Today, on The Huffington Post, current Chicago Bear special teamer Brendon Ayanbadejo speaks out about the state of diversity at his alma mater, UCLA. Amazingly, this year’s freshman class of 5,000 was only 2% Black. Ayanbadejo and Golden State Warriors guard Baron Davis–a fellow Bruin–have started a public awareness campaign called We Should Not Be the Only Ones.

I, and the other athletes who have joined me, think we should not be the only ones to get an education, because we can perform well on a field or on a court. We have little interest in politics, but we have a large interest in human rights. It should be a simple right for a young person of color in this country to have access to higher public education. Let’s start recruiting students, the way they recruited me and the rest of my friends, so we don’t get to a point where every black student on campus is an athlete.

Los Angeles Times columnist J.A. Adande addressed the issue and Ayanbadejo’s efforts in yesterday’s edition of the paper.

The numbers demand words. Loud words, angry words. For the fall 2006 freshman class, less than 100 African Americans enrolled, the fewest in more than 30 years. Twenty of them were on athletic scholarship, which means we’re getting dangerously close to making a fact from the stereotypical assumption that a black student on campus is an athlete. A ranking of African American student admissions in the fall of 2005 put UCLA 29th among the top 30 colleges and universities.

Ayanbadejo address more football specific issues over at his Super Bowl week blog.