Eric Schultz’s political career began with a series of small, seemingly anonymous steps: planning Washington University’s Residential College Olympics, answering phones in the office of an unknown freshman U.S. senator and following around a campaign opponent, as a self-described “18-year-old punk.”

The great baseball statistician Bill James gained fame for debunking the sport’s old cliche that pitching is 90 percent of the game. But for Washington University, as the team’s pitching goes, so do the Bears.

This week was a banner one for our favorite sports media game: Professional Sports Man Says Something Dumb About Women. And I’m not just talking about NFL reporter Adam Schefter becoming a sexual assault apologist because the player in question was “adamant” that despite photographic and testimonial evidence to the contrary, he didn’t throw his girlfriend onto a bed covered with guns, strangle her and threaten to kill her.

A look at the rhetoric surrounding dialogue on diversity, changing strategies in activism and remaining challenges the University faces.

Wash. U. boasts a number of black administrators, but that diversity hasn’t extended to the faculty ranks, and University officials pointed to these numbers as the hardest to change.

Ask administrators about Wash. U.’ history of recruiting black students, and they’ll say that attempts to diversify the undergraduate population aren’t new. “We’ve been focused on it for a really long time,” Julie Shimabukuro, the Japanese-American director of admissions, said. “Wash. U.’s my alma mater, so this is a really important thing to me personally and to our office.” But the numbers don’t bear out tangible results from that focus.

The reporting for this series began last August with research on the Black Manifesto Collection archived in Olin Library’s special collections section. This collection contains the 1968 Black Manifesto, as well as subsequent manifestos and related documents.

Over the course of the fall semester, Student Life spoke with nearly 50 University community members, comprising administrators, faculty, staff, students and alumni. We were searching for evidence of a plan to counteract the University’s history of homogeneity; we hoped to hear tangible, specific tactics that the administration will either continue or adopt to increase the low percentages of black students and faculty and to improve the campus climate.

ONLINE EXCLUSIVE: Sophomore Grace Deering and senior Jamie Silverberg upset the second-ranked doubles team in Division III, but the rest of the Washington University women’s tennis team was unable to do the same on Saturday.

Questions of transparency continue to dog Student Union Executive Officers in the wake of the governing body’s decision to cancel next fall’s WILD, with critics suggesting that Exec might be setting a precedent for long-lasting changes to the semesterly concert without first seeking student input.