September 2014
A school-wide questionnaire at Western
Washington University (WWU) asked the community “How do we make sure that in
future years ‘we are not as white as we are today?’”
The question, released through
the communications and marketing department’s daily newsletter Western Today, comes on the
heels of admonishments given in multiple convocation addresses by WWU President
Bruce Shepard for the university’s “failure” to be less white.
“In the decades ahead, should we be as white as
we are today, we will be relentlessly driven toward mediocrity; or, become a sad
shadow of our current self.”
“Every year, from this stage and at this time,
you have heard me say that, if in decades ahead, we are as white as we are
today, we will have failed as university,” Shepard said in the 2012
speech.
And in a recent blog post on
WWU’s website, Shepard echoes these sentiments, saying those who do not agree
“have not thought through the implications of what is ahead for us or, more
perniciously, assume we can continue unchanged.”
The six
question survey, inspired by Shepard, is meant to combat a
recent decline in Washington high school graduation numbers, the pool from which
the university draws 90 percent of its students.
The university has already replaced standard
performance reviews with sensitivity training and hosts
workshops to better serve undocumented students. WWU also provides
literature on how to better “recruit and retain faculty and staff of
color.”
Campus Reform talked briefly to a spokesperson from the university who was hesitant to offer
clarification to the controversial questionnaire.
www.campusreform.org, April, 15, 2014.
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