- Good evening, this is Emily Taylor. Welcome to A Feminist Perspective. This weekly radio broadcast is sponsored by the Women's Research and Career Planning Center, a program and information service of the Dean of Women's Office, 220 Strong Hall. A Feminist Perspective provides a forum for women themselves to speak publicly on issues of concern to them. And help inform other women and men of the movement which is remaking the shape and substance of women's and men's lives throughout the world. The Women's Resource and Career Planning Center contains large amounts of information, news clippings, government documents, magazine articles, research studies, and books, pertaining to many aspects of the Women's Movement. We should like to invite you to come in to browse or take advantage of the materials which can be borrowed. That's in 220 Strong Hall at the University of Kansas. The subject of tonight's broadcast is Affirmative Action. We've had other programs on this subject, but not for some time. We have with us tonight, a representative from the Affirmative Action Office, Vicky Hamer, who is a graduate research assistant in the office, Shirley Gilliam is the Affirmative Action Officer. Edith Black, the chairperson for the Affirmative Action Board and two representative of affirmatives action committees at the university, Dr. Paul Hack, who is the chairperson for the research and graduate studies Affirmative Action committee, and Dr. Diane Kelly, from the Student Affairs Committee. I think we might start by talking a little about how all these things fit together. We have an Affirmative Action Office. We have an Affirmative Action Board. And we have five Affirmative Action committees. Paul, could you tell us what your understanding is of why we have the five committees in addition to the board? - Of course, we have various concerns and types of interest in organizations on campus. And so I believe the five committees were established in terms of administrative convenience and effectiveness in order to carry on Affirmative Action at the university. Our sector, as you mentioned, is concerned with research and graduate studies and this brings together a large and somewhat diverse group of people, however a common concern, as I say is with research and graduate studies, we include the Anthropological Museum, the Biological Survey, various bureaus, such as the Bureau of Child Research, we include the Conference Center and various museums, as well as the graduate school and graduate studies in general. In this process, we can try to approach the Affirmative Action goals in ways that are least common to the groups which we represent in research and graduate studies. - And Diane is a chairperson for the Student Affairs Committee, what does that include? - Well we act as an advisory committee for Vice Chancellor Balfour, and some of the units that we include would be the admissions, the Dean of Women, the Dean of Men, Counseling Center, Student Union, Continuing Education for Foreign Students, there may be some more that are escaping me at the moment. - Yeah, hospitalism. - Yeah, the Medical Center, I mentioned the Union, right. - That's the Medical Center on campus, - The Watkins Hospital. - the Watkins Hospital. Do we, the other who chair committees that aren't here, the academic, it's pretty obvious, the various schools and departments within those schools of the university and business, which includes really all the business arrangements that come under Vice Chancellor Snitcher. So really the idea was the make sure that nothing got forgotten and that there was somebody who was knowledgeable about each particular aspect of the university. Now that information is all fed into the Affirmative Action Office, which is represented here tonight by Vicky Hamer. Could you tell us a little bit about what the Affirmative Action Office does? - Well, we're primarily involved with implementing executive orders issued by President Johnson early in the 60s. And we tend to serve as a kind of coordinating point for the committees and also for the board. Our primary, first of all let me tell you about the executive order. So that you know what we're working at. The first executive order that President Johnson issued. - The first one really didn't include sex, it was about. - Excuse me I just had a mind blank right there. The first executive order he issued regarded minorities and said that discrimination should be stopped against minorities and that special efforts should be made to repair the damage that had been done. Recruiting of qualified minorities, that sort of thing. The second executive order amended the first to include sex. And the executive orders apply to institutions and businesses receiving federal money. So what we do is try to implement that executive order following a special plan that was devised by the Affirmative Action board. We're involved right now in suits against the university. Would you like me to delineate those? - Yeah, yeah, actually formal charges, isn't it? With the various enforcement agents. I get that a little bit later. We have one other group represented here, the overall Affirmative Action Board, represented by the chairperson, Edith Black. This is the second Affirmative Action Board, is it not, Edith? That the university has had? - Yes, the original board was appointed by chancellor Chalmers. And worked for ever a year, designing a plan that would comply with the executive order. But I think to go beyond that, I think an academic community often, or at least we would hope, would dedicate itself to the goals for Affirmative Action, whether there was an executive order or not. Certainly we are compelled to follow that, but I think the plan goes a little beyond that. The plan was designed and completed, and then accepted as university policy, I believe last March. So we've been in the last nine months, engaged in the implementation and the educational phase, bringing the whole policy and the action side to the various units, which these committees represent to get closer to