The furor over Cordell Black’s position last semester is just one example of the loaded gun of campus diversity — an issue all three SGA presidential candidates have vowed to confront if elected.
But with each Student Government Association candidate outlining the diversity agenda differently, the issue at hand isn’t just which candidate supports diversity most.
Instead, voters face a more difficult task: parsing how the candidates define diversity and where each candidate emphasizes its importance.
SGA President Steve Glickman, who is campaigning for re-election on the Your Party ticket, said his party tackles diversity with a three-pronged approach.
“We want to look at diversity through our education, diversity through experience and diversity through our faculty,” he said.
For Natalia Cuadra-Saez, the only female candidate for president, diversity takes on a distinctly gender-based direction. The platform of her STARE coalition advocates for gender-neutral bathrooms and the creation of a campus women’s center.
Still, Cuadra-Saez recognizes diversity isn’t solely a gender issue. It’s not solely a race, religion or ethnicity issue either, she said.
“Diversity — when you say that word, it really doesn’t mean very much,” she said. “One thing we mean by diversity is a holistic education. What we expect from the university is to give us a diverse, holistic education that will prepare us for when we get out of college.”
Aside from class offerings and faculty, Cuadra-Saez said another focus of diversity advocacy is “better admissions and recruitment practices, so we’re not focused on just bringing in students that improve our ranking, but that really improve the quality of this university.”
Cuadra-Saez supported a recent SGA recommendation to make standardized testing optional for admissions.
Andrew Steinberg, the presidential candidate for the SKY Party, does not list diversity on his party’s online platform. Still, Steinberg said he has plans to ensure diversity in academics and student groups.
“Diversity is incredibly important to this university. It lives within the entire campus. Quite frankly, it’s a given,” he said. “There needs to be more academic focus on diversity, and more opportunities for students to engage in research on diversity and diversity issues.”
Steinberg said he hopes to work with administrators during the review of all new classes incorporated into the general education overhaul this fall to either revise existing classes or create new ones that address diversity issues. He said he also wants to encourage co-sponsorship between student groups on diversity-related events.
Glickman said he wants to build upon the relationships he’s built as president this year to advocate for more diverse faculty and course options. He added that he will also ensure diversity isn’t a casualty of budget cuts.
“I meet with the provost regularly and we talk about issues in terms of what classes that might be cut, mergers that would be happening,” he said. “When you’re merging anything or cutting any, that takes away from a perspective.”
Glickman said he specifically wants to ensure the diversity requirement in the new general education plan focuses on “cultural engagement, pluralistic societies and understanding the depth of diversity that we have on our campus.”
But Glickman has more than just his future plans to account for: Many student leaders on campus said they see his diversity track record as less than stellar.
Wanika Fisher, who ran for SGA president last yearand is the programming and research chair for the NAACP chapter here, said Glickman’s Multicultural Expo — a campaign promise that he touts as a success — was all she saw in the SGA’s diversity efforts, and it wasn’t nearly enough.
“When you look at the actual organizations that are in the Multicultural Expo … it doesn’t really grasp the full diversity of our campus community,” she said. “I think the SGA has done a decent first effort, but nothing that I think is groundbreaking.”
One thing Fisher said will be essential is basic dialogue with and support for diversity groups and communities.
“I haven’t seen outreach outside of that event to diversity organizations or just groups with concerns or issues that they have,” she said. “It’s important that students know who to go to for help.”
Asian American Student Union President George Yeh said reaching out to student groups is one of the best means available to the SGA for enhancing a diverse experience on campus— an avenue he said this year’s SGA used successfully.
But the SGA’s relationship with the administration on advancing diversity is where Yeh said they fell flat, declining to push hard enough for a more diverse curriculum in particular.
“I think this year, the SGA has been reaching to many different groups in supporting their events, and in that way they’ve been doing a great job,” he said. “[But with] the connection between SGA and the administration, there are still some issues that need to be worked out.”
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