The day-long event, which kicked off with speeches from Chancellor John Wiley and Provost Peter Spear, was intended to stimulate discussion of race issues on campus and promote a new campaign, entitled "Creating Community," a theme expected to be the centerpiece of Plan 2008 for the 2005-'06 school year.Crying over low attendance in the late afternoon? You had good attendance in the morning! How do you expect to come up with a plan to affect the decisions of real human beings when you have so little feeling for their humanity? Ordinary folks won't sit through a whole day of something like this. You're scolding them about that? I hope whoever makes the "more concrete plans" has more sense about why people do what they do.
Early in the day, enthusiasm for the new motif swelled, as each round table in the Great Hall filled with minority and white students and faculty. Later in the afternoon, however, the ranks diminished to around 50. The upbeat mood dissolved and the open-mic session took on an elegiac air as frustrated students and faculty lambasted the low attendance, perceived indifference of the campus and generally poor reputation of UW-Madison as a school friendly to minorities. Several speakers cried, and some angrily scorned Plan 2008's strategy, arguing there should be more concrete plans to diversify.
September 30, 2005
Diversity Day: the elegiac mood dissolves into tears.
The Daily Cardinal -- a UW student newspaper -- reports:
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21 comments:
My problem with "diversity" functions is that the diversity training always settles on recognizing peoples differences. It seems to me that the getting around the perceived stereotyped differences should be the whole point of diversity training. As such we should concentrate on how people of different creeds are similar. In that way we will come to learn that, in general, people are the same everywhere regardless of the superficial differences.
Despite my point, I also beleive that the real goals of the liberals who push diversity training is sinister. I think they want to tear down traditional white American Culture, not try to create better understanding.
Perhaps what they were really mourning over was the reporter's inability to spell the word, elegiac.
Mark: I'm the one that misspelled it. The reporter got it right. I thought he had it wrong too. Had to look it up. The "ac" ending looks weird, but the root word is "elegy," and the "y" had to become an "i," and the "ic" ending couldn't be used.
Sloan: I didn't attend (even in the morning), but I get the impression that the big issue is retaining students the university works hard to recruit.
My immediate reactions were, first, "What, *another* diversity workshop? Yawn." and second, "I've had more than my share of dealings with UW-Madison Maoists and Stalinists. I am uninterested in attending an event dominated by people whose commitment to 'diversity' ends the moment I deviate from PC dogma."
Difference is interesting. But I'm afraid the "Diversity" movement is, well, divisive.
The story doesn't give us an idea of who stayed for the afternoon? Did only the minority group stick around and the indifferent white people leave?
Diversity, almost by definition, is a multi-direction street. You can't expect 'diversity' to happen if you target your message to only one group. And to your point, if that message is a day-long lecture on a beautiful fall day in Wisconsin, forget it!
I have a sense that diversity has become and industry rather than an objective. Once the product is stale, repackaging is not a very good option.
What's needed here is a Cultural Revolution that will return the student body of UW Madison to Year Zero, enabling them to make the Great Leap Forward to a Place Called Hope!
"DIVERSITY IS UNITY"
Excellent. Orwell would be pleased.
MULTICULTURALISM is a divisive political concept that has fomented racial hatred.
Art: Good one.
On second thought, Art, "E pluribus unim" expresses a desire to make the many into one. The university's diversity vision seeks to preserve and celebrate difference.
Ann:
Thanks for pointing that out. Al Gore once made the Freudian slip in a speech intoning "e pluribus unum, out of one many".
It seems that such a slip accurately describes the new ideal that the diversity culture wishes to foist upon the country.
But they have it backwards.
Those events remind me of a sermon my priest gave years ago on the necessity of attending church regularly. It was opening weekend of NFL football, and fully half of the church had season tickets to the Detroit Lions. He wryly remarked that only the people who had heeded his message had heard it.
Orwells used his three laws, Freedom is Slavery etc... to describe how a totalitarian society uses relativism to circumvent the truth... i.e., "How many fingers Winston?"
"Out of many, one.." is just a phrase that implies that many can join together to reach common goal. It is not related to circumventing the truth at all.
"Diversity Day" is a great example of what I think of as "baby boomer baggage."
"...The hyperbole police are overwhelmed...."
I don't see how this comment adds to the discussion? Some of the langugage used here IS quite appropriate. Maybe you should explain why it isn't rather than smugly asserting that it isn't
Did they make people watch "Free To Be You and Me" ?
Thanks for the post. I think Diversity training is a great thing, and something we should all continue to have. I apologize for anything stated there that implies otherwise. The Bill Bennett debate today has reminded me that this is not a topic worth debating. There is only downside.
I wish the article would elaborate more on the content of the program. The little that is mentioned sure wouldn't fill up a day-long event. Maybe people were turned off or bored by the morning session so bailed out? Perhaps the event's leaders need to look at themselves as part of the problem? The article shows two guys dancing - a little dancing I can handle but after a while I'd be bailing out, too.
On the topic of diversity training, this program doesn't really seem to fit that description. It was geared towards increasing minority retention, and if I read between the lines correctly it sounds like it was kind of a gripe session.
As the father of a college student, I would hope she wouldn't miss too many classes to attend this kind of thing.
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