University of Wisconsin-Madison faculty, staff and students gathered Friday in Union South for the 2012 Diversity Forum to begin preliminary discussions of a new strategic diversity plan for the university.
Chancellor David Ward welcomed attendees with an address detailing his goals for the forum.
“I wish a very creative dialogue with perhaps some very deliberative outcomes that can allow this institution to keep the history of being committed to civil rights, being committed to cultural pluralism, and now being committed to this center of equity which is even bigger than either of those two ideas,” Ward said.
The forum included small-group discussions, performances by First Wave and five breakout sessions that focused on campus climate for LGBT and American Indian students, dialogue about religious diversity, the human resources redesign and an initiative to increase faculty diversity.
Additional coverage of the breakout sessions and the 2012 Diversity Forum can be found at dailycardinal.com.
Harvard law professor Dr. Lani Guinier delivered the forum’s keynote address, which focused on the nuances of affirmative action and holistic admissions.
Guinier said the college admissions process should lessen its emphasis on standardized testing, given that students of higher socioeconomic status typically perform better on these tests.
Standardized college-entry exams, said Guinier, better correlate with “the model of your parent’s car” than future academic performance.
“We are defending the use of a system that does not work,” Guinier said.
Guinier said Fisher v. University of Texas, a current U.S. Supreme Court case considering the use of race in college admissions, could further disadvantage students of lower socioeconomic status in college admissions.
Guinier detailed a holistic admissions process, wherein the applicants are chosen based on their strengths relative to each other.
“Say you have three applicants for two jobs. John, Jim and Jane apply. You give them a test… John gets seven out of 10 right, Jim gets six out of 10, and Jane gets five out of 10. You’d say, it’s a no-brainer. Hire John and Jim,” Guinier said. “But what if you looked at what they got wrong? What if John and Jim got the same questions wrong? What if the questions John got wrong are the questions that Jane got right?”
A better system of admissions, said Guinier, would hire “John” and “Jane,” who would bring complementary perspectives to the table.
According to Guinier, men consistently outperformed women at Harvard Law School. When faculty discussed the problem, some questioned the competence of the female student body.
Guinier said these faculty members are overlooking a larger issue. She cited studies following post-law school success, which found that female law school graduates earned high incomes, and were among the happiest and most socially engaged.
These studies, said Guinier, show the female students were not incompetent, but that their environment impeded their success.
Guinier compared the situation to “canaries in coal mines.” Coal miners used canaries as an indicator of air quality in mines, she explained. Canaries became sick in coal mines, not because of their own weakness, but because the mine was unsafe.
Like the canaries, Guinier said the poor performance of female law students highlighted problems with the educational system and not with the students themselves.
