“Diversity,” as we all know, is now thought to be so overridingly important as to justify discrimination on the basis of race and ethnicity (and, logically, religion). Alas, in the hothouse campuses most devoted to it, it doesn’t work. Political, social, cultural groups increasingly are segregated on such campuses by the very categories — race and ethnicity — that are said to justify the discriminatory preferences necessary to promote “diversity.”
This is certainly true at the University of Virginia. The UVA student council (whose president, Daisy Lundy, is president because she claimed to have been the victim of a racial assault last spring), as I discussed here on Friday, is now considering an involved bureaucratic mechanism called “The Mix” to promote the “diversity” that is so sadly lacking. The various segregated groups would all volunteer, online of course, to work together, and they would be “paired” by “The Mix” staff on various worthy projects.
I suppose it won’t hurt anything, but if these political, social, cultural groups have segregated themselves by race and ethnicity and have been unwilling or unable to figure out a way to “work together,” a bureaucratic mating service is unlikely to change things very dramatically.
The Cavalier Daily thinks otherwise. In the lead editorial today the editors claim this proposal should be greeted with “enthusiasm.” (My quotes are from the hard copy since at the moment the URL for the edit leads to a blank page. I wonder if that’s someone’s practical joke cum editorial comment on its content.)
This initiative … has the potential to work well because it promotes and fosters long-term interaction between [sic] social, cultural and racial groups that normally would not be in contact. If this is done well, extended and continuous interaction between [sic] such groups could lead to the breaking down of the social barriers that have confounded student leaders and administrators to this point in time.
As it happens, the University’s new Commission on Diversity has also just held its first meeting. One of the several new ventures the University launched last spring in the wake of the alleged attack on Ms. Lundy, the Commission,
[c]o-chaired by Angela Davis, an English professor and Associate Dean of Students for Residence Life, and Politics Prof. Michael Smith, will study current academic and social cultures on Grounds with particular attention to the experiences of women and minority students. The commission then will look into internal and external models for improvement and offer a set of formal recommendations to the Board of Visitors.
“The challenge of the commission is to really focus in on some key areas and find out what is going on at the University around some of those key areas and programs,” Davis said. “This is truly trying to assess where we are, where the gaps are, where we need to go and how we’re going to get there.”
In his introductory remarks to members Friday, Casteen likened the commission’s future findings to a “report card” on the condition of equity within the University community.
Advising them not to fear controversy but to seek middle ground, Casteen told the roughly 30 participants, “either we make a model or we miss a chance that won’t come around for awhile.”
Smith said he hopes the commission’s deliberations will lead to specific and concrete recommendations for action.
“There is a determination to use this commission to gather some of the best ideas that are out there and figure out how to apply them in our context at the University,” Smith said.
Smith and Davis agreed that the search for solutions would capitalize on ongoing work on issues of diversity.
“We’re not starting from scratch,” Davis said. “There’s a lot of good work that’s out there [and] there’s a lot of things that are working.”
How reassuring. The elite universities have been shouting in unison that education as we know it would come to an end if they were barred from awarding preferences based on race to promote “diversity.” But they’ve been doing that for nearly a generation now, and the result is a campus with “cultural and racial groups” that “normally” are not in contact, where “social barriers” have stymied the fondest hopes of the diversifiers.
But don’t worry. “The Mix” and the new presidential commission, with its courageous determination “to really focus in on some key areas and find out what is going on at the University around some of those key areas and programs” and its plan to examine both “internal and externam models of improvement,” will no doubt fix what’s wrong.
White men need not apply.
Wonder what that would do to their diversity utopia?
How sad all of this puerile sentimentality makes me. I spent three wonderful years at UVa (Law ’77) and thank God that the pervasive foolishness that has enveloped the Grounds was, when I attended, regarded as such by all but a few weirdos. Now the weirdos are in charge and cowardly incompetents in the administration sqander the seed capital of a great university to advance their pathetic litte careers. Today, it would seem, a UVa “education” is one to be endured and overcome–a speed bump on the road to knowledge and wisdom–not, as it was for so long, a cherished, first great step toward becoming an educated adult.