Universities all over the country, including the UA, are trying to create diverse campuses.
In fact, University of Idaho has been trying so hard to attract a diverse student body that it doctored a picture from its university Web site that had all white students. Officials cut and pasted minority students' faces over the faces of some of the white students.
Clearly, diversity has become a selling point among universities. University of Arizona's dialogue on race is absolutely necessary to combat the very problems that UI's mishap proves.
Friday the UA held a lunch discussion titled "It's Time to Talk." About 700 people attended the event, including representatives from the African American Student Affairs and the Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Student Center, Asian Pacific American Student Affairs, Chicano/Hispano Student Affairs, and the Hillel Foundation participated in the event. New York Times editors who had studied race at the national level were invited to speak to the audience.
Instead of tackling the issue at its core through dialogue as did the UA, UI felt the need to contrive it's campus' level of diversity. Clearly they were attempting to attract minorities in order to eventually create a diverse student body and to raise the mere eight percent of minorities its student body boasts. Universities think it is so important to attract minority students that they feel compelled to contrive the level of diversity that their campus actually has.
UI issued a mea culpa regarding the incident. It ought to follow up its apology with new admissions policies that will help create a more diverse student body.
Denigrating racism to a cut-and-paste issue, as UI did, merely emphasizes the need not only for campus dialogues on race, but for actual admissions measures that help make campuses more diverse.
UA President Peter Likins's commitment to having dialogue on race is a critical part of the movement toward diversity. While no barriers may have been broken at Friday's forum, it is, at least, an attempt at breaking down racial barriers.
University of Wisconsin at Madison was guilty of a similar incident about two weeks before the UI incident.
Rather than becoming a hardcore policy issue, these universities are portraying diversity as a trend, a mere selling point. Perhaps this is a part of the journey toward a more diverse academic community. But contriving the level of diversity on any college campus is simply unacceptable.
On the other hand, the UA discussion on race, however tame as it may be, is critical for two reasons. It informed 700 members of the UA community about the national picture in terms of race. Also, it gave people a forum to express their views about race and its implications in their lives.
Contriving diversity as a selling point-as UI and UW did-accomplishes nothing in the end.
But dialogue on race-if it becomes a university ritual as it most likely will considering the administration's commitment to improving race relations- can accomplish a lot. Though it may sound tacky, dialogue is the most important way to break down stereotypes and build up a community that is attempting to become more diverse.
