Posted on 05/27/2005 1:30:12 PM PDT by freespirited
PORTLAND — An early draft of a five-year "diversity plan" for the University of Oregon has drawn a firestorm of criticism from faculty, prompting administrators to distance themselves from the proposal.
The draft plan, billed as a "long-term vision for diversity," called for the university to hire up to 40 faculty members by 2012 to teach courses in a "cluster" of diversity-related topics, including race, gender, gay and disability studies.
Under the plan, academic departments that hew closely to the university's diversity goals when hiring would be given "priority in the funding of new positions."
The plan also would mandate that faculty up for promotions or tenure be evaluated on their "cultural competency" — the ability to successfully work with people from all cultural backgrounds. Traditionally, research, publications and teaching have been the key elements of a tenure review.
The draft plan suggests that the university set aside more funding for hundreds of new "diversity-building scholarships" for minority undergraduates over the next five years, as well as new fellowships for graduate students aimed at those from "under-represented" backgrounds.
A key goal, the draft plan continues, is to double the number of black, Hispanic, Asian and Native American students attending the university in the next five years.
Under the plan, student curriculum requirements could also change, possibly with the inclusion of a "gender and sexuality requirement."
"Many people were upset with the content in different ways; the plan was sort of an Orwellian, totalitarian plan," said Michael Kellman, a chemistry professor at the university.
Sources at the university said the draft plan drew immediate condemnation from department heads across the campus, some of whom had little or no knowledge of the proposal before it was posted on the university's Web site.
University officials declined to comment directly on the plan, which was overseen by Dr. Gregory Vincent, the university's vice provost for institutional equity and diversity, who last week announced his departure for a similar post at the University of Texas, Austin.
But in a letter to members of the faculty senate's diversity committee, University President Dave Frohnmayer acknowledged public concerns with the plan.
"We need to step back from specific details, to be mindful of alternative viewpoints, and to develop a sense of urgency in recognizing the problems we face," Frohnmayer wrote. "I also emphasized the need ... to engage faculty, staff and students who believe they have not properly been involved in this dialogue."
For years, Oregon's flagship public campus has struggled to attract diverse faculty members and students.
The dust-up over the plan is the latest in a series of race-related incidents to roil the campus. Earlier this month, 150 people rallied to protest alleged racial discrimination and harassment at the school's highly ranked College of Education.
Last week, a senior at the university filed a complaint with the U.S. Department of Education over the school's policy of reserving 10 slots of selected math and English courses for minority students, in an attempt to increased individual attention from faculty.
Chicora Martin, the university's director of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender education and support services, was part of the work group that put the plan together. She said the controversy provoked by the plan's first draft has created a welcome chance to talk about the current state of diversity on campus.
"We want to make a welcoming campus around issues of diversity," she said. "I think you need to have a plan for that."
A key concern about the draft plan has been worries over how to pay for the new recommendations, including plans to bulk up the administration's diversity staff, said John Nicols, a professor of history and classics at the university.
"There's considerable concern," he said. "If there is no new money available, it would have to be taken from existing sources."
The draft plan does not identify any new sources of funding for the programs and expansions it proposes.
Robin Holmes, director of the university's Counseling and Testing Center, said the draft's authors were not "given direction to come up with funding sources."
"We wrote this as an aspirational document; we received directions to think boldly," Holmes said. "How would we effect the aspirations in this document? That's what we need to sit down in the next year and figure out."
Additionally, Nicols and Kellman both said that faculty members were concerned about the possibility that faculty would need to demonstrate "cultural competence" before receiving tenure.
"This would have made [cultural competence] a huge issue for everyone, in their whole career — promotion, tenure, merit raises — most people felt inappropriately," Kellman said. "No one knows what cultural competency is supposed to be. It's an ill-defined concept that is empty of meaning."
Holmes said the cultural-competence portion of the plan does need further refinement, and called the faculty's concerns "legitimate." But the ideal of being respectful of other cultures underpins the entire proposal, she said.
Changes to the plan may surface soon, beginning with a new executive committee on diversity, which Frohnmayer has asked to "move with dispatch to suggest ideas for continuing this dialogue to a successful and timely conclusion."
Colleges are quickly becoming Soviet/Maoist re-education camps. Even the concept of a 5-year plan is straight out of Soviet central planning.
Here is the actual plan:
http://vpdiversity.uoregon.edu/diversity_plan_draft.pdf
Good grief!
How about more political diversity? Republicans/conservatives are extremely underepresented on college campuses.
I can see this happening very easily. Remember during the last crunch in the state budget, they were hiring recreation directors for the prison and laying off portions of our State Police.
We need to simply cut them off, let them fend for themselves in the private sector.
I agree, although it will such having the streets clutered with ex-professors panhandling.
Reading-Riting and Rithmetic have been replaced by Racism, Homosexuality and Penis Envy.
How will any of these courses help an engineer from letting a building fall down or a doctor to replace a heart valve.
Code for tutors for students who wouldn't have been able to to get into the U if not for diversity programs???
What the hell would the "lab" requirement be?
Never mind.
So the flagship public university campus in Oregon wants a College of Queerdom?
Didn't we hear this one before when a list of 45 Communist goals was read into the Congressional Record? And wasn't one of those goals to make homosexual behavior a part of the academic curriculum?
Pray for W and Our Troops
And we all know what hotbeds of right-wing reactionary thought are colleges of education. I guess anything short of full-blown Maoism is suspect for the leaders of this cultural revolution.
I speak jive!
Why should sexual preference be a 'diversity' subject in any school?
Does that mean heterosexual students can start their own 'diversity' program and get credit for it?
