“Responding to recent incidents of alleged discrimination targeting University students,” the University of Virginia’s Cavalier Daily reports this morning,
the Sikh Student Association, in conjunction with 11 other student organizations, organized a “Unite Against Discrimination” rally, scheduled to kick off this afternoon.
The rally’s aim is to “show a unified force against these actions,” of discrimination, outgoing Black Student Alliance President Lauren McGlory said.
Seth Kaye, president of Queer and Allied Activism, added that the rally’s purpose also is “to show we will not tolerate discrimination.”
….
McGlory and Kaye both said they believe discrimination is an ongoing problem at the University that needs to be addressed.
“There’s systematic discrimination,” Kaye said….
Kaye said he believed that recent events show “exacerbated” discriminatory feelings.
The University, it would appear, must be a seething cauldron of racial hatred. And yet the “recent incidents of alleged discrimination” that provoked the upcoming rally (complete with banners, tee shirts, petitions, etc.) seem almost humorously puny.
Students planned the rally in light of recent incidents of alleged discrimination against University students. The first occurred March 27, when a Sikh student was denied entry to the X-Lounge — at which the Indian Student Association was holding a party — because he was wearing a turban as required by his faith. The Sikh Student Association condemned the incident as a “woeful display of ignorance and discrimination,” in a recent e-mail statement.
And what was the response of these bigoted discriminators?
X-Lounge management, which said the lounge has a “no head covering” policy, later issued an e-mail of apology to the ISA. Sikh Student Association representatives have since met with X-Lounge staff.
“They assured us that it won’t happen again,” [Sikh Student Association President Justin] Chhabra said. He also noted that the SSA is planning to meet with them again “to educate them about the religion and the various different head coverings that Sikhs wear.”
O.K., what else do the rally organizers point to as evidence of the “systematic discrimination” at UVa?
More recently, a discriminatory act was committed against a gay University student April 4, during which he and his guest were assaulted by five males who uttered several homophobic slurs and broke the student’s phone when he attempted to dial 911
.
Also this past weekend, BSA members reported alleged verbal and physical incidents. McGlory said someone drove past Cohn’s on the Corner at about 11 p.m. and shouted a racial slur at a black student.
So, is this all there was? Maybe; maybe not. “Maybe there were more incidents that went unreported,” Queer and Allied Activism’s Kaye said.
I don’t know where the gay University student was accosted, but it is worth noting that “the Corner” is a public street near the University, and of course the X-Lounge has no relationship (even proximity) to the University. There is no evidence that either the “five males” who accosted the gay student or the drive-by epithet shouters were University students.
If the University, in short, were a person, it might give serious consideration to suing these rally organizers for slander. Sadly, but predictably, the University’s response took a different tack, and in its own way is more disappointing than the overheated over-sensitivity of the students.
In response to the organized rally, Dean of Students Allen Groves stated in an e-mail that he sees the goals of the rally as positive and beneficial for the University community.
“As I understand it, the students want to draw attention to discrimination in light of the X-Lounge incident and show solidarity in standing against it, which I see as worthy goals,” Groves stated
Well, what do you expect him to say to students protesting discrimination, even of the head wear variety? Actually, I think Dean Groves did feel the indictment of the University was unfair, but in his attempt (brave by comparison to the usual timidity of administrators dealing with students protesting discrimination) to say so he unwittingly revealed how utterly muddled and contradictory the reigning orthodoxy about discrimination is on college campuses, even (especially) on the part of those in authority who should know better.
Groves added that on the whole, however, he believes discrimination is not widespread at the University.
[Does that mean that, in part, it is widespread?]
“Discrimination refers to people being treated differently or denied equal opportunities based on their race, gender, religion and the like,” he stated. “I do not think that discrimination, properly understood, is a pervasive issue at U.Va., as I believe all students have equal access to relevant opportunities provided by the University. What we have seen recently are sporadic and isolated instances of intolerance, which must be addressed as a community. However, I am not aware of an instance in which a student has been denied equal opportunity or access at the University by a person in a position of authority, which is how discrimination is defined.”
I don’t know Dean Groves, and so I will leave it to readers to decide whether this comment is disingenuous or he is simply in denial of the admissions practices at the University, practices that treat applicants quite differently based on their race. Surely Dean Groves is not unaware of the great weight given to race in admissions at UVa, which means by definition that all applicants are “treated differently” and some are “denied equal opportunity” based on their race. Actually, all are denied “equal opportunity”: some are given more than “equal opportunity,” others less.
One of the effects of the unequal treatment given to students coming in to UVa is the unequal rate at which they graduate. UVa, as I’ve pointed out many times, UVa boasts at every opportunity that it graduates 87% of its black students, a higher percentage than any other public (and a great many private) universities. True, but as I wrote here,
13% of the blacks who entered in 1998 failed to graduate in six years, compared to 6% of the whites and 6% of the Asians. Put another, less optimistic way, blacks failed to graduate at a rate over twice as high as whites and Asians.
Broken down more, the numbers are even more dramatic. As I wrote here,
Of those students who entered UVa in the fall of 1997, 92% of the black females but only 78% of the black males had graduated after six years. (Among whites, six year graduation rate was 95% for females and 91% for males, or a total of 93%, and the numbers for Asians were virtually the same.)
If Dean Groves really does “not think that discrimination, properly understood, is a pervasive issue at U.Va.,” then he either is unfamiliar with the practices of the admissions office or he doesn’t properly understand discrimination.
