WEST LAFAYETTE – By the spring 2021 semester, Purdue’s trustees promised Friday to have a plan in place to deal with inequity, whether based on race, gender or other attributes, on the West Lafayette campus.
What that might include, Trustee Don Thompson – assigned Friday to lead the new Diversity Task Force – wasn’t ready to commit to, as of Friday.
He put that task on a yet-unnamed group of faculty, staff and students he would recruit to “look for opportunities and gaps” on campus, at a time when calls for racial justice continue in demonstrations across the county – including in Greater Lafayette and at Purdue.
Thompson, the former CEO of McDonald’s and the only trustee of color on the nine-member board, said that group would be assembled in the coming weeks. He said the university review – first announced in June in the wake to demonstrations protesting the deaths of George Floyd in Minneapolis, Breonna Taylor in Louisville, Ahmaud Arbery in Georgia, among others – would be patient, deliberate and driven by campus data, as much as possible.
“The goal is overall equity of opportunity for all students,” Thompson said. “Right now, we have a challenge staring us in the face, and we know it.”
In June, Michael Berghoff, chairman of Purdue’s trustees, called for the task force, looking to model it after Purdue’s approach to reopening campus during the coronavirus pandemic. In that case, Purdue President Mitch Daniels charged that group – a collection of deans, administrators and researchers – to review every policy and procedure, in every corner of campus, that could be changed to prepare the university for something similar to the disruption caused by coronavirus.
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That campuswide review, done in less than three months, led to the Protect Purdue Plan being used to reopen for the fall 2020 semester.
Berghoff asked why Purdue couldn’t do the same to address barriers to equity on campus.
“This is centered around our response to making sure every student and staff member at Purdue has an opportunity to experience all of the best Purdue has to offer,” Berghoff said Friday. And if there was anything standing in the way of that happening for certain students – whether they be students of color, staff of color, different origin or any type of group – we wanted to know about it and find a way to improve it.”
Thompson said he’d already been given lists of things Purdue should do. Among the notes, he said, were from those who had their doubts that the trustees and the Purdue administration was serious about the review.
“One of the notes said, ‘Is this really just a farce? Is this just a way to appease?’” Thompson said. “I don’t have time to appease people. I really don’t. I don’t think this board does, either. And that’s not the conversation we had. This board has had the conversation that we want to improve the environment across the campus.”
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What will the task force take up first and where could this wind up?
“I wouldn’t be so presumptuous as to jump in and say, Boom, this is what we’re going to fix first,” Thompson said. “Part of the problem is we tend to do that. We tend to do one thing, one thing, one thing, but it doesn’t address the overall thing we’re trying to address.”
Underrepresented minorities made up 9.8 percent of the student body in fall 2019. Questions about racial equality and acceptance on campus have been common themes for decades. This summer, shortly after the trustees broached the idea about the Diversity Task Force, students and alumni started an Instagram feed called Black at Purdue. There, students and alumni posted stories about racial attitudes and incidents, ranging from the subtle to overt, that marked their time at Purdue.
On Friday, Assata Gilmore and Hannah Walter, student body president and vice president, told trustees that “ensuring that our campus is welcoming and inclusive of everyone, especially Black students and students of color,” would be a top priority for Purdue Student Government this year.
Others on campus are watching.
Cornelius L. Bynum, an associate professor of history, said there’s so much work on this front that it was difficult to pinpoint one starting point. He said one place is to ask a question he said he puts to his students and the administration often: How do you understand the difference between diversity and something like affirmative action?
“My students often come up with thoughtful answer; Purdue officials never have,” Bynum said. “The simple answer is that diversity is a goal while programs like affirmation action are concrete plans. To reach the goal – diversity – you need to implement a plan – affirmative action. The university has never quite understood this and instead has relied largely on platitudes and empty gestures that have essentially resulted in no substantive changes in enrollments for Black students, hiring of Black faculty, or increases in employment, profile or professional opportunities for Black staff. For all the university talk of diversity and inclusion, there’s been little of either over the years.”
Thompson said he was interested in actions, rather than talk, as well.
“This is something this board is going to do,” Thompson said. “You’re going to see. This is something Purdue is going to do.”
Reach Dave Bangert at 765-420-5258 or at dbangert@jconline.com. Follow on Twitter: @davebangert.
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