terrapinsanity.com

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.