terrapinsanity.com

The Diamondback is acting like a student newspaper should this semester, reporting honest-to-gosh news and holding leadership hoofies to the fire as needed. This is a welcome change from some years gone by that we can think of.

Still, in perspective, there is likely a ways to go. Today’s story on reviving an activist past doesn’t have the same punch when it runs next to an article on Victoria’s Secret dropping Maryland panties.

“I was pissed that they took our school off of the website…” Someone get Governor O’Malley on the line, we need the national guard here now!

And this morning we hear from President Mote on the matter of diversity… (full email appended for those of you not on the list.) But let’s review: did he really just say that we promote diversity in the very fabric of our community by protecting special interest groups (that are very non-diverse)?

Reassigning Cordell Black and then coming out with a “look at my track record!” press release on diversity is, how you say, ‘wrong order.’

Date: Mon, 16 Nov 2009 06:16:34 -0500 (EST)
Sender: “President C. D. Mote, Jr.”
From: “President C. D. Mote, Jr.”
To: “University of Maryland Family”:;
Subject: Diversity is in the fabric of the University

Dear University of Maryland Family:

Over recent days our campus commitment to diversity has been questioned
by some in our community. This is a most serious question that calls
for a response.

Our long-standing goal for the University of Maryland remains to build a
great university with diversity woven into its fabric. The diversity of
the campus is a foundational issue; it is neither a project nor an
office nor one of many goals in a plan. Every program, operation and
recruitment across the university must respect and reflect our
commitment to a diverse culture. This commitment is not only right,
just and necessary in a free community that values individual
excellence, learning and civil dialog on important issues, but it is
essential for a university committed to educating people to live, serve
and prosper in a globally connected world where diversity is imbedded in
virtually all issues, be they educational, social, business,
governmental or cultural. Whether we think in humanistic terms or
simply in pragmatic ones, there is no other course for us to follow if
we are to succeed in building a great university today. Rarely in my
life has an issue been so clear. My record over the past eleven years
reflects this belief.

When considering diversity, committing to its breadth is necessary.
While racial and ethnic diversity are clearly important, so are
diversity issues around culture, sex, gender identity or expression,
sexual orientation, national origin, religion, disability, age,
socioeconomic status and others.

Our foundational commitment to building a diverse campus culture does
not mean that everything is fine. That is never true. There are always
things to fix in a complex community even when much of it is working
well. We commit to doing our best to fix problems when they arise, as
we have in the past for many issues affecting our diverse communities.

Finally, over the next decade our community must balance two ideas about
diversity that seemingly conflict on the surface but must work together
for us to succeed. One idea promotes diversity through common-interest
groups. These familiar groups are brought together by the needs for a
collective voice and collective support. The other idea promotes
diversity of the entire campus, across groups, to broaden understanding
of diverse issues and enrich education of the whole community. Both
must exist, be embraced and work together if we are to benefit fully
from the diversity of our campus. The call for inclusion in our
strategic plan, the need for all our people to feel that they belong to
our community, speaks to this issue. The diversity plan steering
committee has the opportunity to highlight diversity outcome goals for
the next decade and to identify ways to balance these two ideas about
our diverse community so they can be developed and work together to our
great benefit.

In closing I assure you that our commitments to diversity and inclusion
are absolute and foundational. We will do everything in our power to
promote them and the success of all members of our community.

Yours sincerely,

C. D. Mote, Jr.
President

A well-deserved honor to Freeman Hrabowski, the talented and charismatic president of UMBC, as Time names him one of the ten best college presidents.

And at the same time, this is more evidence that College Park’s younger sibling is fast on its way to eclipsing the older land grant institution. Too many in leadership believe this campus is too important to become involved in local matters. We pay next to no attention to state politics, instead remaining fixed on the stars, or China or lots of other places far, far away from taxpayers who pick up the tab, and their children who fill our seats. Hrabowsk’s head is in the game, and he is getting good market share.

Math professor Peter Wolfe wrote in the latest Faculty Voice (well … the issue you could have read if the College Park quarterly had bothered to update its web link from the May issue there now … did we mention paying attention to quality?) about leadership here being too corporate. Yeah, we gotta pay bills. We’ve also got to have heart. Right now, corporate decisions on this campus are sucking the heart out of good people who believe in the flagship but who aren’t allowed to win. What a difference a short drive on I95 can make in the working environment!

What can we say besides YEAAAAAH!

What a mixed bag of signals about diversity on the College Park campus!

Zigzagging to the right, Admissions apparently never noticed that they had fallen behind in recruiting black students in this fall’s entering class. Big noises ensue. (Of course … aren’t we supposed to be working towards the day when nobody happens to notice or care what color you are?)

Immediately zigzagging left, leadership demonstrated solidarity with oppressed minorities by embracing, err, lamenting our roots in slavery, followed in rapid order with a diversity conference that proposed one of the largest and most expensive minority outreach efforts in the nation. (Said one wag, “Maybe we aren’t an historical black college, but we sure are a prospectively black one.”)

But many students and faculty panned the idea of spending the full bank account on a diversity plan that on its face was utterly unconnected to the campus quality objectives. (You know – flagship campus and all that.)

Doh! Back to the right, where existing diversity programs on campus get their fair share of budget cuts (far less, actually). But …

… students revolt in protest! Okay, so this is mostly Cordell Black, the long-time shepherd there, whipping up angst over his transition, but we get the point.

On it goes. And this was just the last couple weeks.

How confusing it is when we change the meaning of words so dramatically. “Diversity” once mean variety, especially by including people from across many different races, backgrounds and cultures. Now we must teach that it means homogeneity in a group, especially with respect to skin color, as students protesting for their ‘fair share’ proclaimed this is what diversity looks like. We guess that must mean diversity involves some kind of entitlements too: A lot of students obviously get the message, that cuts to Prof. Cordell Black’s office couldn’t possibly be because the state has no money – it must that race mongering white officials are intent on enslaving us again. To believe otherwise is to compromise on the entitlement. Why give up your due?

Wouldn’t it be refreshing – and promote more successes – if all this energy, cash and emotion went into promoting scholarly excellence? Leadership’s pandering one way and then the other is only taking us off the core message of being a flagship campus.