054 undergraduate students at Brooklyn College, only 399 were immigrants (which is about 3.6%). In 1994, out of a total of 11,478 undergraduate students at Brooklyn College, only 427 were immigrants (which is about 3.7%). Although the majority of the students of the time may not have been immigrants, there was great ethnic diversity among them, as many of these students were first- or second-generation Americans.
In the Spring 1988 semester at Brooklyn College, there was one of the largest student based ethnic scandals in the history of the College.
Student based meaning that the scandal did not involve admittance discrimination by the administration or administrative discrimination at all. In October of the prior semester, the paper published a satirical cartoon about Soviet Jews, which stirred much protest. On March 17th, 1988, Michael Golub, the editor-in-chief of The Kingsman, published a drawing depicting a disembodied woman surrounded by remarks referring to “smelly Jewish people” and the “choking stench” of the Jews. Golub and the other editors of the paper claimed that the cartoons and comments were not meant to be offensive to anyone. Their claims were not heard by swarms of
Current header of the Brooklyn College Kingsman
students, especially the Jewish and female students. Everyone’s outrage was put to the test on March 30th, 1988, when The Kingsman published a photograph of a rock band, inaccurately calling it a Haitian group involved in a dispute with the basketball team. Now, the Haitian-Americans joined the Jewish, the women, and the swarms of students of all ethnicities who were offended by The Kingsman led by editor Golub. The students refused to pay the $1.25 activity fee to keep the paper running. The Brooklyn College administration called Golub and the other editors to a council meeting in order to discuss the matter further; Golub attended the meeting with his lawyers. New bylaws were put into place and certain members of the newspaper stepped down. This ethnic based incident almost caused the end of uncensored student based newspapers at Brooklyn College. During the 1980s and 1990s, the diversity of ethnic groups at Brooklyn College thrived, in conjunction with the immigrant population. As time progresses, the immigrant population at Brooklyn College will only grow in number.
Notwithstanding the scandals in the 1980s, the Kingsman has featured many articles in recent years defending immigrant and minority rights on campus. You can read the current issue of the Brooklyn College Kingsman at by clicking here.
Statistical Analysis of Admissions Data
Are admission proportions of ethnicity consistent within each year from 1990 to 1999? For instance, did Brooklyn College accept the same proportion of American/Alaskan Natives as whites over each year? In order to find out, we used the Chi-Square Test of Homogeneity, which accounts for the evident differences in the counts for the admitted students of each ethnicity caused by the unequal sizes of each respective ethnicity’s population. Our calculations led us to this result:
slide further explaining the chi-square test
P-value = P(Χ2 > 108.331) = X2cdf(108.331, ∞, 10) = 1.158 × 10-18
=> Because the P-value* is less than the significance level** (0.01), the null hypothesis is rejected, which means that there is strong evidence that supports the notion that the proportions of the individual admitted ethnicities are not the same.
*Levels of significance are subjective, but the commonly used levels are 0.05 or 0.01. The smaller the level of significance, the less likely false claims are made.
**The p-value represents the probability of making a type I error (rejecting the null hypothesis that is true) while 1 – p represents the probability of making a type II error (accepting the null hypothesis that is false).
The Chi Square Test was conducted on each year in the 1990s and the same conclusion was arrived at for each test. The analyses show that there is some statistically significant variation among the admitted ethnicites in the 90s.
