Diversity: What it really “means” to Faculty, Students, and Administrators

Introduction

During the 16+ years I have worked in higher education, one of my former experiences working at a small career college allowed me to experience the “true” reality of non-best practices of diversity.

The term diversity used in higher education refers to multiple types of communities based on cultural, racial, ethnic, or sexual identities. (Ackoff & Pourdehnad, 2001; Schnebel, 2000).

Diversity in higher education is sometimes like the family member or relative that is hid from view or the presence of others in an effort to avoid embarrassment or unkind comments. Unfortunately, much like the family member or relative, diversity will not go away or disappear, especially in an emergent global environment. (Aguirre & Martinez 2002).

These are the factual accounts from my experience:

Administrators, Faculty and Staff

There were one seventy eight (178) full-time diverse faculty, staff, administrators and faculty. These were the diverse collective racial employees – one African-American female [Administrator], two African-American female faculty, one African-American Registrar, an African-American female Admission’s Officer and one African-American male bus driver.

Everyone else was Caucasian females, with a total count of approximately 4 or 5 males [all Caucasian]. The diversity with the population of full-time personnel never changed.

However, the evening Administrator hired a diverse population of faculties, being African-American males and females, Hispanic and Caucasian males and females. Their “scopes of practice” were detrimental for the success of the students. Hence, they [students] were the customers and the process was to be student-centric and student-focused.

In reference to the hierarchy Administrators, they claimed diversity was not a problem. Yet, there was a racist remark said to the night Administrator, “You’re only a token here.” In addition, during the swearing in of President Obama in 2008, a Jewish female Instructor said to two African-American Instructors’ that they were “N’s” and he [the President] was too. These two African-American Instructors went to the hierarchy Administrator’s and they neither did nor said nothing about it. The hierarchy Administrators turned a deaf ear as if it was true and moved on. There was almost a literal race riot.

These comments noted the lack of diversity in the college setting for faculty and administrators.

Students

The diverse population of students was 45% African-American [females’ 40% and 5% males]; 40% Caucasian [females’ 30% and 10% males]; finally, the population of Hispanic 10%, and 5% Asian and Muslim.

The largest populations were females, (approximately 85% and 15% males). The students were mostly from socioeconomic backgrounds less fortunate, and lacking positive role model behavior and social skills. Some of the students were not keen in knowing the difference between street authorities versus classroom authority. Hence, their behavior lacked subtlety.

Several Instructors were less tolerant and over usurped their authority by either ensuring the student failed or dropped from the class (mostly African-American). This, situation created monumental setbacks for the student who was trying to make a better life for his or herself. It was evident faculty were encouraged to drop/fail students.

Instead of consistent ridicule and negative connotations regarding their behavioral dysfunctions, hierarchy Administrators should have been conducting consistent professional development sessions to show “positive reinforcement” in order to maintain the diverse population. There were 1,300 students in the beginning while I was there. After I decided to move forward with my career, the retention rate dropped to less than half, along with faculty and staff.

Finally, here are two different views [in their own words] from students in classes that I taught [taken from the pages of my new eBook – “Diversity’s Voice: Now and Then”].

Titus D.

I really do not know my stand on diversity. We have and share different views about many things. Then again, I sometimes ask myself, what makes us different. When I think about it, we all want the same things out of life: peace, a home, finances, and family. When I talk to people I only find out regardless of race, religion or anything else we are never that much different. We all want to be successful in some way. We want what is best for the people we love. From my experiences in college, I am only one of four black men and I know many of my friends would be uncomfortable in this situation but the people around me make it easy for me to adapt. We all share a common goal and help each other out whenever we can. Diversity to me only exists when we let it exist.

Dustin D.

My experience in college with diversity is that I have to have strong communication skills in order to get along with people with different cultural backgrounds. We all look, act, behave, and have opinions of others. You really do not want to be discriminatory towards one another in college because we are all here for a reason. We need to be kind to one another and respect each other’s opinions. This will help all of us to get through college easier and not hate one another.

Conclusion

This paper was based on life experience in a “small” college where there were not a lot of diverse populations and hierarchy administration was not affluent enough to promote the concept. In addition, when the night administrator asked to have a small presentation for “Black History” month, she felt it would be better if it would be titled “Multicultural” month as not to leave the diverse populations out that were at the school. When she asked her supervisor, the response was, “don’t let it be over 10 minutes.” It was a short PowerPoint display of factual information and the presenter had to speak about the information. The presentation was 20 minutes. Afterwards, the supervisor said, “It was nice, but too long.” It was evident; this college setting was not open to any diverse 21st century concepts. The night administrator never asked again. However, students and [some] faculty stated they learned a great deal of new information they had never known from the presentation. “Diversity is here to stay, whether this society likes it or not”.