In our conversations about how to enhance
diversity on campus, we frequently stumble across a chicken and
the egg argument about what to do first. If someone says we need
a more diverse student body, someone else points out how students
recruited to address that issue will not feel comfortable if we
do not have an environment that welcomes diversity. If we talk
about increasing representation of African American and Latino
students among the Mudd population, someone else contends recruiting
and admitting such students will mean nothing if we do not have
support services and academic policies to insure the success of
those students. Similar arguments emerge when we discuss enhancing
faculty and staff diversity.
While each of these arguments raises
legitimate concerns, they collectively unintentionally undermine
efforts to take action by refracting our focus and dividing us
by our particular staff, faculty, or student perspectives. These
distractions occur, in my view, because many of us accept the
“the part can fix the whole” myth that has plagued
most efforts at educational reform in the United States. “If
our schools were better our students would have better attitudes
or skills.” Or “if only parents were more involved
in their children’s lives or more willing to impose discipline
on their children, then we could accomplish something in our schools.”
Or “if students were only more motivated, then we could
improve our curriculum and raise expectations.” Whom or
what we blame for failure (or target for reform) depends on the
particular vantage point of the individual or group advocating
change. Each group sees the problem from their own perspective
and calls for reform, usually with some justice, from that perspective.
Unfortunately, rarely do we step back
as a community -- educators, parents, and students -- and contract
ourselves to the kind of across the board simultaneous and sustained
effort that can generate real change. Because we lack the perspective
and political will to take this comprehensive approach to change,
we often take on reform efforts in a piecemeal fashion that results
in failure. Thus, for example, a district might buy new textbooks
and train teachers in new reading strategies but fail to work
with parents and students to insure that these resources are utilized.
As a result, test scores continue to drop, apathy grows, and reformers
are disheartened. The part could not fix the whole. Worse still,
the next time the district attempts to improve reading skills
everyone points to the original failure as a reason for despair
or a rationale for another piece meal approach.
This long digression applies to our
situation in the sense that the part can fix the whole myth could
set back our own efforts to address diversity issues on campus.
Rather than work piecemeal, choosing between addressing environmental
and recruitment/retention issues, we must move forward in all
three areas simultaneously. We must work to create an environment
more affirming to diversity at the same time we hire and admit
more women, Latinos, and African Americans and invest personnel
and financial resources in retention programs and support resources.
We must address all three issues simultaneously to prevent any
one aspect of our efforts to fail for the lack of progress in
the other areas. And to insure that this simultaneous advance
occurs, we should structure our long term agenda, our blueprint
if you will, around these three areas: 1) an environment affirming
diversity, 2) recruitment and retention of a more diverse faculty,
staff, and board, and 3) recruitment and retention of a more diverse
student body. We should incorporate those “best practices”
that we believe help us advance in these areas; we should not
hesitate to design new approaches unique to our unique institution;
and we should move forward on all three areas simultaneously.
Please forgive the frequent “musts”
of the previous paragraphs, I am merely attempting to communicate
my own sense of urgency and emphatically argue my position, not
rebuff discussion or feedback. Indeed, I would appreciate any
argument with or response to the ideas I have shared here.
Letter to the Harvey Mudd
College Diversity Task Force
Fall 2000
