Section A·Page 2
The University Daily Kansan
Thursday, December 4, 1997
Minority faculty in the Big 12
M. D. Bradshaw/KANSAN
Chancellor's minority-faculty goal calls for 66 more professors by 2000
Continued from page 1A
A lack of minority faculty members causes many students to go through their college careers without having a professor who is a minority.
"In the two years that I have been at the University of Kansas, I have not seen a minority teacher within my major or outside of my major," said Gina Dama. St. Louis senior.
"I am curious why that is. We as a University should be aware of minorities."
Damico is an advertising major in the School of Journalism, which has three minority faculty members.
Mike Cuenca assistant professor of journalism, is the chairman of the University Human Relations committee and a member of the KU Coalition Against Racism.
Kitchen: Says chan-
cellor's faculty goal
is achievable.
"The chancellor has made a verbal commitment to increase the number of minority faculty. It seems that the chancellor is aware that we need to work on this area." Cuenca said. "I think it's obvious when you look around campus that there are not a lot of minority faculty."
Cuenca said one reason for the lack of diversity in the faculty was the geographical location of the University.
"We're in the middle of the United States where the minority population is small," he said. "There is a lack of experience with other kinds of people, ethnicities and cultures. That is a big part of the fight here."
Although location may be a reason for a lack of minority faculty, Hemenway said he thought that this was not a good excuse.
"The challenges are the same every place in the country. You want to hire the best possible faculty," he said. "I am not one of those who is willing to accept that it's harder to recruit a Black faculty member at Lawrence, Kan., than it is to Ithaca, N.Y., or Los Angeles, Calif."
Kitchen also said that he thought that location was not the reason that the University was lacking a
large number of minority faculty members.
"The University of Kansas is not earning enough salary-wise as compared to some of our peer institutions for faculty. I think that's a factor in itself," Kitchen said. "We've got to have more than just the University of Kansas to offer these people. This is a great University and a great research institution, but sometimes it takes a little bit more than just that."
Marc Adin, director of human resources, said geography played a larger part in the hiring of classified staff members such as secretaries than it did in the hiring of faculty members.
When the University examines candidates for job openings, especially openings for classified staff, the University does not have the luxury of choosing from a large pool of minority candidates. Adin said.
"Classified staff are drawn from the regional or local area. Because of the lack of diversity in this area it is difficult for us to increase the number of minority applicants." Adin said. "In hiring faculty, we certainly have a lot more leeway and freedom to pursue national candidates."
Kitchen said the difference in the diversity of classified staff and faculty could be because of where employees are from.
"I think partly because a lot of people have their roots here or somewhere close to the Midwest, they are attracted to the University," he said. "Faculty will have to come from another institution, and I think faculty weigh very heavily who these institutions are and what they represent."
Although Adin said that facultylevel diversity was a more realistic possibility because of a broader candidate search, the 16 percent of minorities in the classified staff compared to the 10 percent among faculty disputes this.
Kitchen said he thought that students should not go through the University without having a professor or a class member who was a minority.
"We hear it far too often, from particularly minority students, who simply say they can go through an entire four years here and there is never anybody in their classes who looks like they do," he said. "That's kind of sad in 1997 that we still have that."
Center serves multiple purposes
Mission statement
The Multicultural Resource Center (MRC) of the University of Kansas was established to promote an educational environment that recognizes and celebrates the diverse composition of the Lawrence campus population.
The focus of the center is to serve as a primary resource for developing cultural sensitivity. The program's curriculum is designed to assure that the social and classroom environment of the campus is inclusive with respect to the cultural, racial, ethnic, religious and other differences represented in the diverse University community.
To foster and contribute to a more global and multicultural society, the MRC prepares administrators, faculty, staff and students through consulting, training, workshops, seminars and other educational programs.
The center also will work to eliminate stereotypes and myths that have served as the basis of racial, ethnic and cultural discrimination and prejudice on campus and in society.
It will not only promote cultural understanding, but it's primary goal is to help individuals learn to respect and appreciate the richness that is found in diversity.
It is the purpose of the MRC to promote multiculturalism on campus. As the name implies, the center will insure that multiculturalism becomes an accepted and practiced ethic in the educational program and in all facets of University life.
In a small annex north of Summerfield Hall stands the Multicultural Resource Center, the hub of multicultural affairs at the University of Kansas.
The center, housed in a remodeled Military Science Annex, opened Sept. 6, 1995, after more than five years of discussions and planning.
By Ryan Koerner
rkoerner@kansan.com
Kansan staff writer
"Its purpose is to create an environment in which individuals can learn to respect and appreciate the richness found in diversity," said Gloria Flores, the center's coordinator.
During the late 1980s, campus groups had considered opening ethnic-specific centers on campus. There was talk primarily of an African-American student center, said Sherwood Thompson, director of the center and of the Office of Minority Affairs.
Thompson said that an ethnic specific center would not have helped to further the goal of a diverse University.
The groups finally decided that one center would be more beneficial to the University.
"We elected, with students' insistence, that our best approach at integrating the KU community would be an inclusive center so as to reduce the polarization among groups on campus." Thompson said.
Jointly funded by Student Senate and the division of student affairs, the center is equipped for lectures, small dialogue groups, panel dis
An article in Monday's "Kansan" suggested that the Douglas County AIDS Project hd served 39 patients since 1981. It has served 39 patients since January 1, 1997.
MRC Spring hours
- 10 a.m to 9 p.m. Monday through Thursday
- 10 a.m to 5 p.m. Friday
10 p.m. to 5 p.m. Friday
cussions and video presentations. It also has a library and computer work station.
Items in the reading library include periodicals, books and video resources that cover diversity issues. Flores said.
