It’s a little ridiculous that at our incredibly ‘diverse’ university, there is so little substance to our diversity. NEIU is not yet a place where every group is represented at every level of the university, all the way to the top.
It is the year 2007, and at a university where 25 percent of all students are Latino and 10 percent of all students are African-American, there are a grand total of zero current members of the Board of Trustees who are Latino or African-American.
Pending the approval of CCICS Professor Grace Dawson, there will be one African-American voice on the board. Dawson is essentially replacing the only Latino voice on the board, Carlos Azcoitia, who was a trustee for exactly two meetings before Governor Rod Blagojevich rescinded his nomination.
This university loves to claim the mantle of diversity when visitors, members of the media or potential students and faculty are around. Why pay lip service to something when you’re not going to deliver on it?
The appalling lack of voices from people of color on the board has officially become the first crisis of President Sharon Hahs’ young administration. Former president Salme Steinberg says she repeatedly asked Blagojevich for a more representative board; we need more direct action than that.
In the 1960’s, at NEIU and elsewhere, they took to the streets to DEMAND equality. Recently it was the 42nd anniversary of the “Bloody Sunday” march in Selma, Alabama for voting rights and human rights. Have we forgotten that those sacrifices were made to give everyone a seat at the table?
NEIU has a moral obligation, as an institution that claims the vanguard of diversity and tolerance and all of those buzzwords we like to use, to walk the walk and make the Board of Trustees better represent the people of this university.
If the first response by President Hahs is to place the blame at the feet of the governor, she should remember that she runs this university, and she answers to each and every student, professor, secretary and janitor at NEIU. Governor Blagojevich is not our problem: a culture of paralysis and stagnation at this university is.
It’s convenient to blame Springfield, hours away, when there is a problem with this university. Where is the action? Don’t lay it at the governor’s feet. March to Blagojevich’s office and lay it on the line, President Hahs. You have a university to lead, and we expect you to set the example and solve this disturbing problem.
Have we really come so far in this country, and at this university, when our leadership does not reflect the university it governs? It is a question that we may not want answered at NEIU, because the answer will tell us a lot more than we want to know about just how little ‘diversity’ means at this university.