The Review

Issue date: 11/6/07 Section: News

Media Credit: Steven Gold The diversity-training program in residence halls was immediately suspended as of Nov. 1.

The university's diversity-training program, which was implemented in residence halls by Residence Life, has been immediately suspended for the duration of the academic year, according to President Patrick Harker.

In an interview on Monday, Nov. 5, Harker said the program would no longer conduct activities under the current framework, which includes one-on-one conferences between resident assistants and residents and monthly floor meetings.

The university's statement, which was titled "A Message to the University of Delaware Community," was written by Harker and released on the university's Web site on Nov. 1. The decision came three days after the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education, a "non-profit educational foundation" according to its Web site, sent the president a five-page letter detailing its concerns with the program.

The letter, which was also sent to three members of the university's Board of Trustees and high-ranking staff members in Residence Life, stated the diversity-training program "requires students to adopt highly specific university-approved views on issues ranging from politics to sexuality, sociology, moral philosophy, and even science." The FIRE letter also stated the adoption was attempted through "mandatory diversity training sessions" conducted by RAs to their residents.

Harker said he was unaware of FIRE's letter until Wednesday morning because he was in China until late Tuesday night. He said he "did not want to jump to any conclusions" before reviewing the program, but ultimately decided on Thursday that the program needed to be suspended for a more extensive review.

"When looking at some of the material, there were enough questions raised about the program, in my mind, so that the best course of action was to stop the program, to step back and take a look at this," Harker said. "We'll have a faculty group, along with the administration, take a deep look at this to make sure we're doing it right."

A press release, titled "University of Delaware Requires Students to Undergo Ideological Reeducation," was published on FIRE's Web site on Oct. 30, which included a PDF file of the letter written by FIRE senior staff member Samantha Harris.

The situation garnered national attention from television programs such as Fox News' "Hannity and Colmes" and CNN's "Glenn Beck," while The Philadelphia Inquirer ran a front-page story titled "Diversity program creates division/Delaware freshmen unsettled."

During an interview that occurred after Harker's decision, Harris, FIRE's director of legal and public advocacy, said the university does not have the right to use "coercion and high-pressure tactics to force students to adopt [the university's] views."

Harker said this interpretation was never the intention of the university and disagreed with critics who questioned the legality of the program.

"Every major university has such a program," he said. "It is a normal course of doing business. We are not trying to do something that is unusual."


'There was no clarification'


When Arman Fardanesh, a freshman and now floor senator in the Russell C third floor residence hall, arrived to campus on move-in day, he said he immediately felt uncomfortable by what he described as "three hours of mandatory diversity training."

"They had all of these posters around the room. Basically, they'd have 'whites' on one, 'blacks,' 'Jews' - all of these classifications. And they would want you to write stereotypes about [them].

"So people would be like, 'OK, Jews,' so someone wrote 'cheap' or 'big nose.' Publicly. I didn't even know these people."

Junior Grant Newman, who was an RA in Russell C second floor for four weeks but left for "personal reasons," said activities such as this are implemented to help students "understand who they were" and to "facilitate very difficult discussions."

Fardanesh said the message was lost in the execution of the program.

Much of the controversy surrounding the program has centered on a specific Residence Life Diversity Facilitation Training document that featured definitions of a "racist" ("…The term applies to all white people…living in the United States, regardless of class, gender, religion, culture of sexuality") and "non-racist" ("A non-term.").

Newman said the material came from the director of the California-based World Trust Educational Services Dr. Shakti Butler. She presented the document at RA summer training as, what Newman describes, "tools" that "were by no means what we had to believe."

Fardanesh said he was one of the first students to speak out against the program. He sent an e-mail message of complaint to his RA in early September. Fardanesh said the purpose of the diversity-training program, and what he called "mandatory floor and one-on-one meetings," was ambiguous and that students were unsure of its intent.

