The University of Connecticut is under fire this week after a report that it would create a living space segregated by race. The school is concerned about the lower graduation rate for black students. So it has arranged for black-only housing to try to maintain a more supportive environment. Others call is segregation and a return to pre-Brown v. Board of Education values. The university has insisted that it is not a separate dorm and that the reports have been overblown, as discussed on Snopes.
I have long warned about a trend toward segregated schools and classes based on race, gender, and sexual orientation. While advancing laudable goals, the means of the ScHOLA²RS House (“Scholastic House of Leaders who are African American Researchers and Scholars”) is troubling. While few would argue with special programs to help any struggling student, the creation of race-specific zones or housing is a substantial retreat from conceptions of race-blind institutions.
Vice Provost Sally Reis rejected such arguments and insists that “It’s no more segregated than putting individuals with an interest in entrepreneurship together because they have common interests.” Most people would see a considerable difference between having a dorm for business students and a dorm for black students. One is based on an immutable trait that has long polarized the nation and produced gross inequalities. The other is an intellectual interest that is shared across gender, racial or other demographic lines.
Yet, Erik Hines, a UConn professor who will serve as faculty advisor to the ScHOLA²RS House students, said that UConn may plunge even further into such segregated housing: “We have all types of learning communities. If they bring forth a proposal to our Office of Programs and Learning Communities they will be considered by our executive director.”
The university insists that it is not creating separate housing:
ScHOLA²RS House is a Learning Community designed to support the scholastic efforts of male students who identify as African American/Black through academic and social/emotional support, access to research opportunities, and professional development. The intent of this Learning Community is to increase the retention and persistence of students using educational and social experiences to enhance their academic success at UConn and beyond in graduate and professional school placement. ScHOLA²RS House will encourage involvement with the larger university community to foster peer and mentor relationships and will actively engage students in inclusion efforts at UConn.
It has specifically responded to media reports through Dr. Erik Hines:
Twelve students already have contacted us with interest in living in Scholars House. Participation is, of course, entirely voluntary and its programming will be open to all in the University community, not only black male students.
This living community will also be located in the new Next Gen Hall when it opens this fall, so Scholars House students will live among 700-plus other students from all backgrounds while at the same time having access to specialized educational and social experiences to encourage success in their college careers.
To correct misinformation that some have unwittingly spread, this learning community will not be separate, nor is the building only going to house this group of students. Rather, this will be one of several learning communities whose residents live in Next Gen Hall, along with other students who aren’t in learning communities.
Source: Fox
Progressives are the anti-Midas; everything they touch turns feculent.
Republicans , meanwhile, far from returning to their roots, seem hell-bent on reversing their formative policy achievements.
The Republican party has become the party enslavement, of disunion, of government control and intrusion.
Thanks to Republican efforts, America has officially become a third-world nation. And they want everyone armed to the teeth.
That’s not a recipe for disaster at all.
I read about this. Any criticism against their segregation of black men has been dismissed as racist.
Oh, the irony!
They would do better to determine why they have such a poor graduation rate for male African Americans. Typically, admissions requirements are supposed to select those students with the best chance of graduation and future success. A low graduation rate suggests a problems in admissions criteria, which makes me wonder if they’ve lowered the bar in an Affirmative Action type of process in order to promote diversity.
They have done a disservice to African American male students. People will associate this residence with under-achievers, which may taint attitudes towards the truly excellent African American students. In addition, female African American students are excluded.
The university is supposed to promote diversity, and yet inexplicably went to great effort to hyper concentrate African American students, thus reducing the diversity in dorms and study groups. A more appropriate response would have been tutors and other assistance.
A life lesson that students learn when they go off to university is that they are independent adults. They are no longer in high school where someone will call your parents if you don’t show up to class. You are responsible for yourself. There are office hours you have to seek out if you have questions. You suddenly are in a lecture hall with a hundred students.
