State Senator Says Not Enough Blacks in Nevada Medical School

Black Issues in Higher Education, Nov 11, 1999

CARSON CITY, Nev. -- State Sen. Joe Neal has renewed his criticism of the University of Nevada School of Medicine, noting there are only 11 Blacks among nearly 1,000 students who graduated from the school since 1980.

Neal, a North Las Vegas Democrat who is Black, blames "cultural bias" for the low number of minority medical students and alleges that 90 percent of U.S. medical schools have more Blacks in their first-year class than Nevada has had in 15 years.

"The school can find very good excuses why they can't find minority applicants," Neal recently told members of the Regents' Academic, Research and Student Affairs Committee. "But mostly, once you adopt a culture where you don't think minority students qualify, you discard them."

Dr. Joe Crowley, president of the University of Nevada, Reno, agrees that the medical school's biggest problem is "under-representation of certain minorities -- African Americans, Native Americans and to a lesser extent, Hispanics."

But Dr. Steven Montoya, a member of the medical school admissions selection committee, defends the university's numbers, saying, "We're not admitting numbers, we're admitting future doctors."