Uniform(ity) Required by Lauren Waterman collage: Jill Nussbaum The University of Virginia, over a century and a half after its high-minded inception and decades after integration and coeducation, still has a faculty that, except for a few aberrations, looks much like it did one hundred years ago -- largely white and male. The students of this university have been fairly well indoctrinated to the ideals of multiculturalism that pervade higher education today, and the student body is considered to be a fairly diverse one, especially when compared to other public schools. But the faculty, while claiming to embrace multiculturalism, lags behind in the process of infusing diversity within its own ranks. Despite the hard work of the Equal Employment Opportunities Office, the faculty simply does not achieve a level of diversity to match that of the student body. Faculty diversity is closely monitored. Each year the Office of Institutional Assessment and Studies uses figures provided by the Human Resources Department to put together a statistical picture of faculty and staff broken down by both race and gender. Each employee is counted and classified into one of seven subdivisions: Service/Maintenance, Skilled Crafts (Masons, Bricklayers), Technical/Paraprofessional (computer geeks), Clerical/Secretarial, Professional (jobs that require a college degree, including hospital nurses), Instructional or Research Faculty (professors), and Executive/Administrative/Managerial (John Casteen and his cohorts). The IAAS findings are published yearly in Data Digest and posted on the Web, but don't expect to see them in next year's admissions brochures, framed under a picture of a happy study group munching away in the Pav, their shining, intelligent faces only slightly less bright than their glaringly evident racial harmony. These findings, considered by at least one faculty member "embarrassing, ... the University's dirty little secret," are not publicized or talked about. A couple of the faculty members with whom I spoke were not even aware that the findings existed. The university employs a full time workforce with a racial and gender makeup quite similar to that of its student body -- approximately 19 percent minorities and 50 percent women. But Data Digest reveals that this racial and gender parity does not extend up the ladder of occupations. In fact, the majority of the women and people of color employed at the university (92 percent of the African-Americans and 85 percent of the women) work in the five less visible and lower prestige sectors such as secretaries or food service workers. Women are well represented in the "professionals" sector, but George Stovall, the director of the Center of IAAS, claims this is largely a result of the many female nurses working in the university hospital. The university workers with whom I am most concerned in this article are precisely those who may have the greatest impact on students -- the professors. They have the greatest control over the curricula and are responsible for the bulk of the students' formal education. Many serve as mentors and role models. Unfortunately, they are also the least diverse group. The most respected members of the faculty are those with the security of tenure. As of last fall, tenured faculty were an astonishing 86 percent male and 93 percent white. The university is not without the tools to deal with this situation. The Office of Equal Opportunity is the university's watchdog, dedicated to overseeing the hiring and recruitment of faculty and staff. They seek to ensure that the process is fair to all "under-represented" groups protected by the federal government, including African-Americans, Asians, Pacific Islanders, Native Americans, and Hispanics. According to Brad Holland, interim director of the office, "What we like to require of the departments is that they do enough to ensure a diverse and competitive applicant pool." The Faculty Appointment Procedures manual dictates that "The faculty hiring process should demonstrate a 'good faith' effort to recruit women and minorities." There is a lot of room for people to slip through the cracks between these two definitions. The departments at U.Va. are not explicitly required to hire a diverse staff; they are required to hire "in line" with the applicant pool. This means that if the pool for ten jobs is composed of ten percent women, one woman will be hired. Holland responds, "I really don't see a lot of evidence of discrimination once people make it to the interviewing process. We can't say that there is a problem. But that's quite different from saying that there's not a problem. One question we have to ask ourselves is why is the [number of minorities in the] applicant pool so small?" Several of the faculty with whom I spoke see the problem as a question of effort. Holland suggests that, like in any institution, "Some people are better at putting forth serious effort than others." William Harmon, the Vice President of Student Affairs, seems to agree: "There is a sense that, since this is a prestigious institution, 'if you build it they will come.' But that's simply not true because we compete with other prestigious institutions who are willing to invest more, both financially and psychologically, into attaining minority faculty." Simply put, there is a market for minority faculty, and the university needs to be willing and able to compete, by recruiting aggressively and offering better employment packages, just as they already do for some special scholars. Other faculty see the problem as not only one of effort, but also of accountability. Several cite the decentralization of the university as a major problem in enforcing