The University of Oklahoma announced it’s new vice president for diversity Tuesday. Former state lawmaker Jabar Shumate will be in charge of boosting OU’s low multicultural numbers at both the faculty and student level. OU is the last Big 12 school to add a high-level diversity position.
Betty Harris is one of the longest tenured African American professors at The University of Oklahoma. She’s been at the school since 1985, and she’s seen an ebb and flow of peers who have similar racial backgrounds.
“There were only a handful of black faculty members when I came to OU. And gradually more black faculty members came, but now our numbers our down again,” Harris says.
Recruitment isn’t the only issue. Retention is just as important.
That’s why Harris is one of only four current black faculty members who has been around long enough to become a full professor.
According to OU’s 2015 fact book, only two percent of faculty are black. And in recent weeks, that’s been a vocal complaint among minority students.
“For a majority institution, it is behind. But the national statistics are not that much better,” says Marybeth Gasman, a professor of higher education at the University of Pennsylvania. Gasman says African American faculty members at white majority institutions generally account for between 5 and 7 percent. She isn't surprised to hear OU is a bit behind.
“A lot of faculty are fairly insular, and they like to hire people like them. If you have a majority white faculty, then they tend to hire people like them,” she says.
At OU, two-thirds of faculty is white. Professor Harris doesn’t think it’s necessarily intentional, but she argues the lack of diversity extends to things like events and outside speakers.
“We don't get a lot of high visibility national speakers,” Harris says. “A lot of the events that are held where there are panels are all white. They do not reflect racial diversity, whether it's on slavery, the west, etcetera.”
During a press conference this week, the new vice president for the university community Jabar Shumate said he’ll work with faculty and change things.
“My job is going to be to present to them those tool kits and those ways to go beyond what we're doing to find highly qualified faculty that really look like what we want a college or university on this campus to look like and that is diverse and inclusive,” Shumate said.
Often times people think about diversity as, "Well, you're just targeting someone,” says Oklahoma State University’s ç.
He oversees Oklahoma State University’s diversity initiatives office and is the president of the Big 12 Chief Diversity Officers Consortium, a group that O-U will be the last to join.
Kirksey says his job involves more than recruiting underrepresented students; it also includes attracting and keeping minority faculty members.
“Diversity is really about getting the absolute best individuals that you can possibly get. And you only do that if you broaden your applicant pool enough so that you get as broad an array of applicants as you possibly can.”
Strengthening those numbers at the top trickles down to students too.
“I like to think that these things tend to be cyclical. Students of color come where there are other students of color, and faculty of color come where there's other faculty of color,” Kirksey says.
“It's incredibly empowering to see someone who looks like you and perhaps they even have a similar background to you,” says Marybeth Gasman from the University of Pennsylvania.
“With white people, we get to see people like us in positions of power all the time. We get to see teachers that look like us all the time. Whereas African Americans, Latinos, Native Americans, they don't get to see very many people that look like them.”
In the years since Professor Harris has taught at OU, the number of black students in her classes has dwindled. This year, only two black women are in her Race and Ethnicity class. But she says she can’t blame students when the faculty numbers are low. Harris says the quiet discrimination needs to end.
“I started out in the civil rights movement at 12 years old. That was about 40 years ago. And some of the same stuff is continuing to happen, so I have to be convinced that there is a concerted, well meaning effort to deal with this issue because we’re dealing with changing demographics in the state,” Harris says.
She’s skeptical about the new diversity position at OU, but Harris says it’s a step in the right direction that she hopes will lead to a more multicultural atmosphere on campus.
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