the people that are involved and to try to reach our goals for Affirmative Action. - So that the second board that's appointed is implementing the plan that was made by the first board. Now we've mentioned the executive order, of course that's the first time that Affirmative Action was used. Now, of course, we have quite a number of laws. And other guidelines mention Affirmative Action, too. The three I think that we're most concerned about is the executive order, with guidelines put out by the Office of Federal Contract Compliance, then Title Seven under which the university came in March of 1972, this last year, with guidelines put out by the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, and now Title Nine of the Higher Education Act, or the educational amendments of 1972, enforced by HEW, as far as universities are concerned, all of these are enforced by HEW. So we now have a variety of laws, all of which say we must take Affirmative Action. So we better make sure that everybody understands what Affirmative Action is. When somebody asks you that, how do any of you define it? I recall one time in the early days of being in a meeting that didn't involve the University of Kansas at all, but a city group that is also required to take Affirmative Action and the definition that were given in those early days were a little bit on the funny side to say the least, I'm not sure anybody would've gone away knowing what it all means. What do you say when somebody asks you what Affirmative Action is? 'Cause this isn't gonna go away, is it? In fact, it's becoming more and more important now for the university to observe, and of course universities aren't the only ones that are involved, but that's our particular topic. What do you say, Paul, when someone says, what is Affirmative Action? - Well, it certainly involved willful self study, analysis, and then a setting of goals, plans, to rectify and equalize, normalize, some situation that is not so at present. - Yeah, I would agree with that, I think that the idea was, was that discrimination, or just stopping discrimination wasn't enough, once you stop discrimination, women and minorities still aren't adequately represented in a lot of areas, so the idea that Affirmative Action was to improve on that, the seek out qualified women and minorities and to hire them in areas where they've been underutilized. - With hiring, promotion, recruitment, the whole works, so those who have been previously discriminated against, that special action would have to be taken to give them an equal opportunity with those who had not been discriminated against. Do any of you have any other ideas on the subject of how you would define it? I noticed recently, in Title Nine, there's reference to remedial action, which I think is a rather good idea, because under Affirmative Action, of course, there was the obligation to correct past errors, too. Like if it were determined that certain groups in the university had been underpaid, remedial action was supposed to be taken to make their pay equal to that of others on the campus. Now the term is used in Title Nine, is specifically used, remedial action, and Affirmative Action, which means do more than would be required, or more than ultimately should be done, when we arrive at the place where all the remedial action has been done. In other words, if we get to the place where everyone, regardless of sex or race, every human being individually is admitted to whatever training program, medical school, law school, engineering and so forth, a relationship to that individual's own abilities and interests, regardless of all these other things, then we don't need Affirmative Actions anymore, do we? - But we're a long way from getting to that. The resistance we often see is that instead of non discrimination, now we're having reverse discrimination, and we're looking at the people who are not as well qualified, and we get that all the time, what we're into now is reverse discrimination, your remedial point is the thrust of many of us, it's gonna take a while before we're gonna be able to make up the time that's been lost by all these years of under utilization of the people that we're talking about. - Right and I'm also pleased to see that Affirmative Action has grown beyond the idea of quotas, or just bare quotas, which really gave us a bad name to begin with. - But those, there was never any requirement for--. - No, this was something in the public mind and in the press and I think it had much more play than it deserved. - Yes, I noticed a couple of weeks ago, perfectly disgraceful letter to the editor in the chronicle of higher education, written presumably by a scholar with a real straw man technique, building up a false idea of what Affirmative Action was in the first place, and then saying why that false idea was wrong. I noticed in the last issue, that there was an excellent response to, and very reasoned. There never was anything that said anyone should take unqualified people. There never was any rule that said there should be a specific quota. Go ahead Diane. - I'm not sure in the minds of many people, though, I think in the minds of quite a number of people that Affirmative Action still is equated with quotes and I think we've got a real mission ahead of us to convince people that is not the only thrust, or the thrust of it. - And I think we must understand that there's a difference between goals, that we certainly must have to study and will set end quotas. - Perhaps we should explain that. - Yeah, this would be a good time right now, to start that process, in case there's still someone who still feels that quotas and goals are the same. What do goals mean, and why is it important that we have them? Well maybe why is it important that we have them would be a good place to start. Why can't we just say, we aren't gonna discriminate anymore? - Well, some ideas that kind of fall off the top of my head, is that people might be a little less persuaded to really make the effort if they didn't have a pattern or a guide to