This is preparation for the real world, where in your career you will be responsible for getting up on time, getting to work in a presentable condition, completing your work, accepting criticism and changing appropriately, and furthering your own career.
1. I am struggling to understand what “laudable goals” are being advanced here.
2. George Wallace was a Democrat.
Segregation was a Democrat policy.
Democrats are just returning to their roots.
A stellar career in Orwellian legislation drafting awaits (s)he who came up with the acronym, “ScHOLA²RS House.” Bravo.
It will be the noisiest dorm on campus, without question.
It’s fine, who cares. Seriously hand-wringers, get a life. The leftist cultural-marxists who only see red, and the right wing capitalist zealots who only see green, need to leave normal people and institutions alone and if people segregate whether its at lunch tables or dorm rooms or neighborhoods, LET THEM BE!
Now Indiana is fussing over whether they should ban discrimination in real estate transactions. HELL if I would rent to “Caitlyn!”
According to the Fox article link at the bottom of the post, this new housing scheme is for black males only, based on their alarmingly low graduation rate.
But then a university spokesman said this :
Hines said about 13 students had already applied for ScHOLA²RS House. Male students “who identify as African American/Black or mixed-race will be prioritized in selection, however any student interested in engaging in topics related to the experience of black males in higher education is invited to apply,” according to the UConn website.
This idea is wrong on so many levels; two thoughts:
(1) What happens when a white wants to live in the black dorm – can he be kept out? (Obviously it is racial segregation and discrimination when a black is not allowed into a “whites only” dorm.)
(2) UConn is not preparing its students for life. By numbers alone, a manager is 7 times as likely to be white/Hispanic as black (even more so in the real world); newly minted graduates will suddenly have to face being the minority guy in a hierarchical environment, working for somebody of another race. No experience, no coping skills (and probably speaking a different dialect in a strange accent). Good luck.
So race, religion, sexual profiling is acceptable as long it’s being done for a good cause? Who gets to decide what is good?
davidm(George Wallace)2575
This is a deplorable band aid. The problem has nothing to do with career choices, putting all the lawyers, premeds, etc in the same environment. This is simply a case of removing an uneasy feeling of academic inferiority due to the lack of focus earlier on in a student’s life. The idiots that come up with these solutions should all be fired and those that can focus on the real problem, augmenting the student’s education before he or she arrives at college, should be hired. The rest is nothing but BS and somewhat unsavory. In this country for every intelligent but difficult solution there are simply too many ‘ya buts’ that come up with these stupid, stupid, stupid responses to conditions that took centuries to develop and will need many generations to repair. Affirmative action alone was a productive bandaid but a bookend that was missing the other bookend. The other bookend is the beginning of the child’s life.
The problem here hinges on misdefining the word “equality” when talking about gender and racial equality. The meaning of the word equality originally referred to being equal in worth and value, and also to having equal opportunity, but it has shifted to mean equal in performance, equal in success, etc. If men and women do not perform the same, or if their wages are not the same, we immediately interpret that to be an indication of discrimination. Well, that is a wrong conclusion.
I think it is perfectly fine to have racially segregated dorms, as long as students are not forced to segregate because of racial hatred. I think most schools have gender segregated housing as well as gender segregated bathrooms. We should not automatically interpret that to mean that the school administration harbors hatred toward one gender. In the same way, certain races or ethnic groups may find it helpful to segregate their living arrangements in order to feel more comfortable and safe. Perhaps it will help society in general to come to a better understanding of the correct meaning of equality for all.
What’s next? The Carlisle Indian Industrial Boarding School in Pennsylvania.
The United States Indian Industrial School in Carlisle, Pennsylvania, generally known as Carlisle Indian Industrial School, was the flagship Indian boarding school in
the United States from 1879 through 1918. Founded in 1879 by Captain Richard Henry Pratt under authority of the US federal government, Carlisle was the first federally funded off-reservation Indian boarding school.
