On Monday I attended both a General Faculties Council (GFC) meeting and a strategic retreat. The retreat consisted of members of the GFC, the Board of Governors, the Senate and the Alumni Council. We essentially had roundtable discussion regarding the future of the university. Overall it was very interesting and enjoyable.
The GFC is headed up by the President of the University. All the Vice Presidents, plus the Provost and Vice Provosts are members. All the Deans and department/program heads are also members (I think). And then there are elected members that represent various other groups on campus, like the Students' Union, the Graduate Students' Association (GSA), the academic and non-academic staff unions, etc. I'm considered a Graduate Student-at-Large on the GFC as I was nominated by the GSA to be on the council. Last week we had a brief overview of university governance and it turns out the GFC is 33% students, but most are undergraduates. Students are also members of the Senate and the Board.
Anyway ... the retreat was organized into 12 tables. Each table was assigned a specific topic to discuss. Each table was also assigned a facilitator and a scribe. The facilitator mediated the discussion and the scribe (obviously) made the notes of what was said. The scribes consisted of actual staff members in the President's office and other Governance offices. The facilitators ended up being Deans. For example, table 1 (my first table) was lead by the Dean of Physical Education. Table 5 (my second table) was lead by the Dean of Science. Table 3 was the Dean of ALES. Table 4 was the Vice Provost and Head Librarian. Table 7 was the Dean of Students. Table 10 was the Dean of FGSR. And table 12 was the Dean of Native Studies.
My point here is that the assignment of Deans as facilitators was pretty deliberate. It probably had something to do with the fact that there were enough of them to spread between 12 tables AND they could naturally take on a leadership role.
Near the end of the retreat, when each table was sharing what they'd discussed, someone raised their hand and pointed out that we unintentionally assigned only white people to be facilitators of each table. She also mentioned that she'd already mentioned that fact to the President and said -- very forcefully -- that we could not continue to do that.
I understand where she was coming from (although ironically she was a white woman), but I don't understand what she expected as an alternative. If there are no Deans with non-white ethnicities, what were they suppose to do? Would it have been appropriate to assign someone as a facilitator ONLY because they weren't white? Wouldn't it be odd that some facilitators were white Deans and others were non-white something else's? I think one of the purposes of having Deans be facilitators is because they already had a certain level of power at the table and people would respect their leadership. If you assigned a non-Dean to facilitate at one table simply because they weren't white, would they receive the same level of respect as per leadership? And if they didn't would it be automatically assumed that they weren't respected as well because they were non-white or because they weren't at the Dean level? Wouldn't that open more problems?
Again, I can see her point but I'm not sure the organization of an event like this is the problem. The problem is more systemic and related to the fact that there are very few Deans who are non-white. Isn't that the larger problem? Why aren't there more non-white Deans? Do we have a balanced number of white and non-white professors (who could one day be a Dean)? Do we have enough non-white interest in a Dean job? Does the U of A have a diversity hiring policy?
But then doesn't it go even deeper? Maybe there are a lot of white Deans because the majority of professors are white as well. And maybe the professors who are skilled enough to be a Dean also happen to be white. Then the question is -- why don't we have more non-white skilled professors? Is it because we don't have enough non-white graduate and undergraduate students? Is there enough interest in this profession from non-whites? If so, are they at a disadvantage, and if so, how? And doesn't that mean it really starts from the bottom (i.e. kids)?
You can't change someone's ethnicity once they reach a certain level, you need to have a variety of ethnicity at every level. But unless you start with giving all kids an equal chance to pursue whatever they want, that'll never happen. You can't wait till you get to the Dean level and they say "we're only going to hire a non-white person." If the only skilled people at that level are white, you can't hire an unskilled non-white person to do the job -- that's not helpful to anyone.
Anyway, as I've already said, I understand where this person was coming from, but I'm not sure pointing it out in that particular situation was useful. Ironically, up until that moment no one was probably thinking about white and non-white people (i.e. they looked at everyone as simply a member of the university community). But the minute it was pointed out everyone starts to notice the ethnicity of everyone else -- for the wrong reasons.
Many of the topics discussed at the various tables were too high-level to include ethnicity (or any specific type of demographic). But the ones that did have the ability to include ethnicity, did. It wasn't ignored or forgotten. It was discussed naturally not because it was suppose to be, but because it was important.
Although -- the main ethnicity focus was Aboriginal peoples. Is that racist? To focus on a specific ethnic group over others? I'm not sure. Are Aboriginal peoples more important than other ethnicities here in Alberta or Edmonton or the U of A? Is that fair or reasonable? I have no idea.
As an aside, immediately after this comment was made to the group, a professor asked a question. She happened to be of an ethnic minority. As she started her question she made the comment that she would be the ethnic minority representation. I don't think she said this to be funny, she said this sarcastically. I don't think she appreciated being distinguished because of her ethnicity, she would have preferred being treated as an equal.
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