Segregation.

[Sue U]

The Daily Mail story linked in the OP is the usual hyperventilating slop of context-free manufactured outrage pandering to the most vile racist leanings of its readership.

What gave them away?

It said "Daily Mail" right at the top of the page.

[Long Run]

They can dress it up, but it is clearly a voluntary segregation dorm. I don't see the problem with providing such an option for people who believe that such a living situation will help them have a better experience; the risk, of course, is that it could harm the electing students by not having them get the full college experience of dealing with people from all of walks of life (and it potentially denies other students chances to interact with such students). The latter issue is why it would make no sense for there to be a white dorm at a very white place like Western Washington (all the dorms are mostly white as is).

[ex-khobar Andy]

Sue said:

As noted above, for decades many universities have had residence halls devoted to particular cultural affinities, particularly French, German and Spanish.

I don't doubt it; I think it's an idiotic idea; and in my one year in the equivalent of a 'dorm' I lived with botanists, social study majors, literature and drama freaks, a French guy, a couple of engineers - and that's just the ones I recall. I would hate to have roomed with only chemists and it was probably university policy to mix us up. I don't recall any Black guys although the chap who succeeded Nelson Mandela (Thabo Mbeki) as South Africa's President was there a couple of years after me.

[Bicycle Bill]

And XKA supplied the link to the actual university website with its on-campus housing information, which states "Any student interested in Black Affinity Housing and committed to the goals of the program is encouraged to submit a request form." Last I heard from Merriam-Webster's, "any student" =/= "black only."

Sure, any student "is encouraged to submit a request form", just like any student with a satisfactory grade-point average can try out for the basketball team.  They don't HAVE to be over six feet tall and able to slam-dunk from the free-throw line...    Yeah, right.

Care to make an estimate of the odds of
1) a Latinx or Asian student — or any other non-black student — applying for residence in designated "Black Affinity Housing",
or
2) should there be such applicants, the odds of their being approved for one of the 40 set-aside spaces?

-"BB"-

[rubato]

In my 10 years working at UCSC and more as a student self-segregation by race, culture, religion, interest was the dominant mechanism for segregation. As Su and Guin have said above. Administrators fretted about this and tried to come up with ways of discouraging it but no good liberal would impose it by fiat.

As an aside a friend was head of the Vietnamese Students Union and living in an apartment with other students. He asked his apartment mates if he could use the apartment for a VSU meeting which set off a keening whine from a white student who kept saying IT'S NOT FAIR! Why can't I go?
after a little of this idiocy my friend said "Fine go, you can go but you have to wear OD green!

yrs,
rubato