Accessibility of Hope College
Letter from LAUP to Hope College containing recommendations on ways to improve the accessibility of the college for Latinx students. Click to view the full document!
Now, we turn to Hope College. Located two streets from the heart of downtown Holland, MI. Hope is a small, Christian, liberal arts school. With a large Latinx community just blocks away, how is the college welcoming and supporting these students?
In this report, from 1978, LAUP wrote to Hope College to address the lack of representation, resources, and overall accessibility of the college to Latinx students. This four page document includes examples and statistics of Hope’s current diversity as well as a list of recommendations for improvement in areas such as Admissions, Financial Aid, Curriculum, and Student Support Services.
The report emphasizes the lack of representation at Hope and highlights one of the impacts of this: it “affects the Latino student enrollment at Hope College and much more, the ability to retain the few Latino students who do enroll at Hope.”
In the 40 years since this report, representation, inclusion, and diversity have continued to be a large part of the conversation on Hope's campus. So, what and how has Hope College changed?