MAVIN Foundation is committed to advocating for the full inclusion of mixed heritage people in all aspects of our society. This section of our website is committed to our advocacy and research efforts on behalf of mixed heritage and transracially adopted college students. To get involved with CACI's advocacy efforts, please contact us at caci@mavinfoundation.org


One Box Isn't Enough!

OMB guidelines included a January, 2003 deadline for all federal agencies to implement the new guidelines. Two years after that deadline has past, one of the largest federal agencies, the Department of Education (DOE), has not done so! Department of Education standards affect over 76 million students, including over 2.5 million students of mixed race who are currently forced to identify inappropriately. The delay in implementing these policies means that schools do not have a clear picture of student diversity on their campuses and are limited in their ability to meet the needs of all students, especially their multiracial students.

To address this issue MAVIN Foundation with Level Playing Field Institute, and in partnership with the Association of MultiEthnic Americans, launched the One Box Isn’t Enough initiative (OBIE). This past November we delivered 3,200 comment cards to the Department of Education urging them to implement OMB guidelines.

MAVIN Foundation issues report on how mixed heritage students are classified at U.S. colleges and universities

One of the major areas of concern for mixed heritage students in higher education is the right to identify yourself appropriately on forms asking for racial and ethnic data. To discover what colleges and universities are currently doing we launched a major student of almost 300 schools from across the nation. You can download the report here and view the press release here.

OBIE Comment Cards Delievered to Department of Education

On November 14, 2005, over 3,200 comment cards were delievered to the U.S. Department of Education regarding the inability of mixed heritage students to accurately represent their heritage. Read the full press release here or download it here.

Pictures are available of the students delivering these cards. To view the pictures, click here.

We would like to thank the following partners for their commitment to the One Box Isn’t Enough effort:

  • Association of MultiEthnic Americans
  • Half and Half at Bryn Mawr College
  • Multiethnic Organization Redefining Ethnicity (MORE) at the Claremont Colleges
  • Eugene HONEY
  • Under One Sky at Haverford College
  • Level Playing Field Institute
  • MICS at Stanford University
  • Multi at Swarthmore College
  • Mixed Student Union at the University of California Berkeley
  • Hapa at the University of California Los Angeles
  • Mixed at the University of Washington
  • MISO at Western Washington University