U Senate to Review State of Diversity, Bias on Campus

The University Senate will convene for its last session of the semester Friday to tie up loose ends and make final decisions regarding issues of discrimination and diversity on campus.

Among other items, the Student Affairs Committee will present a resolution to mandate the creation of a Commission on the Status of Diversity. This development comes on the heels of a report delivered by the Student Affairs Committee at the April plenary, when the committee addressed the University’s handling of bias issues last semester.

The establishment of such a commission was originally recommended in a 17-page report by the Student Affairs Committee, which enlisted the aid of the External Relations Committee. The two committees presented the report coupled with a call for more substantive action.

“We should come back with a resolution to address these issues in a more systematic way,” said Sharyn O’Halloran, co-chair of the External Relations Committee.
O’Halloran outlined the goals of the committee in an e-mail Sunday: “The committee’s mandate is to further diversity initiatives on campus (e.g. racial, cultural, socio-economic, among others).”

The Commission on the Status of Diversity is based upon the model of the Commission for the Status of Women, which was founded by the Senate in the ’70s after the Department of Education nearly revoked 33 million worth of government funding to Columbia due to alleged discriminatory treatment of women in higher education.

The Commission on the Status of Women works independently of the Executive Committee of the Senate, but “shall report and make recommendations periodically to the parent committee and to the University Senate on the status of women,” according to its mandate. The commission is charged to deal with issues involving faculty, students, and administration.

The Student Affairs Committee does not yet have a quotable mandate for the Commission on the Status of Diversity, but has stated that it will generally follow the mandate for the Commission on the Status of Women.

“While we expect the Commission to pick a yearly project to work on, much like the Commission on the Status of Women does, the broader mandate is to support and propose relevant policy, to conduct research into specific questions as needed and to function as a source of information on different related initiatives around the campus,” Andrea Hauge, co-chair of the Student Affairs Committee, wrote in an e-mail.

Other items on the agenda for Friday’s meeting include a resolution to limit the number of chairmanships of Senate standing committees per person, a report from the Faculty Affairs committee asking the University for help funding research when grants are not renewed, and a resolution calling for guidelines on the conduct of deans and chairs.

The behavior of University officials was first raised as a issue in the Senate in March of 2003. Though a resolution was passed, nothing has been put in the faculty handbook, as was desired. The new resolution will likely push for the inclusion of conduct guidelines for deans and chairs in the faculty handbook, which is overseen by the provost.

shane.ferro@columbiaspectator.com