follow right in front of them and it's important for us to also know what areas need that kind of improvement. A goal is merely a number that is set, we'll say for instance, we want to try to find one women, and one minority in a given field in the next five years, what the department or unit will be required to do is try to find someone who's qualified. And that we have special procedures and recruitment sources to aid them in that process. If the five year time period ends, and they haven't found someone, they're not going to be penalized in any way for not having done it, if they can demonstrate that they've made a good faith effort, if they can show us their records and they can say we have looked everywhere we could possibly think of looking, with your aid, and have not found a qualified woman, then hiring a qualified man is not going to. - You're saying they won't be penalized, one of the discussions in Affirmative Action board, and I understand the minority affairs advisory committee, also, is some kind of incentive to be provided through budgetary means for the various units who can identify qualified people, and we're very hopeful that our administration will come up with, if not our plan, something similar, to get some built in incentives. One of two ways have been suggested, one is that we would isolate certain positions that would be filled only by those units who could identify minority, this applies more to minorities as women. That they could identify a qualified person for a minority position in their unit, they would then get that position and could not have it in their budget, if they couldn't identify the minority, the other is to have a fund, which could supplement a budget line that is open. The thing is said that the market for a minority PHD in most fields, is beyond some of our reach. And so one of the plans is that we would have a fund in which various units could draw if they had a qualified person that they could get if they have the money in their budget. So we hope to get some incentives. - I think it's important to point out right now, to diverge just a little bit from that incentive program. If a department of a unit cannot provide adequate justification for not having hired a woman or a minority, then the university can be denied federal funds, which in many cases I know it amounts up into the millions of dollars here, and I think that's the case in most large university. So that's the ultimate penalty. - One of the concerns of our research and graduate sector committee as this moment is finding a way of demonstrating compliance, and ensuring compliance to HEW on the basis of non discrimination of sex in titles Seven and Eight. This is one of the charges that the vice chancellor has just presented us, and I assume, can we not supply satisfactory assurance of non discrimination on the basis of sex for these programs, which involve a lot of student awards, support of students in various training programs at the graduate level, that these awards would be cut off by the federal government. - Let's so hope so, because that's the point of the whole thing. I wanna go back just a little bit to goals and time tables, because your example may have been a little extreme. You know, one person in the next five years, let's take a more simple example than that, a large department. One of our largest departments I suppose, is English, isn't it? Now it has a certain number of professional faculty in it. I don't know how many, let's say 50. It may be twice as many, or half that many, I don't know what. Now how do you determine how many, you've used the word, qualified, and of course when we use that, we misuse it in front of all people, men as well as women, minority, or majority, so let's just drop it and say people who have the proper credentials to teach in the English Department. How do you determine what the goal should be for a department? - You want me to answer? - Yeah, why don't know, you've gone through those figures. - Well, the number of women and minorities, and let's say the faculty, is determined, and a total percentage of the total faculty is determined of women, men, and each of the significant minorities that we are dealing with. - That's was exists right now, is first determined, right? - Right, that's determined. Then that percentage is compared to a national figure, let's say that there are 10 women PHDs in an English department, and that constitutes a certain percentage, and that that percentage is compared to the total number of women PHDs in English in the United States, lets say, over the last 50 years. If the percentage of women in the English Department is smaller than the national availability seems to indicate, then that seems to indicate again, that our department is under utilizing women. - We don't wanna do 50 years, do we? - Well, from 1920 to 1970, that's the data we're using. After that is done, when it's determined if the department is under utilizing women or minorities, and or minorities, then the department determines how many vacancies they expect to have in the next year, and again in the next five years, then based upon the availability of positions and the availability of women, they set a numerical goal, and it becomes rather ephemeral at that point, that what they think they can find. - Of course those availability figures, they are a first order determiner, but they are influenced by the number of students who have been admitted and actually completed degrees in those last 50 years, a number of women, minority students, et cetera, and so it behooves us also, to take a look at our admissions policy, isn't it? - Definitely, definitely. - Graduate programs with regard to this. - In other words, one of the real advantages of having specific committees to be looking at a number of things is that it isn't all entirely a matter of the marketplace, but rather access to the kind of training and experience and education you have to have in order to get into the marketplace, however, with some departments, and we used a fairly simple one