SGB, BAS calls officials absent on diversity issue

Faculty and administrators were markedly absent from a briefing yesterday evening about the… Faculty and administrators were markedly absent from a briefing yesterday evening about the lack of diversity among tenured professors in certain departments at Pitt, reflecting a “disconnect” between student and faculty, said Student Government Board member Amanda Reed.

The SGB Diversity Committee and the Political Action Committee of the Black Action Society conducted joint research for about a month on the demographics of faculty in 20 University departments.

They sent letters about the results to the department heads and invited faculty and staff to come to the meeting, held in the William Pitt Union.

But even though the group issued a press release, made a Facebook group, passed out flyers and contacted administrators, only members of the committees were present at the meeting.

“A goal of executing this action was to create dialogue with faculty, which upsets me, because they aren’t here,” Reed said.

Eight of the departments that received letters also received “zero awards” from the committees.

These departments have no tenured faculty members who are women or people of color.

The classics, geology and planetary science, religious studies, studio arts, theatre arts, history of art and architecture and history and philosophy of science departments have no tenured faculty of color, while the statistics department has no tenured female faculty, the student groups said.

The committee members said they had difficulty accessing faculty information because University officials, such as the diversity specialist for the Office of Affirmative Action, did not have the information broken down for specific departments.

Instead, they called the departments to do the research themselves.

Sophomore Amanda Washington, a member of the SGB Diversity Committee, said that one department head told her to look at pictures of faculty members online in order to find the information.

Junior Suzie Adjogah said she also encountered resistance with some department heads.

Some could only speculate on how many tenured faculty of color taught in some departments.

“We couldn’t get in touch with the communication department,” Adjogah said, “which is ironic.”

SGB diversity committee chair Shannon Martin reported that since 1997, female faculty members increased from 31.4 to 36.9 percent; Asian, from 9.72 to 16.7 percent; Hispanic, from 1.5 to 2.1 percent; and American Indian, from zero to 0.1 percent.

Only black faculty members decreased, from 3.5 in 1997 to 2.5 percent today.

“Our faculty should be as diverse, if not more diverse, as our student body,” Martin said.

She said currently 10 percent of Pitt students are black, 5 percent are Asian, 1 percent are Hispanic, and 80 percent are white.

Reed argued that affirmative action is important so historically excluded groups of people can increase representation in universities.

“This is important, especially at Pitt,” Adjogah said. “People come here to look for different perspectives.”

Reed added that student-faculty communication in general should improve, not just with respect to affirmative action policy.

“There’s a huge disconnect between people who make decisions and people who pay the money,” Reed said.

Sophomore Jared McClain said that one option to improve communication between students and administration would be to restore student presence on the Board of Trustees, which Reed said was taken away years ago.

Reed suggested allowing students to sit on hiring committees or offer more student input for specific departments – things she plans on discussing with Dean of Students Kathy Humphrey.

The committees conducted the research for National Affirmative Action Day April 1, which is cosponsored by the United States Student Association, the NAACP’s Youth and College Division and the Civil Rights Education Fund’s Student Activist Network.