Diversity education task force formed

The President's Task Force on Diversity Education, led by Southeast Missouri State University President Dr. Kenneth W. Dobbins, had its first meeting on March 11 to discuss diversity on campus.

"It's a task force in that there are some issues that we need to start talking about, race on this campus, and I think it's very important that it's not a standing committee," Dobbins said. "Right now it is to look at specific issues and report back to me on some of the things that they think might be helpful when we talk about race issues on our campus."

Dr. Debbie Below, vice president for enrollment management and student success and dean of students, and Dr. Morris Jenkins, chair of the College of Health Sciences and Human Services, are co-chairs of the task force and will help facilitate discussions among its members.

Dobbins said that talks about a diversity task force began in August before classes were back in session. According to the task force's mission statement, its main charge will be to "advance the awareness and understanding of issues related to race, ethnicity and nationality in a university setting."

"When the Ferguson issue hit, we have around 300 students from that area, and they needed a place for them to come," Dobbins said. "It was a week before school started and we offered them to come in early. And we had some that did and some that didn't obviously, so that they had a safe place that they felt comfortable being in. But, you know, that just brought to the forefront that we haven't talked a lot about race on this campus, and I think that it is high time to do that."

Dobbins said administrators on campus were given the opportunity to address a number of diversity issues after peaceful protests were held in front of Kent Library in November following the announcement of a grand jury decision not to indict police office Darren Wilson, who shot and killed 19-year-old Michael Brown in August.

On speaking about diversity on campus in a group setting, Dobbins said several Caucasian students said they felt uncomfortable talking about race issues. He said one faculty member responded with, "Until you're uncomfortable, nothing productive is going to be coming out of these discussions."

"I don't want this task force to just feel uncomfortable, but I think it's something that we need to have some dialogue [about]," Dobbins said.

"One of the reasons I came here was the openness of the administration and the faculty on issues of race, and then I was more impressed when I found out that the students were taking the lead after the Ferguson issue," Jenkins said. "They were taking the lead on this particular issue, specifically for Ferguson, but not ignoring that overarching issue of discrimination and racism and all the -isms. I think a grassroots approach is the best approach to take."

Jenkins said he hopes the students and faculty will have those uncomfortable conversations so the university as a whole can move forward in the future with a clearer understanding of diversity on campus.

In order to have that conversation, the task force is made up of 32 students and faculty members from all areas of the campus.

"It's one of the larger groups that we have on campus, and this one is a task force, but it's intended to be representative so that there's faculty representation from each of the colleges, there's representation from each of our groups -- meaning clerical, technical staff, the faculty senate, the Deans' Council, the certified professional staff and then, of course, student government," Below said. "Student government appointed, I believe, three students to the task force, but we have a total of, it's either 11 or 12, students who are a part of this task force, because it was students who started the demonstrations. It was the student voice that really began the conversation."

The task force has been given a list of objectives to help facilitate the discussion and to help members work toward an end goal.

"Many of the objectives came from the students themselves who've said, you know, 'I'm spending my time and money here, and I want to learn about these issues, but I want to be in a class environment where I can also talk about race,'" Below said.

Jenkins said the diversity task force hasn't been modeled after any program at any other neighboring university, and that it was developed over time to create a structure that fit soundly with the Southeast community.

"This is a unique place. In a way, it's strange to me," Jenkins said. "You know, it's a small community, and we're right down the road from Ferguson and right up the road from Memphis where Dr. Martin Luther King got shot, but there's this dynamic that's happening here at this university that I think is unique to me. Coming at it from the outside, because you have this academic community in a world that's, I would say, is a little more conservative, and it provides a lot of opportunities for conflict and uncomfortableness."

Below said the purpose of the first committee meeting on March 11 was to have introductions between all the members, to review the objectives of the committee and to start a conversation.

"From there we'll decide if we need to work in sub-committees, and then something else I'm hoping we can achieve this week is just to ask the question, 'How do we engage the rest of campus in this conversation?' While this looks like a large group, there are a lot of people who have opinions and who want to share those and voice those," Below said.

Below said another purpose of the task force is to encourage collaborative programming between student organizations on campus like Student Government Association and the Black Student Union so the organizations are not planning programming on top of one another.

The task force also will have discussions about expanding course options to better supply students with opportunities to take more culturally diverse classes, along with the possibility of creating more diverse options for majors.

"In order to deal with race and racism, there must be some basic education. I think it's incumbent upon all of our colleges, departments and programs to provide opportunities, academic opportunities, for conversations revolving around race, actions revolving around race, because most of the young people who are going to school here will be confronted with people from other cultures, especially in health and human services," Jenkins said. "... I'm hoping that we come up with strategies -- it may not necessarily be a course, it may be infusing something in existing courses, it may be workshops, it may be doing things for our auxiliary things such as the police academy -- so there's a lot of options. So I'm thinking that whatever road they take or we take, I think will be a good one."

Below said the university currently is searching for a person to fill the position of coordinator of equity and diversity issues, and said that person may eventually become a part of the task force once he or she is acclimated to university life.

The task force will submit a progress report to Dobbins at the end of the spring semester and will follow up with a final report with recommendations on how to proceed in December.