Racial Diversity is Difficult to Come by at St John's -- St Ben's in Collegeville

Almost 50 percent of the students enrolled in fall 2005 at the College of Saint Benedict (CSB) and Saint John’s University (SJU), two single-sex schools located six miles apart in Collegeville, Minnesota, near St. Cloud, were new or first-generation students. Most of them, however, were also White.

The number of Black undergraduate students at both CSB and SJU over a 10-year period from 1995-2005 barely totaled in the teens. Of the 2,045 women enrolled in CSB last fall, 17 are Black; 13 of 1,875 males enrolled at SJU are Black. The total minority undergraduate student population (Black, Asian, Hispanic and Native American) is currently 4.7 percent at CSB and 4.1 percent at SJU.

“We’ve always been committed to being a welcoming community and a diverse community,” asserts CSB President Mary Ann Baenninger. “In the past, our efforts have been more directed at issues of numbers. But we’ve found that that is not enough.”
[snip]
Although pleased with how the student population slowly is becoming more diverse, Baenninger, the two-year CSB president, admits, “Having diversity on our staff is more of a struggle. From the day I arrived, this has been a driving goal of mine. Our faculty is fairly diverse for where we are in central Minnesota, but in terms of our support staff and other professional staff, it’s more difficult to attract a diverse group of staff.”
[snip] Read More in the Minneapolis Spokesman-Recorder