Sexual studies of any kind should not be in school.
Sex between two people has always been and should always be PRIVATE!
I'm really getting tired of the gay crap being thrown in our faces.
(gasp) My alma mater!!! I'm so embarrassed.
Not really surprised, though. When I attended in the 70s, the U of O was reknowned as a liberal party school. During my freshman year, some wacko set off a bomb in the Administration building. Fortunately it was at night and no one was hurt. There were anti-ROTC demonstrations every spring.
As an aside, it was also the setting for Faber College in "Animal House" in 1978--our moment of fame!
"diversity staff"== zampolit == political officers to enforce ideological orthodoxy
they, the 'ex' professors, may have bright futures as subject for medical experimentation
Don't speak too soon. That might be a proposed class at U of Oregon.
:-)
But in a letter to members of the faculty senate's diversity committee, University President Dave Frohnmayer acknowledged public concerns with the plan.
Chicora Martin, the university's director of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender education and support services, was part of the work group that put the plan together.
Once all these PC bureaucrats and committees are on campus, it's all downhill. They will build empires and make demands. Unfortunately, many, if not most colleges already have "Vice Provosts of Diversity" and "Directors of LGBT Services". And those colleges that don't have them already are going crazy hiring them. Witness the vice proctor of diversity mentioned in this article; he's been lured away to another college.
Highly ranked, my foot. When I was a freshman there in 1971, I enrolled in the last Chaucer class to be offered. It was being replaced by what was called "bonehead English" classes.
It's just blazingly illegal under current standards. But, of course, the ACLU will do nothing to stop it.
Only if UofO had defined diversity to include religous and political background would the ACLU have gotten involved.
So then not all is wrong there, I mean you still have Animal House to trot out :) One of the greatest movies of all time. My teenagers saw it the other day for the first time and cracked up. It transcends time and space!
In very liberal Austin, Texas.
Here are a couple of classes to add. No 'diversity studies' program could be complete without these offerings. Maybe the school could add a class in Shakedown studies and have Jesse Jackson teach the class? Also, Race industry and rioting 101 can be taught by Al Sharpton.
Diversity should be Blondes, Brunettes and Red Heads. AND TWINS!
True! Belushi was so great--I still miss him.
I didn't know about the movie until I went to see it in the theater. Imagine my jaw dropping when I saw Larry and Ken walking through my college campus in the first scene! And I had fun imagining the flight path of the golf ball hit by Otter (beside the stadium) that landed on Dean Wormer's desk. It would have had to travel 1/2 mile and make two 90-degree turns.
I am on faculty at a University and I say this rather ashamedly, since higher ed has become a bastion of intolerance for opinion diversity. Question--what in the hell does one do with such degrees?? -- gender, gay, etc. As they say in higher ed; welcome to the new millennium, you have the freedom to conform. Diversity on college campus is perversity to say the least.
Look out Texas, here it comes!!!
Liberals gone wild.
OK...maybe we keep it open, but just require 45 percent of all professors hired be conservatives. How's that for diversity?
"Question--what in the hell does one do with such degrees?? -- gender, gay, etc. As they say in higher ed; welcome to the new millennium, you have the freedom to conform. Diversity on college campus is perversity to say the least."
With those degrees you can teach other future liberals the same worthless crap that you were taught. You can also go on to law school and then join the ACLU.
I wonder if non-white faculty members who are up for promotion or tenure will be evaluated on their "cultural competency". Or is this something that only white faculty members will be subjected to?
I celebrated diversity by buying that t-shirt.
I am so glad that I left academe in 1987 and went into sales, instead. I would never have been able to put up with this nonsense. I sympathize with the chemistry prof mentioned first. He is in for curriculum planning meetings designed to get his department's share of the new venture.
Chem 305: Disability from Chemical Imbalances , for instance. Oh yes, I know how to play the game, but it is a very dumb game.
Teach that stuff to other people, of course.
My first thought was taht since Harvard caved to the tune of $50M, public schools have to keep up with the Ivy League.
These people are just freakin insane.
They are determined to further dumb down the minority populations by offering degrees in such rot.
The Democrat plantation is growing larger every year.
OTOH, it takes them off the hook by having to actually teach useful and verifiable material.
It's part of a conspiracy. They would have to reject the victims of people with "Education" degrees that they
offered that didn't educate enough to have the competence and skills need for institutions of [formerly ]higher learning.
Then, they'd have to admit failings of other departments, such as "Sociology".
Then they'd have to justify funding such departments, etc.
"We need to simply cut them off, let them fend for themselves in the private sector."
If you're a professor of "Disabiliy Studies" what exactly are you qualified to do?
Pan Handle, which is probably what they did before they created this gig out of beuracratic thin air.
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>>Question--what in the hell does one do with such degrees?? -- gender, gay, etc.
Starbucks barista.
And I've been a hiring manager in private businesses. I'd laugh (privately) if anyone forwarded me a resume with that crap on it, and throw it in the trash. These people learn little to nothing that would be useful in private business, and much that would tend to make them likely to be disruptive.
It is getting tougher and tougher to find a decent college education for kids these days. Someday, a few colleges with vision are going to advertise that they do not take race, gender, ethnicity, religion, disability, or sexual orientation into account in any way, shape, manner or form when it comes to admissions or curriculum, and they will have people from around the country kicking their doors in to enroll.
And people wonder why we have H1-B visas! We gotta get engineers and computer scientists from somewhere! American students are too busy majoring in "queer theory" and "contemporary social activism." And then they whine that nobody will hire them straight out of college for $75k/year.
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