as an example, that's scarcely a problem, because English is a field that many women have been interested in, I don't know about minority figures on that. But what you're basically saying, then, is that what the department is doing is looking first at itself, to see where it stands, in relationship to percentages. Then looking at what the numbers of people and the percentages of the kinds of people who have the proper training for this profession, and saying to yourself, what would this department look like if it represented what is really available? Now in some fields, of course, this is much more difficult and there are fields in which very few women or minorities have interested themselves in at all and you may be starting back in the freshman year, or in the junior high school, to interest women, for instance, in engineering. If each department started with where it was, I think we would all be better off. Now this is somewhat more complicated that universities of course, than it is in some other Affirmative Action areas. If you were doing this in city employment. Then you'd use the immediate vicinity, wouldn't you? How many carpenters there are, or women. - As a matter of fact, we're using some Douglass County statistics for our own goals and time tables. - For things outside of the--. - Clerical and--. - Right, to the availability of the people, but the reason you use the whole United States, is that's where universities recruit from, is the Whole United States. So essentially, you're asking a very reasonable question of what would this department look like if it were truly representative of the people who were qualified to be in it? The time tables part you mentioned, we're living in day where we're not in a growth industry anymore and so you do have to figure out, when is someone going to retire, when is someone likely to leave to go somewhere else, and so you set your time tables accordingly, and then you also mentioned a very important aspect, that you're judged on the basis of whether you tried to make your department truly representative of the qualified personnel available to be in, how do you folks feel, all of you adamantly involved in this as to what problems exist, or how well we're getting along, or any comments you have concerning the enforcement agencies, mainly the HEW, the wage and hour people, the Kansas Commission on Civil Rights? Do you have any comments on where we seem to be going? We are, as Vicky mentioned, we have been investigated by a number of compliance agencies, any report from them yet? - No, as a matter of fact, we've heard that we had an onsite review by HEW, conducted here last winter and we have not heard as yet, any fond report from them. - It was a year ago. - Yeah, a year ago, and the state Civil Rights Commission will probably act sooner, I suspect, I suspect, let's see, when was it? In October of last year, in October 1972, a suit was filed with the Kansas Commission on Civil Rights, charging that the university discriminated against female faculty and students. They have since conducted quite an extensive investigation, but we've not heard any report of the results of that investigation. - They're understaffed, and they're way more charges than they'll possibly investigate. So I think, it's not likely that we can rely on having to comply through order. - Nor should we have to. - Or should we have to, but we're making some headway, just namely in the name of committees, if you'll notice, once in a while, you're seeing some evidence that we are being represented both women and minorities on committees that perhaps would never have been attended to before, there are, once in a while, breakthroughs, although it's not going as fast as we'd hope, we are making some progress. - And at least there's an awareness, isn't there? Which is of course, one of the reasons that asking people to come be on this radio program, on The Feminist Perspective, are of particular concern of course, and this radio broadcast is with women, but we are equally interested in removing discrimination from anyone who has previously been discriminated against. - As a matter of fact, Dean Taylor, I was speaking with the department chairman this afternoon, who has recently become aware, through activities with Affirmative Action, the fast that there simply aren't enough men in a certain area of their department, and they're going about trying to recruit more men in that particular teaching area. - Yes, that's a very important force to recognize. If we're talking about discrimination by sex, we're not talking only about women, they are underrepresented in many fields, and we do have some fields in which men are underrepresented, too, they're certainly underrepresented in home economics departments, we don't have one here, probably in your field, Edith, aren't they? In the social welfare? - In human development. - In human development. - Office and clerical staff. - Education. - There's definitely material to work there, underrepresented, the whole movement toward equality of course applies to everyone in the particular groups that have been recognized as underutilized by universities on a professional level, has been women, and minority members, but when we begin to look at the whole picture, we see that there are some places where men are also underrepresented. So we're really working towards the goal of treating everyone as an individual, is that correct, no, get rid of all the myths that exist about the group characteristics. - Of course that's the most difficult part. - It really is, because these myths are firmly established in the minds of a great many people who tell us what men are like, what women are like, and what blacks are like, and what Chicanos are like, what Indians are like, and yet everyone of knows people in those groups that aren't a bit like the stereotype. We thank you people for joining us tonight to discuss the question of Affirmative Action, we hope that those of you in the radio audience will join us each Monday night at 7:30 for A Feminist Perspective.