I believe the authors of the proposed Diversity Plan have good intentions, and I only wish to strengthen their efforts with the following critique. As I see it, the plan could be strengthened in the following ways.
The length: If the document is intended to be read by the University community, then 40 pages seems excessively long. Even though diversity in Eugene is a complex and impassioned issue and worthy of a comprehensive plan, 40 pages almost guarantees that most community members won’t read it. (I only read up to the first 22 pages). Solution: Provide an executive summary allowing readers to become familiar with the main points of the document quickly.
The language: The writing style used in the document is wordy and needlessly complex. Page 8 reads, “Given the financial constraints on all University resources, reallocations of existing resources should be managed carefully to accomplish as much as possible, as cost-effectively as possible,” or in layman’s terms, “the University lacks funding, so we have to be careful how money is spent.” Solution: Edit the plan so that it’s written in a language people want to read.
The timeline: The Diversity Plan calls for departments across the University to develop their own individual plans. At this rate, by the time the University community has become fully “diversified,” global warming will have melted the polar ice caps and the entire Willamette Valley will be 15 feet underwater. Seriously, empowerment is important, but affirmative action has existed since at least the 1960s, so you decide how well it has worked. Solution: Call for action now; in this case top-down decision making is good.
The numbers game: The plan rates the level of diversity on campus by comparing the percentage of students enrolled (by ethnicity) to the percentage of minorities who graduate Oregon high schools; (see page 5). While high school graduates are the in-state pool of applicants, this comparison is unfair to minorities in Oregon, because not all minorities enrolled in the University are from Oregon. In addition, this comparison ignores the barriers of society associated with lower high school graduation rates of students of color. Solution: Rate the level of diversity on campus by comparing the University’s minority enrollment to the national census data because if there hadn’t been more than 100 years of legal racial discrimination, the University would be more diverse. If the University represented a slice of U.S. diversity, the student body would contain at least 40 percent minorities, but according to the admissions office minorities only make up 14 percent of the student body.
Cultural competence: Despite the best efforts of the University to train the staff/students in cultural competence, it is difficult to become culturally competent without interacting with people from different cultures and points of view. Solution: Find a way to triple the critical mass of diverse students and faculty on campus. Some may argue doing this would mean instituting “reverse discrimination,” which is easy for us white males to say because it’s difficult for us to feel what it is like to be discriminated against if we are the ones who continue to dominate the positions of power. Ruffle some feathers, Oregon. Let’s set the standard for the rest of the nation to follow.