NORTON - A new diversity survey shows Wheaton College students, faculty and staff generally consider the campus culture inclusive.

Survey questions about campus diversity drew average scores of 4 and 5 on a six-point scale, said Derek Price, co-chairman of the President's Action Committee on Inclusive Excellence, which conducted the survey.

However, some Wheaton students - white, as well as black - reported feeling stereotyped by their peers about their race, Price said.

"White students report a sense that students assume they're all wealthy, and black students report a sense that students assume they're all poor," he said.

The concerns raised by the survey results are significant, Price said. "This is the experience of enough students that we can't dismiss this," he said.

The survey results will lead to new initiatives at Wheaton, possibly as early as next fall, Price said.

Two community study teams - one on tolerance on campus, the other on social stereotyping - have met more than once a week since this winter.

Price said they might make their recommendations to the president's committee by the end of the semester.

And more study teams are expected to be added.

Price said he expects the efforts to continue for a couple of years; surveys will be done periodically.

Plans to react

The answers to the broader inclusiveness questions are a good sign, he said.

"We thought that we were improving, so that was not a surprise," Price said.

Recently, alumni of color got together with current students of color to compare experiences at Wheaton, Price said. "Students from five years ago said when they were on campus, they still felt the need for quiet and safe spaces where students of color could come together and compare notes," he said.

The students were "a very small minority" at Wheaton back then, he said.

Students from the past two years "don't feel the same need," Price said.

"It's not so much the numbers. It's that Wheaton has made concerted efforts to become a campus that is an inclusive campus," he said.

College officials have sought to raise awareness of race and ethnicity in the classroom, Price said.

Still, some students of color indicated they feel in some classrooms that there "might be lower expectations about them as students," he said.

"None of us on the faculty thinks that's true. But we have to recognize the experience of the students," Price said.

Wheaton was exclusively a women's school from its founding in 1834 until becoming co-educational in 1987. In July 2004, Ronald Crutcher became the college's seventh president, and the first African American to hold that post.

MICHAEL GELBWASSER covers Norton for The Sun Chronicle. He can be reached at 508-236-0439 or at mgelbwasser@thesunchronicle.com.