beyond the clouds

Last Wednesday evening Shreve Hall hosted a diversity panel which I co-coordinated. The goal of the panel was to open a dialogue between students and people who could effect change on campus and in the community. We invited 125 student organization leaders, roughly 25 administrators from Housing and Food Services [HFS] and another 20 campus administrators to serve as panelists, and ended up with eight final panelists. The panelists were:

• Sally Mason, Provost, Purdue University
• Alysa Christmas Rollock, VP for Human Relations, Purdue University
• Alan Manifold, Advisor, Purdue Baha’i Club
• Clad Clark, Residential Life Manager, Hillenbrand Hall
• James Foster, Administrator for Diversity Education, HFS
• Heather Stout, Associate Dean, Adaptive Programs
• Christopher Munt, President, Delta Lambda Phi
• Todd Trabert, President, Intervarsity Christian Fellowship

Also in attendance were First Lady Patty Jischke and senior members from HFS.

While the panel was a great success, I came away feeling frustrated at many of the textbook answers we received from the campus administrators. Some administrators went so far as to bring premade answers. When questioned about their answers, they simply rebounded the question with one of their standard responses.

One question asked concerned why the applicant’s race is a question on Purdue’s application. Provost Sally Mason said it’s a Federal mandate to ask that question. (I don’t recall her mentioning if it was mandated for the application or accepted students.) She also stated that many people choose not to answer that question. (Some other people mentioned to me later that there is a stipulation on the application stating if you don’t answer that question, you automatically become ineligible for scholarships; I have yet to confirm this.) The student also questioned whether race was used as a deciding factor in the admissions process, something that was unanimously denied by the entire panel.

As Lisa was preparing to hand the mic to the next audience member I took the opportunity to ask Sally why other personal attributes aren’t included on the application, such as sexuality and alternative genders. She replied that these questions are not federally mandated. This bothered me because the entire panel was filled with proclamations from members of the adminstration about how Purdue is so proactive about diversity, when in fact this is but one example of how they are very reactive. Purdue could start to shift to more of a proactive university by moving the race question to a post-acceptance survey given to all newly accepted students.

Along with race and ethnicity, other questions such as sexual orientation, gender identity, disabilities, socioeconomic status and other characteristics could be asked with the idea that Purdue is on a mission to know their student population inside and out, and offer any and all assistance possible to incoming students. Those who checked that they were queer, for example, would receive information from Ally or QRC welcoming them to the campus, informing them of the respective organization and offering assistance with questions or concerns. As it stands right now, people interested in finding information about those organizations have to seek them out, and quite possibly don’t for presumption that organizations like those don’t exist on a conservative campus like Purdue. Furthermore, Purdue does not provide any additional funding for critically important groups like Ally and QRC.

Purdue’s stance on diversity is, and will be for some time, very black and white. Race/ethnicity is nearly the only focus of Purdue’s diversity agenda, with many other facets of true diversity being completely ignored. Nowhere does Purdue take the opportunity to offer assistance upfront to people of alternative sexualities or genders. Also missing from Purdue’s diversity agenda is disabilities and socioeconomic status. It could be argued that these last items are handled by Purdue through Adaptive Programs and HORIZONS; honestly, Purdue is becoming better in the area of socioeconomic support through the creation of the Science Bound program, although applicable students are limited to those in Indianapolis Public Schools. (Science Bound was created as a direct result of low applicants to Purdue from IPS students).

I’m glad the panel occurred, am glad of what was discussed and can’t wait to do it next year. My only hope is that the answers from Purdue’s administration is more honest and not quite so protective of Purdue’s image.

More information:
     Purdue Exponent Article
     Fulltext Transcript of Panel [coming soon]
     Video Stream of Panel [coming a little less soon]