Reprint from the Wisconsin State Journal, March 2, 1997During the question period at the UW-Madison’s widely-reported Faculty Senate monthly meeting on February 3, problems of policy and governance emerged concerning the taboo subject of racial/ethnic diversity.
It began with questions I posed. It ended with a law professor questioning my motives and with the Dean of the College of Letters and Science expressing his shame at the discussion taking place and concluding, “This is not the right kind of discussion to be held in a public forum.” Ironically, the Dean’s statement implies that some university education policies should not be discussed in the very forum, the Faculty Senate, where they must be discussed.
What prompted my raising the diversity issue?
The immediate cause is the apparent failure of the Chancellor and the University Committee to safeguard the faculty’s role in shared governance. More than two years ago, Chancellor Ward, in unveiling a remodeled version of former Chancellor Shalala”s “Madison Plan,” described the new “Madison Commitment” as a faculty-driven plan that would solve the minority enrollment problem. The administration stated explicitly that no goals or timetables were implied.
But subsequently, the Chancellor, without attempting to secure faculty concurrence yielded to the demand by the student Civil Rights Defense Coalition . He unilaterally agreed that the campus would reach proportional representation of minorities by the year 2000. This action, taken last spring, and the University Committee’s failure to challenge it suggest a significant erosion of faculty power.
More fundamental is the continuing commitment by the Chancellor and the UW-Madison to a diversity policy which was framed in the early 1970s. In 25 years, the program has produced no identifiable increases in minority enrollment. Faculty committees regularly decry minority underrepresentation but never probe its root causes. Instead, they urge greater effort, more staff, and increased university funding for diversity efforts. Yet, the promised results never materialize.
Recently, I checked the representation of minorities. The percentage of new freshmen minority students has exceeded the percentage of minorities among the prior year’s Wisconsin high school graduates in 9 of the last 12 years. Moreover, Asian Americans among the minority groups are overrepresented. Paradoxically, White Americans are underrepresented. Rather than the serious underrepresentation implied by the Chancellor’s action, minorities as a group have been consistently overrepresented.
The plain truth is that campus concern about diversity is not really about minorities in general but rather about African Americans. As a group, they appear to be seriously underrepresented. But is the traditional method of defining diversity representation flawed? What should count is not the percentage of minorities among last year’s high school graduating class but the percentage of minorities among last year’s high school graduates who qualify for admission at UW-Madison.
The UW-Madison admission standard is by far the toughest in the UW System. Yet, individual minority applicants unable to meet that standard can still be admitted under the lower standard that applies to minority groups. Director of Admissions Millard Storey indicated publicly in 1994 that the enrollment of African Americans would be only half as great if they were subject to the same admission standard as nonminorities.
Whereas African American high school graduates last year made up 3.8 percent of all high school graduates, they constituted perhaps no more than 1.5 percent of all applicants who meet the UW-Madison admission standard. With African Americans representing 1.7 percent of new freshmen enrollees this year, they cannot be described as underrepresented if the yardstick used is the percentage of Wisconsin high school graduates who meet the UW-Madison admission standard.
I raise the diversity issue because I care passionately about this University and its future. To succeed at what UW-Madison does best, it must recruit well qualified students, those whose past academic records indicate highly probable academic success. To maintain the University’s high standing, merit must permeate all decisions, from deciding whom to admit and how to evaluate student academic performance, to whom to hire and how to evaluate faculty for promotion. We must strive to bring the state’s ablest high school graduates to their highest level of intellectual development. We must unify our efforts to promote academic excellence.
The time has come to reexamine the effects of our diversity policy. Do we want to continue bringing to campus sizeable numbers of minority students who are unlikely to succeed academically? Do we want to continue stigmatizing qualified minority students by virtue of special admissions standards that benefit minority groups? Do we want to continue frustrating faculty, administrators, and staff by seeking to attain the unreachable goal of minority representation for each and every racial/ethnic group without regard for prior academic achievement and future promise? Do we want to continue undermining the public’s confidence in our ability to spend taxpayer funds wisely and well by pursuing the flawed targets of our current diversity policy?
These questions need to be answered before a new set of diversity proposals described by the Chancellor in yet another letter to the Civil Rights Defense Coalition are implemented. These proposals should be presented to the faculty and to the Faculty Senate so that they can be discussed openly and thoroughly. Thus, I urge the University Committee at the very least to schedule an opportunity to assess the pros and cons of both these proposals and the UW-Madison’s policy of racial/ethnic diversity. I look forward eagerly to participating.