EDITORIAL: With more diverse students, CMU must become more inclusive
Illustration and typography by Design Editor Nate Morrison.
Diversity, minority enrollment and campus-wide inclusion are now the stated priorities of Central Michigan University for the next four years.
University President George Ross outlined CMU’s new diversity goals last week at the Sept. 22 Board of Trustees meeting. In his remarks, Ross reported that overall minority enrollment is up to 5,398 students belonging to a non-white ethnic group. That number is up from 5,239 minority students enrolled overall in the 2015-16 academic year.
Ross explained his data shows minority freshman enrollment topping out at 22 percent this year, and 16 percent minority enrollment on campus. He also outlined the university’s goal to hit 20 percent overall minority enrollment by 2020.
It’s a goal Ross said goes beyond simple metrics and diversity quotas. The president said he wants CMU to “look” like the rest of the state by recruiting from typically Black and Latino Michigan high schools and community colleges. In 2014, CMU specifically opened a satellite Global Campus outpost and classroom in downtown Detroit to forward that goal.
We applaud the university’s efforts to make CMU more diverse and inclusive by trying to recruit students from a wide range of cultures and ethnicities. We ask that Ross and his cabinet continue to take that charge seriously by consistently addressing the divide between white and non-white students on campus.
The first step in easing racial tensions is admitting we have a problem.
On Thursday, Ross and other trustees confirmed a long-held narrative that CMU is a predominantly white school with a history of poor race relations on campus. Three different CMU diversity studies released last year support that narrative. At least 60 percent of students of color felt CMU wasn’t doing enough to promote diversity on campus.
Another 40 percent felt discriminated against at CMU and Mount Pleasant. Ross gave voice to many frustrated students of color by acknowledging these facts in an open meeting and vowing small steps to address them.
His words now obligate the university to take pointed action.
A good way to start is by offering more diversity programs for awareness and inclusion activities. Ross can also engage in more face-to-face forums like last year’s Walking Together event.
The forum was supposed to be the “first of many” conversations on race issues at CMU and in Mount Pleasant.
Students expressed mixed feelings about the effectiveness of the forums. It did, however, lay the framework for CMU’s new diversity goals.
Ross leveled with students at that Walking Together event by sharing his experiences of racism and prejudice in the years preceding his presidency.
It was a stark admission from a university president who is decidedly pensive in his approach to university affairs – including previous conversations on race.
If Ross and CMU administrators are truly dedicated to diversity and inclusion, we would like to seem them schedule a Walking Together event each semester for the next four years, improving the quality of discussion and extending student question and answer sessions.
Ross can lead by example with experience. As we tackle race issues on campus, we can also begin to think broader to other groups within our campus community. Inclusion goals should include everyone on campus, with individual plans meeting individual group needs.
That includes resources for women and LGBT students.
Race issues are complex. Surmounting them mandates a calculated, methodical response. That seems to fit Ross’ personality to a tee. We hope that his call for greater diversity is met with swift action instead of empty rhetoric.
Students may or may not immediately see the effects of enrolling a couple thousand more people of color, but it’s a start. Before that number grows, addressing issues of race on the front end is a natural conclusion and preemptive strike against intolerance and hate.