equal opportunity policy and encouraging the schools to seek faculty diversity. Dean Turner of the Office of African American Affairs: "I don't think the chairs of the departments are made to be accountable. I don't think that the deans and chairs are committed to ethnic and racial diversity." Dean Turner may have a point. After talking to him, I decided to call the offices of the deans and chairs of some of the whitest schools and departments, to ask them what was (or wasn't) being done to diversify their faculty. For the most part, no one in these offices could direct me to the person accountable. When I phoned the medical school I was simply bounced around to various African-American doctors until finally, one of their secretaries realized what was going on and attempted to connect me to the dean. One of my calls to the engineering school included the following conversation: Me: Hi, I was hoping that we could talk about minority faculty on your staff. The figures I have here say that you only have fourteen people of color on staff, and I was just wondering ... E-School Woman: How many? I think we have more than that. Me: Fourteen. So I was just won ... Her: One hundred and fourteen? Me: No, just fourteen. (Pause) You have 150 white people, though. Her: I'll have to get back to you. The problems that the university has encountered in acquiring minority faculty may also be connected to the fact that, according to Brad Holland, "The university is so concerned about any program that can be perceived as having a reverse discrimination effect." Because of this, some people feel that Affirmative Action at the university has been shelved, to an extent. One administrator wondered how "the university has decided to take this stance [on affirmative action] without ever even being challenged." Some of the deans I was able to get in touch with cite none of these problems as being factors in their failure to achieve a diverse faculty. Jim Freeland, Associate Dean for faculty of the Darden Business school (which has only three people of color on its faculty), says that the problem is simply a dearth of qualified minority applicants. Often those that Darden has attempted to hire have been wooed by other schools. "We have really put forth a tremendous effort in the last few years. Last year we made three offers to minority candidates, and we just couldn't attract any of them." Jeanette Lancaster, the Sadie Heath Cabaniss professor of Nursing and a Dean of the nursing school, also claims that her school has only two people of color on staff because there "are not a large number of people of color with a doctoral degree." However, she raises another concern, suggesting that the lack of applicants is exacerbated by the fact that we are in Charlottesville. Lancaster said, "We have a spouse employment problem in Charlottesville, because it is such a small town." It is unclear, however, why this would make it more difficult to obtain minority applicants than whites, who presumably also have spouses that would desire a job. Other faculty also cite Charlottesville as a problem. "There are certainly reasons why we might be at a competitive disadvantage, being located in a small market without a large community of minority professionals," agrees Holland. But few agree with Lancaster that Charlottesville is largely to blame. Holland underscores his admission by again maintaining that "I should like to think that if people are really serious about it, we could find people and get them to U.Va." Whatever the problem the recruiting process has, the university needs to focus its efforts on correcting these problems and obtaining a more diverse faculty. Everyone stands to benefit from this action. Dean Turner presses, "There are so many people that have never had the opportunity to interact with African-American scholars, and as a result they leave this university not fully educated. I want all students to come out of the university with a good education about the world they are going into, and that world is a world of diversity." Turner only mentions African-Americans, but it is doubtless important that students are able to interact with other minorities as well. His point can apply to even those groups not recognized by the government as "underrepresented," including people of Middle Eastern origins, Jews, and openly gay professors. One administrator raises the point that the directive to diversify the faculty may not be taken seriously because it doesn't seem to come from the top. "We do have a president that has been asked to work on fundraising and is not at the university a significant amount of time. This type of thing has to be a priority of the top people, otherwise the departments won't pay attention." But that doesn't mean that we, as students, are powerless to bring change. Dean Turner agrees: "I don't see the curriculum being infused with multiculturalism, and students will have to engage faculty members for that to happen." Dean Lancaster of the nursing school claims that she discerns no negative effect on her students as a result of their teachers being overwhelmingly white. Perhaps there is no discernible direct negative effect, but without a diverse faculty, students may not get as broad an education as they could, or may absorb unconscious messages about "what kind" of people should major in engineering or biology. I was told that unless diversity was made a priority at the top, the deans wouldn't take it seriously. But I don't think that is true. The faculty report not only to their superiors, but also to the student body. As Dean Turner told me, "The onus is on the students."

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