by Brandon Green
Students, faculty and staff filled the Colony Ballroom at the Stamp Student Union to tell the diversity planning committee how dissatisfied they were with the current Diversity Strategic plan draft. The Latino representation said they feel neglected in the draft.
Although many were optimistic about the outcome of this Diversity Plan the majority of the people thought the language in the plan was flawed.
The planning committee worked intensely on the draft for about six months before presenting it to the public to comment at this town hall meeting on Oct. 28.
“The primary purpose of this document is to engage the community,” said Rob Waters, chair of the Strategic Planning Committee and the assistant to the president for diversity and equity. “We want to create a plan in which everyone in the university sees themselves. If you don’t see yourself in this document, tell us that.”
Along with Rob Waters the committee consisted of: Asian American Studies Department Chair Larry Hajime Shinagawa, Behavioral and Social Sciences Assistant Dean Kim Nickerson, women’s studies professor Ruth Zambrana and Stamp Student Union Director Gretchen Metzelaars.
In the beginning of the meeting Waters gave a brief disclaimer explaining how the document is a draft and how the committee wanted to leave the plan as broad as possible.
However, for almost two hours student leaders and faculty expressed what they felt were the missing components and holes in the draft.
Latino Student Union President Lidia Rosa said she could not see herself relating to the draft at its current state.
“As I read this plan I couldn’t help but think the overwhelming thought of where are the Latinos in this plan,” Rosa said to the committee.“I see every minority studies program mentioned in [the draft] except for the U.S. Latino studies minor as well as the Latin American studies certificate.”
Throughout the meeting students felt that minorities, graduate students, students with disabilities and international students were not being represented correctly in the draft.
One major part of the 18-page drafted document that faculty, students and staff were worried about was the creation of a chief diversity officer and a diversity office on campus. There was a lot of concern over how the officer would be appointed and how much power and authority a chief diversity officer would have on this campus.
“There is no single office that is charged with the responsibility of diversity,” said Nickerson. “The intent in having a central coordinating academically focused office or person is to be able to catalogue, among other things, and have a list of all the great organizations on this campus that focus on diversity.”
Nickerson explained how because the different organizations around the campus are decentralized, a person coming to the university would have no idea where to find information on all the different programs.
Assistant to VP for Administrative Affairs and moderator of the meeting Gloria Aparicio said, “From a Latino stand point this plan is not only to deal with the community here but we also have to provide some strong support to the parents. We have a community that is non-English speakers and it is very important for them to understand the process.”
Nancy Struna, the American Studies Chair, urged the committee to push forward. “We’ve seen reports like these come and go, and I hope this is not another one that will just come and go,” she said.