It was founded on the principle that Native Americans were the equals of European-Americans, and that Native American children immersed in mainstream Euro-American culture would learn skills to advance in society.
In this period, many Anglo-Americans believed mistakenly that Native Americans were a vanishing race whose only hope for survival was rapid cultural transformation.
6 boarding school laws are still on the books today: Did you know it is still legal to withhold food and clothing from Indian children who don’t attend school?
Or that Indian children can be placed in reform schools without parental consent?
Take a look at this before and after picture of 3 Lakota teenagers. The year is 1883.
http://indiancountrytodaymedianetwork.com/2014/04/30/6-boarding-school-laws-still-books-154579
I’m assuming that the difference between this program and the segregation of past centuries is that it is a voluntary housing option, and that the intent is to help blacks, not hinder them. If such is the case, I see no real difference between this and the segregated admissions and academic policies in place at most American colleges and law schools for the past half century.
At my law school, back in the late 80s, blacks and Hispanics were admitted under the “Special Admissions Program,” and their qualifications were openly and significantly inferior to those of whites and Asians. They were also automatically placed in the “Academic Support Program” where they were given supplemental lectures by the professors, and tutored by white and Asian students who qualified for the work-study program. The one difference between my private law school and the state university across town, is that we all attended the same core classes, whearas at the state school the ‘special admits’ attended separate classes, and the law school operated two completely separate, parallel programs.
At my federal agency in D.C., we have a significant number of black attorneys from a local T20 law school. Their abilities are so noticably inferior, that a number of us have speculated as to whether the law school also runs two separate, parallel programs. It really doesn’t seem possible that they attended the same law school as their white and Asian peers. So if housing them together, voluntarily, to provide further academic support would help, I see no problem. It’s not as though it would impose any additional stigma. Everybody already knows that they attended college and law school under lowered standards, and were then dumped on the government agencies who are forced to hire and retain them. In fact, my agency prefers white lawyers from second-tier law schools for litigation. Ivy League black lawyers are tracked to management or “community outreach” because it fills the diversity quotas and they don’t need analytical or writing skills.
“I say segregation now, segregation tomorrow, segregation forever….We invite the negro citizens of Alabama to work with us from his separate racial station . . as we will work with him . . to develop, to grow in individual freedom and enrichment. ”
George Wallace argued the exact same thing that UConn is saying.
The idea that segregation based on race, gender or creed is acceptable or worse “laudable” is repugnant. Would it be be seen as forwarding “laudable goals” if the segregation was proposed as white only? There is an old saying that the road to hell is paved with “good” intentions. I think that saying applies here.
Reblogged this on L'horreur islamique à l'âge des ténèbres ن.
I continue to find this whole concept quite confusing, and, I might add, that I found it especially confusing during my years in law school, when I would routinely read notices, posted in the halls of the school, advertising the times and places for the scheduled meetings of various associations. What kind of associations, you may ask? Why, the Association of Black Law Students, the Association of Christian Law Students, the Association of Jewish Law Students and the Association of Gay Law Students. I would just stare, in astonishment, at these notices, wondering why, on earth, that there was even a need–a desire–to segregate law students by race, religion or sexual identity, thereby encouraging division, not unity, in that Hellish atmosphere. Granted, law school was and, I assume, continues to be, a harrowing experience, but the need, on the part of the school, to both fund and foster such division, through these programs within the university, seemed to be antithetical to the very concepts being drummed into our heads on a daily basis. Sure, I get the whole concept of community; however, certain actions serve to create even greater divides and are wholly inconsistent with many of our common values.
We’ve had seven years of a black president, uncountable sums of money thrown at race-based advancement programs, and race relations are at lower than ever. Is this sort of nonsense that feeds it.
What about black-only schools? Oh wait, we already have those. Next…
“Can’t we all just get along?”
– Rodney King
“Social Engineering” is actionable treason in a nation of enumerated freedoms and unalienable rights. The outcome of freedom must be accepted for what it is, natural and God-given.