What are we doing here?
Seriously, what are we doing? In the recent Kentucky Interim Education Committee meeting the subject up for discussion was Diversity Equity and Inclusion or DEI, because of course it was.
After failed attempts at legislation last year to ban DEI, the House bill famously being driven by the alleged daughter of a slave, the legislature took to the interim to speak with state university presidents about their DEI policies, programs, and lacks thereof. This was partly due to the last-minute DEI hail Mary to at least modify the postsecondary funding model to prohibit the use of “any race-based metrics or targets in the formulas” for higher education they passed in SB191.
On the agenda to speak were the presidents of UofL, UK, WKU, EKU, and Murray State. For those unfamiliar, none of those presidents are Black and all but one (UofL President Schatzel) are men. So, super diverse. The committee itself was not a broad spectrum or representative of the people either, with most of the committee members being men (24 out of 34) and white (31 out of 34 and one daughter of a slave).
The meeting was well attended, and there was diverse representation in the crowd, but it was not lost on any of us that the people leading this important discussion were not really representative of those who should be afforded the opportunity to lead those conversations.
Prior to this meeting, it was announced multiple Kentucky colleges and universities were shuttering their DEI offices. Yes, you heard (read) that right—shuttering. I suppose all the talk and commitments in 2020 were either imagined or false. Anyway, the meeting itself felt like the beginning of a dystopian novel.
The first up was the University of Kentucky. And I’ll break here to say this—it felt like this meeting was structured by a perceived hierarchy based on order, time allotted, and discussion, which in a conversation including ‘equity’ felt…weird. At the conclusion of UK President Capilouto’s presentation, the questions began. UK is one of the aforementioned schools that closed their respective DEI office. So naturally the questions seemed to fall in the line of, “so President Capilouto you closed the office but are you still doing that DEI stuff in other ways?” One senator used this period to bring up a totally believable story about a girl not getting a resident assistant (RA) job because she was white and Christian. After being assured UK was not ‘doing the DEI’ it was on to UofL.
President Schatzel, to her credit, began by rightfully centering her discussion on the students and introducing some student leaders who also made the trip to Frankfort. The students were of multiple races, ages, ethnicities, and genders…aka diverse, and leaders at the University of Louisville. She was the only president to do this, and maybe it is of no surprise UofL is not one of the schools to close its DEI centered offices…yet. At the conclusion of her presentation, the questions were pretty mundane but what stood out was questioning around the UofL Office of Institutional Equity. The panel wanted to know why it had to exist and why they focused on equity versus equality…because obviously they haven’t seen the picture we all have seen to delineate the two.
In response, President Schatzel discussed how UofL and equity doesn’t believe in showing bias and focuses on treating each student as an individual. With little to follow up on, the senator who mentioned the unhired RA brought up something about locking Christian students in libraries at UofL…again what are we doing here?
The rest of the meeting went this way, but the other universities were asked to present together due to time. But what was striking to me and the basis of my what are we doing here is what was NOT discussed.
I ran numbers and research with
Dr. Ricky Jones on the current student and faculty diversity numbers which I am sure he will share(hint they aren’t great).But what was not discussed was the staggering lack of diversity within the universities, with UofL being the most diverse, and the others really lagging behind. What was not discussed was how we ensure we build more diverse and inclusive universities and how we can continue to educate ALL Kentuckians to contribute to our future? What was not discussed was how many non-white students seek education opportunities outside of Kentucky and quite a few never return. There was no discussion on how to bring people from multiple backgrounds to our universities and how to grow diversity of thought, diversity of experience, and diversity in general.
The meeting should have been on how we can make all of these universities more reflective of the state (commonwealth) they represent and how that will make us all better as a whole. Instead, there was little on substance and plenty on posturing, and statements that asserted DEI was a divisive concept, when they are the ones making it divisive. We are stronger when we are together, when we are diverse, treated equitably, and feel included. Hopefully that happens one day.