About one year after faculty concerns prompted the University to re-examine its plan for increasing diversity on campus, the body representing the University’s faculty overwhelmingly approved a revised version of the Diversity Plan Wednesday.
Voting 32 to 6 in favor of the plan, most Senate members agreed that passing it is only the beginning of the diversity-related efforts.
During the greatest University Senate meeting turnout so far this year, 150 Columbia was nearly filled to capacity with faculty, senate members, staff and students. After rallying outside, many students from a group of about 100 sat in the middle of the lecture hall cheering and applauding those faculty members who spoke in support of passing the plan and hissing and booing when professors expressed opposition to the plan.
After years of conversation, one faculty member said it’s time to take action and work toward bringing in faculty of color and, in turn, attracting more students of color.
Another faculty member said the plan is an economic burden of more than $4 million a year that could result in legislators punishing the University by reducing state funding.
The latest version of the plan has been under review since last May, when the original Five Year Diversity Plan received strong criticism. The process of creating the plan included work by a Senate ad hoc committee, several public meetings and work groups, and it involved more than 1,000 comments proposing changes, omissions and alterations.
Professor of history Matthew Dennis compared the diversity plan to the Declaration of Independence. Both, he said, tout equality, opportunity and pluralism as foundations. The document opens with these three characteristics, Dennis said, and it continues to define diversity broadly, to affirm the mission statement of the University in its pursuit of academic excellence and to call for a shared responsibility in achieving the stated goals.
He noted the contention and controversy the plan has caused on campus this and last year.
“In fact, that contention demonstrates the larger central point, that the process which has produced this plan has been open, inclusive, democratic and responsive,” he said. “The result of one of the most extensive public discussions this campus has seen.”
Chris Ellis, professor of economics, attempted to spearhead discussion of the diversity plan with a motion stating that the proposed plan wasn’t accompanied by a financial impact report, which is required by the University Senate bylaws.
Senate President Peter Keyes said that of the 36 motions to pass in the Senate in the last five years, only six had fiscal impact reports.
Keyes overruled the motion with the support of a majority of voting Senate members.
Ellis said during the discussion that diversity on campus is important but that the diversity plan is not a good idea.
“I believe it will not fulfill its goals,” he said.
He added that the current plan is fundamentally and logically flawed from an economic standpoint because it doesn’t help increase the number of underrepresented students on their way to college. Instead, it takes money from other resources.
The main problem that the University should address is that “the poor fail to achieve,” he said.
Black and Latino students continually fail to meet academic standards necessary to make it to college because they are not given a fair share in society, he said.
“I’m not giving you an opinion here; there is a large body of literature that tells us this is true,” he said as student interrupted him with shouts and hisses.
Ellis asked the University to enhance the pipeline instead of spending millions on the proposed diversity plan.
Several other faculty members spoke against the current draft of the plan, asking that the term “cultural competency” be removed or that the plan be dropped because of a threat from Oregon Rep. Linda Flores, R-Clackamas, who said that the state will closely scrutinize the University if it implements the plan.
The document defines “cultural competence,” but the term is no longer used as a requirement in the plan.
Professor of chemistry Michael Kellman said the $4 million a year cost of implementing the plan may cause a reduction in state funding if it is adopted.
Professor Daniel Close of the College of Education said he and a colleague, Pat Rounds, conducted a survey of the 400 faculty in the college to get their opinions about the diversity plan. They found, he said, that faculty see a need for the diversity plan but think it needs to include gay people and people with disabilities.
Disability is included in the plan’s definition of diversity.
Close told of several instances this year when students approached him after experiencing homophobic, religious and mobility discrimination.
Close and Rounds received a statement signed by 75 students concerned with their own preparation for the 21st century in an increasingly diverse world.
Ellen Scott, professor of sociology, said the plan fits with the University’s mission of diversity.
It holds people accountable, she said, by requiring departments to submit annual reports that show progress toward achieving the stated goals and serves as a guide toward greater academic success.
“Putting resources towards this goal does not conflict with the goal of raising all faculty salaries,” he said. “Indeed, if we were a more competitive university we would have more success in retaining all faculty, including underrepresented faculty.”