I came away from yesterday’s University Senate meeting awestruck by the steamroller of diversity in the name of political correctness here on campus. The biggest rift created by this plan is between the humanities and sciences, not between proponents and opponents of diversity. Even the main opponents of the plan are in full support of the promotion of diversity on campus, but not of the subjective, loosely-defined criteria of “cultural competency” and “critical mass.” The core of the opposition to the plan has been from Math and Economics department professors who stated that this plan would not further the aims of diversifying the campus. Some professors quietly said it was a power grab by the President’s Office.

The meeting was accompanied by a large sect of students wearing black clothes and red armbands who hissed at speakers opposing the plan. I recorded the speakers’ discipline and stance (in order of speaker): Sociology, English, College of Education, CIS, Business Administration, History, Ethnic Studies, Sociology, Political Science, and English.

Opponents’ disciplines: Economics, Math, Math, Math, Chemistry, Math, Economics, Math.

A number of math professors were from former Soviet states; they spoke of how destructive notions such as cultural competency had been to their lives before coming to America. One professor broke into tears as he described the possibility of “Cultural Competence Officers” in every classroom. Math Professor Huaxin Lin spoke of how the plan implied that Asians were “overrepresented” on campus. Another math professor in closing his speech reminded us that this plan treats some “more equal than others.”

Are the gulags under construction? Not yet – but according to those who lived under communists, this is the genesis.

This entry was posted on Thursday, May 25th, 2006 at 10:40 by Andy and is filed under Campus. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.