There will not be a progress report on the University’s Diversity Plan until May 2008, and in the meantime the University isn’t getting any more diverse.
As of winter term 2007, 14.2 percent of University students identified as belonging to a minority group, a marginal increase from 13.6 percent a year earlier, according to the Registrar’s Office. Statewide numbers are only slightly higher.
Minority students constitute about 31 percent of college students nationwide, according to the National Center for Education Statistics.
The stagnant numbers aren’t a surprise to Charles Martinez, vice provost of the Office of Institutional Equity and Diversity, even with the emphasis on the Diversity Plan during the past two years.
“It’s clear that we’re changing, just not in a way that Oregon is changing,” he said, noting that the number of Latino students enrolled in Oregon schools has increased more than 200 percent in the past 10 years.
“I think it puts more pressure on the University to respond to an increasingly pluralistic community,” he said.
“There’s a deep, long, important history around diversity efforts in our institution,” he said, adding that those efforts have been “complex and at times very difficult.”
The often-contentious plan goes back to at least 2002, when the Office of Institutional Equity and Diversity was created, a vice provost for diversity was hired, and a work group was set up to draft a diversity plan as part of a legal settlement. In June 2001, former University employee Joe Wade filed a lawsuit alleging racial discrimination. Wade was the director of the Office of Academic and Student Services until 1999, when the University decided not to renew his contract.
When the suit was settled out of court in 2002, establishing the position of vice provost for institutional diversity was part of the settlement.
Administrators have said that both the position and the Diversity Plan were planned before then, and the settlement was merely proof that the University would follow through.
The drafters of the plan’s first draft were criticized for not asking the advice of faculty and being crafted without much help from University administration.
“It had things in it like they were going to make tenure and promotions and pay contingent on teaching diversity,” Bill Harbaugh said. Harbaugh is an economics professor and an outspoken critic of the Diversity Plan.
“When that plan was proposed the faculty erupted,” he said.
University President Dave Frohnmayer appointed an Executive Diversity Working Group to develop a second draft of the plan that was released in May 2006.
Directives in the plan include developing a culturally responsive community, improving the campus climate for minority students and faculty, and developing ways to recruit underrepresented and underprivileged students.
The new plan addressed many of the concerns that had been raised about the old plan. For example, the term “cultural competence,” which caused confusion and objections, was omitted from the University-wide plan. But the term could still be included in the strategic action plans that each school, college, and administrative unit at the University were directed to create.
The plan broadly defines diversity. It states that diversity “includes, but is not limited to, differences based on race, ethnicity, national origin or citizenship, gender, religious affiliation or background, sexual orientation, gender identity, economic class or status, political affiliation or belief, and ability or disability.”
“It’s about the ways as individuals we vary from each other culturally. It’s not just race and ethnicity,” Martinez said.
That all-inclusive definition can’t apply to hiring, however. It is against the law for the University to discriminate based on political affiliation. And hard numbers are needed to show that faculty from underrepresented groups are being hired, Martinez said.
He said there should always be debate about what diversity means. Assuming everyone has the same definition of it is “not an accurate reflection of our University community, nor would it be what we aspire to be,” he said.
The involvement of new students is important for the future of the plan, he said.
Liora Sponko is the program coordinator for student government. She helped organize the committee that created the ASUO’s Diversity Plan last year, and will coordinate students shaping their Strategic Action Plan this year.
“I thought it was neat that we could get students at-large (instead of those already involved in student government) to participate,” she said. “We encourage broad participation.”
The ASUO will be recruiting more students to prioritize the goals of their plan, she said.
“Every individual can contribute their voice to the effort of the institution,” Martinez said.