December 1, 2015

Update from President Bardo regarding diversity

When I met with a group of faculty and staff last week about diversity, Lyston Skerritt from Student Affairs said that the campus needed to know that diversity was as important to me as innovation. I assure you it is as important. In fact you can't have innovation without diversity, because innovation is often dependent upon the coming together of people and ideas in combinations that didn't previously exist.

Why all the emphasis on diversity now? It's because the turmoil at the University of Missouri was a wake-up call. We have good people in place all over campus attempting to do the right things for the right reasons around diversity. I want them to know they have this administration's support and that we are committed to improvements.

Here are some steps that we've already undertaken:

- Dr. Marche Fleming-Randle, assistant dean of the Fairmount College of Liberal Arts and Sciences, will become assistant to the president for diversity. She will report directly to me and will have a seat in my cabinet, which is referred to as the President's Executive Team. Student Affairs VP Eric Sexton and I also recently asked her to serve as Student Government Association adviser, so she has a direct line to student needs.

- At our diversity dialogue last week, speakers discussed increasing the diversity of the student body, faculty and staff and increasing diversity training. Dr. Fleming-Randle's responsibilities will include shaping those efforts and reporting directly to the executive team and me on barriers and progress.

- Judging by all of the student testimonials I've been hearing about the Office of Diversity and Inclusion, I believe that office does a good job and deserves our continued support. As of today, the office's website is linked directly from the Wichita.edu home page, and we'll be adding prominent diversity content.

- Student leaders have told me that I didn't give them a feeling of being protected when they were subjected to hateful " even frightening " emails and social media postings during the recent controversy over the removal of pews from Grace Chapel. We had university police and the university's attorney review the communication to see if it threatened physical harm or crossed legal boundaries into criminal hate speech. That wasn't the case. I am sorry that people felt the need to resort to hateful speech to get their point across. That doesn't further any educational purpose of this university.

There will be more on diversity topics in coming weeks.