"Some people thought it had to do with the Honors program," Fardanesh said. "Some people thought if you didn't do this, it looked bad. There was no clarification at all."

Fardanesh said he and three other students in his Honors Colloquium class discussed their anger at the program with Professor Jan Blits. Blits is 30-year professor at the university and the president of the Delaware chapter of the National Association of Scholars, which lists on its Web site an issue of concern being "use of non-curricular resources, such as orientations and residential life programs, to impose political and ideological conformity on student life."

Blits said he was the liaison between the concerned students, which he described in a later e-mail message as "well in the dozens," and FIRE officials, who he said knew his name from his position with the Delaware Association of Scholars.

Students provided an "enormous amount of evidence" in the form of e-mail messages that used the word "mandatory" to describe floor meetings, Blits said. He said he believed the program, which he described as a form of "brainwashing and propaganda," was implemented to help the Residence Life staff, not the students.

"I think they saw that this program would greatly advance their careers," Blits said. "I think they had no idea how shocking much of this would be to faculty, parents and students. I think they completely misunderstood the effect of people seeing this."


'We are not mandating anything'


On Oct. 31, Vice President for Student Life Michael Gilbert, who oversees several university departments including Residence Life, wrote a response to FIRE's letter.

In his reply, Gilbert clarified that "students are not required to participate in any residential activity, educational program, or to maintain the University provided nametag on their door. We do, however, encourage students to participate in as many experiences as they are able as we believe this enhances their life at the University."

In an interview conducted on Monday, Nov. 5, Gilbert said there was miscommunication between Residence Life, its RAs and its residents. In turn, he said, he recommended to the president to immediately suspend the diversity-training program. Gilbert said the future of Residence Life is under further review, which includes "working this week to communicate with RAs" to "respond to any of their concerns."

"When we have these kinds of concerns - about lack of clarity, about expectations - and when we're not communicating well about the goals of the program or our own point of view about issues of diversity," Gilbert said, "[it is] all the more reason for us to say, 'Stop the program. This is a problem for students and a problem for the university.' "

Gilbert, who took his position at the university this past August, said he had not reviewed Residence Life's diversity-training program since he took office.

From a student's perspective, Fardanesh, who said "80 to 90 percent of his floor" were happier now that the program was dismantled, said Residence Life should return to a more relaxed approach to promoting residence hall harmony.

"If you want to have a meeting, then do ice breakers," he said. "You get to know other people in that way. You'll find out a lot more about them than this forced diversity [program]. There should be a tight bond on your floor. Not this. I think [Residence Life] ruined it."

Newman, who is now an RA-turned-resident, said he sees the role of the university and Residence Life differently.

"It is absolutely the university's responsibility to not only think about what [students] are learning in class, but what the environment is outside of class," he said. "The university isn't just a classroom. It's every building. It's every student. It's every staff member."

Harker, too, said he believes it is up to the university promote "basic citizenship and civility" in order to prepare its students for life after graduation.

"We are not mandating anything for anybody, but people, I think, will be much worse off if they don't at least question these things," he said. "Even if [students] come to the conclusion that they were right all along and they didn't need this, they should at least question. If people aren't doing that at a university, then they're not getting an education."

He acknowledged that the swift action in suspending the program three days after receiving FIRE's letter could make it appear as if the university followed the bidding of an interest group, but that assertion gives the "wrong impression."

Ultimately, Harker said it was his decision, along with the assistance of his senior management team that includes Gilbert, to suspend the program. He said a situation such as the suspension could have been handled in a more constructive way.

"The unfortunate fact is that there were faculty who had these concerns and rather than bring them to me as a faculty colleague and as president of this university, chose to take it outside," he said. "That is unfortunate because we as an administration want to be an open administration - open to criticism.

"Rather than do that, and rather than give me and this university the professional courtesy do so, they took it to an outside entity. Why they did that? I can't tell you. But that is a fact. And they gave us no time to evaluate it. That Wednesday morning was the first time I was made aware of this program."

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