Officials defend diversity plan draft

The first draft of the university’s new Diversity Strategic Plan is far from perfect, university officials admitted.

After an initial draft was released Thursday, students charged the plan with being too vague, lofty and dismissive of certain underrepresented populations, including graduate students, international students and the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender community, among others.

“This whole diversity plan is frankly a big joke,” Graduate Student Government President Anu Kothari said. “It is called managing diversity, as if diversity is some sort of errant child. Diversity should be celebrated. You don’t need to manage it.”

Even as students balked at the plan’s goals, officials emphasized it was nowhere near finalized and said they will gauge community reaction to the plan and its proposals at an open town hall meeting being held in the Stamp Student Union this afternoon. They will make changes accordingly.

“We’re going to take in everything everybody says,” Assistant to the President for Equity and Diversity Rob Waters said. “What’s in the plan is one idea, but we’re very open to hearing other things. Sometimes, people have better ideas than we do.”

The plan, which has drawn criticism in the past for not effectively representing student concerns, will be redrafted following the town hall discussion, Waters added.

Members of the steering committee charged with drafting the roadmap toward a more multicultural university said they’re looking forward to hearing feedback — for  better or for worse.

“A town hall meeting is an absolute must,” said Larry Shinagawa, the director of the Asian American studies department and a committee member. “We need to do this in a way that includes the input of everyone. We really respect the input of the entire community because this diversity plan will affect all of us.”

The plan itself breaks down into 34 goals across four key categories: managing diversity, academics, student life and staff. It calls for the creation of a new office of diversity and the appointment of a chief diversity officer, as well as greater recruitment, retention and promotion of minority faculty and staff, a renewed emphasis on closing the achievement gap that exists among students of color and greater integration of diversity programs into the general education curriculum.

“It’s a good start,” said Brandon Dula, the assistant director for the Office of Multicultural

Involvement and Community Advocacy. “I think a lot of people have concerns about what will end up being in the draft and why, but I think it’s a good start.”

Though Dula said having stronger connections between offices of diversity at the university would help students in the long run, one of the main points of criticism students had of the plan was its intent to create a new office and administrative position.

Kothari, among others, said the university should focus its efforts on improving existing organizations rather than creating a new one.

The two existing offices that support minority students at the university are MICA, which serves students by advocating for and organizing multicultural communities, and the Office of Multi-Ethnic Student Education, which focuses on supporting students of color in academics. Students are worried the third office wouldn’t mesh well with the existing two, which many have come to know and count on.

The new office, Waters said, would act with both MICA and OMSE to promote coordination among different university offices.

“We have, in some ways, a stronger set of diversity programs and a far more diverse student body than most of our peer institutions, but we’re far more decentralized, so our presence isn’t as strong as it could be,” Waters said. “We just need to have a more unified presence — everything in one place.”

After reviewing the diversity plans and strategies from the university’s peers — University of Michigan; University of Illinois; University of California, Berkeley; University of California, Los Angeles and University of North Carolina — Waters said the committee came to the conclusion that this university is perhaps one of the most culturally rich institutions in the country, but the problem is, our diversity is latent.

“The plan we created is clearly different than most of theirs,” Waters said. “It helped to see what they’re doing, but I think we have, in some ways, a lot more programs and, for sure, a more diverse student body. To me, that’s what the chief difference is.”

Not all of the university’s peer institutions have diversity blueprints, but among those that do, most created new departments or positions to oversee diversity management and implementation. Only two of the blueprints — Michigan’s and Illinois’ — are nearly as long, as in depth or as detailed as the draft suggests this university’s plan will be.

The cost of implementing their plans, peer institution administrators said, has varied. But Waters said some of the most important parts of the plan could come at little to no cost to students or the university.

“One of the things that doesn’t necessarily cost money is promoting more coordination across offices, across the campus and across divisions. It wouldn’t necessarily require creating a new position, just someone with the authority to say, ‘Let’s just work together,’” Waters said. “I also think being one of the most diverse and inclusive universities in the country — and we say we are — we should present ourselves that way. I don’t know that that would cost too much money.”

Ultimately, Waters said, the university’s diversity plan committee will have a much better idea of which direction to go after today’s town hall meeting.

“I really don’t know how this will end up,” he said.

mlang at umdbk dot com