We are writing in response to the misrepresentation of facts in the Emerald article “University outranks state system on staff diversity,” published on Oct. 15. The problems are apparent in at least two places, including the “minority faculty” chart and quotes taken from interviews with us. In particular, we are concerned the article conveys the sense that lack of diversity on campus is not a critical problem at the University, a message clearly communicated by the title.
In fact, the number of faculty and students of color at the University is appallingly low, showing that the institution engages in practices that contribute to the exclusion of underrepresented groups — African Americans, Asian Americans, Chicana/os and Latina/os, and Native Americans — in the University community and the broader society.
The first problem in the article is that the University numbers in the “minority faculty” chart are greatly inflated and bear little relation to the actual situation. The most recent official source for this information in the Oregon University System is the OUS Fact Book 2000, which is available online — and this source indicates that the Emerald’s numbers of “minority” faculty are roughly doubled in each category. While the numbers the Emerald used indicate that 213 of the University’s faculty members are people of color, OUS shows that the figure is 110.
When you consider that the OUS Fact Book numbers are themselves inflated because they include temporary faculty (including some students) and employees who do not have teaching responsibilities, the situation becomes even more serious. Compare these numbers with population figures from the last U.S. census (using national figures to compare, since faculty members are hired nationally and not locally), which indicate that people of color comprise approximately 30 percent of the population, and it becomes clear that there are deep-rooted structural problems within U.S. society that exclude people of color from educational institutions, including the University of Oregon.
Next, we would like to reemphasize the points we were trying to make in our interviews, which we feel were not presented clearly. We both insisted that the University must hire a more racially diverse faculty in every unit, including (but not limited to) Ethnic Studies. In addition, the article omitted parts of the interviews indicating that we, along with many of our colleagues, understand the lack of racial and ethnic diversity is an extremely dire problem at the University. Although some individual departments have recently undertaken efforts to address hiring, recruitment and curricular issues, the University administration has never generated a coherent and comprehensive plan to respond to these urgent problems. We call on them to do so.
The University of Oregon must address these problems for the sake of white students as well as students of color. Education on diversity issues, including power and inequality, is essential to understanding the increasingly heterogeneous society we all inhabit. If we fail to address these issues in the classroom and to combat discrimination in the
institution, we are not fulfilling our responsibilities as educators. Before we undertake these tasks, however, we must understand the nature of the problems. Regrettably, the Emerald served to obfuscate, rather than clarify, these issues.