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
Similar to Obama’s deportation numbers being higher, because he’s counting people he turns around at the border entry points
Bruce: Your remark is uncivil and is more reflective of your own powers of intellect than anyone else’s.
And if you want to refer to our standing in the international community you should refer to our standing in the international community
And you really think Hillary went 6 for 6 on the coin flip to win the Iowa Caucus, keep drinking the Kool Aid
“The relevant measure is the one…“.
No it isn’t.
The relevant measure of unemployment is how many people are unemployed.
The Obama number was already a lie, and became ever more mendacious after 2012.
Romney was either not bright enough to read the BLS data, or he was misrepresenting in order to placate the GOPe.
Or both.
And your statement about the U.S. becoming a third world nation, get it?
The relevant measure is the one Romney was using to make his claim and the one he would have used to show he achieved a reduction to 6%- which Forbes didn’t bother pointing out at the time was flawed.
Still more relevant, is that Romney was counting on the electorate being gullible enough to believe that he, and he alone, could get unemployment down to “6%”. Fortunately, only the kool-aid guzzling vivisectionists fell for that BS. (And what are today’s Republicans if not vivisectionists)
Hey idiot, I was referring to our standing in the world and the respect other nations have toward the United States
monty z wrote: And you know this how…?
monty, read the article:
“At UConn, there are about 580 African-American men out of about 21,000 undergraduates on the rural campus in Storrs. Their graduation rate is about 55 percent, compared to 81 percent of all male students and 83 percent of all UConn undergraduates.“
” two years later, unemployment was down to 5.5 percent”
That’s a lie, pure government obfuscation.
The U6 in 2014 was closer to 15.5%.
Democrat leaders know that lying by undercounting the unemployed made the Democrat serfs feel better.
They’re not too bright, and easily led that way.
In contrast, according to FORTUNE, “If you use the broadest definition of unemployment, the ratio of people over the age of 16 with jobs to the overall 16-and-over population, the Labor Department says that 40.6% of the population is unemployed.
But you just keep singing that sweet old Democrat spiritual, monty.
Whatever gets you through the night.
The crickets are loud this time of year in Arizona
And you know this how…?
If they are athletes it is because they were allowed to pass on their athletic ability, until they got to college. They were never taught study skills, etc. If they came off the streets, they were spending too much time just trying to stay alive day to day to worry about school. Besides the schools in poor neighborhoods are jokes.
Really, Bruce? More than ever? More than the Economic Crisis (the Depressing Recession) of 2007? Really?
More than the Great Depression? Wow.
Statements like yours, along with all the other defenses of Republican policies and accusations of Democratic efforts to save this country, sound hilarious.
Particularly when we recall how Romney, the cardboard candidate, proclaimed that if elected he would have unemployment down to 6 percent within two years. He lost and two years later, unemployment was down to 5.5 percent. Just to get an idea of how lame the Mittster is, every economic indicator at the time was predicting unemployment was giong to drop to six percent anyways.
Apparently, Romney’s the kind of guy who would command water to flow downhill and feel like Moses
I’ll beleive black UConn students want racial equality only when this obvious and horrible racism disappears at UConn:
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/CRTD8Z0UwAEQ_W-.jpg
So because there is a lower graduation rate with black students we will house them altogether because of their common interest, what’s that failing? What would the reaction be if some university said they plan on having an all white male housing because they have a common interest.? That common interest is their excellence in studies and high rate of graduation. That would probably go over like a fart in a divers helmet.
Monty This country has sunk more in the last seven years than ever, I didn’t know Obama was a Repbulican
Racism at the highest level. You can be an American or you can be an African but you can’t be an African American, Just like Mexican American
Monty Z – Lmao! You sure drank the kool aide.
http://allnewspipeline.com/images/obama_muslim_brotherhood-1.jpg
What Olly wrote.
This may be a result of the Huskies’ men’s and women’s basketball teams telling the school administration what their living arrangements will be for the 2016-2017 season.
So the black community is going back to “segregation”! Maybe whites of old knew something back then they don’t know now.
George Wallace and LBJ are smiling down on UConn, as next they’ll be labeling white and black only restrooms and water fountains.
I’ll sit back and watch as the black only living spaces become more like Chicago and isolate themselves even more. I guess it’s proof and safe to say that history repeats itself.