Diversity is a loaded term — plain and simple.
But the diversity sensitivity training required for all teaching and project assistants on this campus only adds to our society's hypersensitivity towards diversity and casts a proverbial dark cloud over freedom of thought.
As a teaching assistant at this institution, I decided a few weeks ago it was finally time for me to attend the three-hour workshop. If I had paid, I would have complained to a manager and asked for a refund.
Early in the training, students were asked to break into small groups to discuss their thoughts and feelings toward improving diversity on this campus. Disappointed the workshop didn't go as far as pass out a "warm fuzzy" to each participant and engage in the singing of "Kumbayah," we subsequently discussed our findings with the larger group.
Famished and still trying to understand the purpose of this workshop, I raised my hand from the back of the room to ask a simple question — or so I thought: "How do we define diversity?" The moderator was most likely taken back by the question and engaged in the oldest ruse in the book when unsure of the answer — throw the question out to the group. For once, a packed room of graduate students was silent.
Why wasn't I surprised?
I find it ironic the pith of the training couldn't be defined. While a definition wasn't provided, the message of the training was ostensibly apparent: Don't say anything that might offend any group of people who are perceived to be socially disadvantaged or marginalized.
This seemingly innocuous message does nothing more than suffocate free speech and engage the university in inducing thought reform.
Fortunately, I'm not alone in my thoughts about mandatory diversity training. Last year, a hand full of legislators in the Colorado state Legislature introduced a measure that would condemn mandatory diversity training for college students after the University of Colorado implemented such a program. Though the measure failed 6-5 in the House Education Committee, it raises important questions regarding the implications these programs have for the principles protected by the First Amendment.
Such policies as speech codes and mandatory diversity training on our nation's college campuses are blatant violations of freedom of speech, conscience, and thought. More simply, they put the nail in the coffin when it comes to the pursuit of truth and knowledge.
The university, through this training, forces graduate students to consume what is considered to be "politically correct" by those in Bascom Hall in regards to ethnicity, race and equality, among other issues. For every student who agrees with these views, though, there is another student who disagrees. Unfortunately, students are not asked to respectfully debate these issues in an open forum like mature adults, but rather they are forced to accept the viewpoints of the organizers and leaders of these training sessions.
Our nation's highest court has firmly established the government cannot regulate viewpoints. Writing for the majority in West Virginia State Board of Education v. Barnette, Justice Jackson prominently concluded, "If there is any fixed star in our constitutional constellation, it is that no official, high or petty, can prescribe what shall be orthodox in politics, nationalism, religion or other matters of opinion or force citizens to confess by word or act their faith therein."
It's disappointing this university would flirt with violating such a concept.
Don't get me wrong. I'm all for diversity and a nondiscriminatory campus. And the intentions of some of these programs are undeniably good. But at what point are we willing to silence free speech and intellectual thought in an environment that prides itself on being a "marketplace of ideas?" This is a public university, and unlike the classrooms of a sophomoric high school, the ivory tower is situated in a public forum where ideas are to be freely exchanged.
I don't know whether to be more irate at the university or the Teaching Assistant's Association — the organization responsible for the implementation of the diversity training during collective bargaining negotiations 15 years ago — for allowing such mandatory training to occur.
Nonetheless, I've said it before and I'll say it again. There is no constitutional right not to feel offended. But there is a constitutional right to engage in unfettered debate and discourse.
Darryn Beckstrom ([email protected]) is a doctoral student in the department of political science and a second-year MPA candidate in the La Follette School of Public Affairs.
