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Peter Wood On Sweet And Sour ?Diversity?: A Real Zingger

Paul Zingg, the president of California State University, Chico, made the mistake of circulating a ?diversity action plan for 2010-2015,? To Form a More Inclusive Learning Community, with a cover letter asking for both ?feedback? and ?input.? One of the copies found its way into the capable hands of Peter Wood, executive director of the National Association of Scholars, who has provided his ?feedput,? which he calls ?Attack of the Giant Plethora.? Read the whole thing; it?s a real Zingger.

Since Peter has been so thorough I want to make only a couple of small points. The first is to encourage you to take a look at the collage of photographs that opens the Report. They suggest, at least to me, that if Chico State were any more ?inclusive? than it is now all but minorities would be excluded.

Along the same (color) lines, Task 1 (!) listed in the Report is to

Increase the recruitment
and enrollment of underrepresented
student groups; [sic] especially from our
service area

More specifically, Task 1.3 states the goal to ?Become a Hispanic Serving Institution by 2015,? presumably by an ?Annual Increase in Percent Latino/Latina Students; 25% by 2015.?

Now, as Peter Wood has shrewdly and perceptively observed (can?t put anything over on him), ?Chico State already serves Hispanic students.? Indeed it does. Chico Facts, a university website, reveals that currently 13.5% of Chico State students are ?Hispanic/Latino.? And, as Wood further observes, ?there is nothing in the plan that suggests these students receive an inadequate education.? Nor, one might add, are there any barriers keeping out more Hispanics.

But let?s look at this Task 1.3 a little closer. What is the tipping point, or whatever, at which an institution becomes ?Hispanic serving?? If it is not ?Hispanic serving? at 13.5%, why will it be at 25%? Second, can Chico State make the dedicated effort it will take to becoming ?Hispanic serving? without violating California?s constitution, which thanks to Prop. 209 prohibits state institutions from preferential treatment based on race or ethnicity? Finally, if Chico State does succeed in becoming ?Hispanic serving,? does that mean it will (no longer?) be white, black, or Asian-serving? If not, then why is it not already ?Hispanic serving??

Finally (really finally; I was joking above), Butte County, California, where Chico State is located (and thus presumably its primary ?service area?), is (or was in 2005) 11% Hispanic or Latino.. Thus it would appear that Hispanics are already ?overrepresented? at Chico State and would become substantially more ?overrepresented? if and when Chico State achieves its goal of becoming ?Hispanic serving.?

Speaking of ?overrepresentation,? of course, requires us to make at least passing mention of what some might describe as Chico State?s current ?underrepresentation? problem. According to ?Chico Facts,? 63.9% of the students are white. Butte County, by contrast, is 83.4% white. Perhaps in the final version of the Report President Zingg can let us know how becoming ?Hispanic serving? will cure the problem of what, by the exclusively numerical logic of the diversiphiles, strongly appears to be the underserving of whites.

Full post as published by Discriminations on April 23, 2010 (boomark / email).