UMass Chancellor’s Diversity Plan Draws Fire From Students, Faculty

AMHERST, Mass.
University of Massachusetts students and faculty members sharply criticized Chancellor John Lombardi’s proposal to improve campus diversity issues, saying his plan takes too much power away from students.

Acknowledging the “angst and pain and sense of alienation” that many students expressed over the topic, Lombardi says he will redraft his proposal and extend the public comment period on the plan — first scheduled to end April 1 — until April 22.

“Everybody’s voice will be heard,” Lombardi said after a faculty senate meeting where more than 100 students and professors showed up to comment on the plan.

Lombardi’s proposal, issued in late March, would reallocate $800,000 from the campus budget to pay for programs designed to improve the academic performance of minority students and to recruit and retain a more diverse pool of faculty members.

The plan comes four months after a drunken party where a group of students posed for photos with a caricature of a student government leader dressed as a member of the Ku Klux Klan.

A commission formed by Lombardi afterward identified a “climate of distrust” on campus and said many students and faculty feel “racially or ethnically isolated” at UMass.

Lombardi hopes to create a new Center for Student Development intended to address diversity issues and enhance student performance. His plan calls for hiring an associate vice chancellor and two directors to run the center.

Some worry that the center will take control of diversity issues away from students.

“It takes a voice that has been independent and puts it under an administrative umbrella where it can be controlled,” says student government President Eduardo Bustamante.

The proposal would also strip student government officials of their responsibility to fund and manage certain student support and advocacy programs. The funding and oversight of those programs would come under control of the administration, another move that critics say takes too much power from students.