"This is a multipurpose facility," said Flores, who also is associate director of the Office of Minority Affairs. "We provide resources like the reading library because for a while before the center opened, there hadn't been that kind of resource on campus."
Although the center provides campus diversity resources, its main purpose is diversity education. Flores said that the staff tried to be as broad in its programming choices as possible.
The lunches are held at about 11:30 a.m. in the center's small auditorium. The date of the lunches differs from month to month.
The center holds "hot topics" brown bag lunches once a month that address current events.
The resource center also co-sponsors events with other groups and offices on campus such as the Hispanic-American Leadership Organization, the Asian-American Student Union, the Native-American Student Association, Student Union Activities and various academic departments.
Name change reflects office's goal
Continued from page 1A
Bryan said that what he thought was best for Kansas was an aggressive faculty recruitment policy similar to the way Kansas men's basketball coach Roy Williams seeks out players.
"The most effective way would be an athletic model of recruitment," Bryan said. "You have a position to fill, and you know what you need. You send out advertisements, talk to people and aggressively pursue the candidates."
Bryan said that although the University's affirmative action policy was not quite as assertive as he would like it to be, the University's administration was very much behind his efforts.
When Chancellor Robert Hemenway began his tenure at the University in fall 1995, he set a goal to increase the number of minority faculty members from 125 to 200 by the year 2000.
Hemenway said, "There's a special responsibility here to make sure women and minorities are included in the hiring pools."
And Bryan said it was essential that efforts to diversify maintained their high-priority status.
"We're moving on up, but not necessarily as fast as we could be," Bryan said. "We're behind where we could be at this point. We need more."
Jim Kitchen, dean of students, worked as an affirmative action officer for more than 10 years. He said he didn't believe in diluting standards just because a person was a minority, nor did he believe that there were not qualified minority candidates available.
Although the Office of Equal Opportunity is not directly involved with diversifying the student body, it does assist all departments with the hiring and firing of all classified and unclassified staff.
"When people say they aren't out there, that's hogwash. They're out there," Kitchen said.
"We don't use quotas here. We set goals," Bryan said. "Sometimes those goal are numerical or based on a target percentage, but there's a very big distinction between quotas and what we do." Bryan said that the distinction was a lesson.
Quotas are enforced by a court order after an organization has been found to use discriminatory practices.
The University has never been subject to a court order of this type. Bryan said.
The Office of Equal Opportunity, however, does determine whether minorities are being underutilized in certain departments. It does this through an analysis of the number of minorities in each department, coupled with data on how different fields of study are diversified regionally and nationally.
Bryan uses this information to set diversity goals for each department.
Although he finds it unvoidable at times, Bryan grudgingly uses the term "minority." He said he thought it was contradictory to the goal of creating a level-playing field.
"I can't give you some magic number," Bryan said. "I don't even have one in my head. But unless you do something assertive or proactive, women and minorities are not necessarily put on the same level playing field."
"I think it perpetuates the idea of dominant and subdominant groups." Brvan said.
Sherwood Thompson, director of the Office of Minority Affairs, agreed that what mattered most was not hiring a member of a minority group but hiring the most qualified individual.
"I think that the important consideration should be talent," Thompson said. "It should be versatility that the person brings to the job."
Thompson said that his concern with affirmative action was that a candidate's innovative teaching techniques and background could be overlooked.
"Whites have been some of the most effective in teaching minority issues, and faculty of color have been and will continue to be very effective teaching Western Civ and other courses of non single-group nature," Thompson said.
Bryan said that the distinction was a legal one.
Kitchen agreed that a job applicant's credentials should be the most important consideration.
"I certainly don't think that one should be on the faculty just simply because of their ethnicity." Kitchen said. "I think you need to have the qualifications to go along with it."
"We also are working with faculty who are bringing unique cultural programs to their classes," Flores said.
Flores said that the center was accomplishing many things but that there always was room for expansion.
"It has to do with getting the staffing and getting the word out," she said. "When we are shorthanded, it is hard to get the word out."
In addition to Thompson, Flores and three student employees, the center has occasional help from student volunteers. Right now, Flores is heading a search committee for an on-site, full-time assistant director position.
Flores said she thought that the center had positively impacted campus since it opened two years ago.
Pres. Clinton holds forum about race
"I just think that more faculty have been calling on us for help with diversity issues," Flores said. "We hope to build stronger relationships with faculty. As long as we have interaction of that kind, we'll keep the message out there."
The Associated Press
AKRON, Ohio — President Clinton learned Wednesday that getting people to express their innermost beliefs about race will not be easy.
CLARIFICATION
Pursuing his national dialogue for nearly two hours, Clinton struggled to draw out the opinions of students and community leaders in a town hall forum at the University of Akron.
Save for an exchange on affirmative action between Clinton and a conservative author, the panelists agreed with each other for nearly 90 minutes. Clinton extended the session for 30 minutes before conceding that deeper sentiments would have to be expressed outside of his forum.
"This is the beginning, not the end." Clinton said. "What we're trying to do here is drop a pebble in the pond and have it reverberate all across America. If we don't speak very frankly about what we believe, then when it's over we won't feel very good."
As soon as the session opened, a student of mixed racial ancestry told Clinton that bank clerks react suspiciously when he deposits checks for his mother. And a Caucasian student said he feels afraid when he sees disheveled African Americans on the street even though one of his favorite TV stars is black comedian Bill Cosby.
"That's a pretty gutsy thing for you to admit." Clinton told him.
"I have those prejudices," Jonathan Morgan said. "It has nothing to do with my personal experiences."
you to admit," Clinton told him. The only truly divergent voice came from author Abigail Thernstrom, who argued that race-based preferences are no longer necessary to uplift minorities.
"Black progress is indisputably here to stay," she said.
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