Racial Climate Survey Gives UMass Boston's Leaders an Opportunity to Micromanage
Part III: Institutional appraisal and impact of external environment
Previously, we reported on a racial climate survey whose goal is to “gather student perspectives about our campus climate, which can inform community actions to foster a greater sense of belonging at UMass Boston." As part of this noble goal, the results of the survey were disseminated to the UMass Boston community in the form of six info sessions. This is the third and last installment.
How shall we describe the findings so far? A tempest in a teapot? Much ado about nothing? A mountain out of a molehill? Select your favorite idiom. This part is no different.
Finally we reach the last two sessions - Institutional appraisal and the impact of the external environment. Here is where our Supreme Leaders get to pat themselves on the back and find excuses to shove more DEI, more committees, more reasons to interfere with our teaching, research and service, give white students perpetual guilt and give students of color a perpetual sense of victimhood.
Appraisal of Institutional Commitment
This session was recorded, in case you wanted to torture yourselves some more. In this session:
NACCC respondents evaluate their administrators’ demonstrated commitments to racial diversity and inclusion at their institutions. Students also assess institutional leaders’ responses to racial problems on campus.
Key topics
Rating of campus racial diversity
Rating of how campus administration deals with racism or racist incidents
Rating of administration's commitment to campus racial equity and diversity
If you have been following us for a while, you know that our entire reason for being is our Leaders obsession over DEI, the whole DEI and nothing but DEI, so help us God.
Most students view UMass Boston as racially diverse, but we already know that.
Slightly under 50% of the students think that our Supreme Leaders do a good job handling racist incidents on campus. Almost all the rest said “what racist incidents? Didn’t we agree there were hardly any?”.
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Most students agreed that UMass Boston is committed to racial diversity (notice that the survey was conducted before affirmative action was struck down). We have long asked ourselves whether our Leaders cared about anything else.
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Almost all students believe our Leaders do a good job addressing racial incidents. Our impression is that their reaction ranges between swift and decisive (albeit often performative) action when blacks are concerned and deafening silence when Jews are concerned.
Despite the fact that most students believe our Leaders are committed to racial equity, it is never enough. Therefore, the recommendations are:
Indoctrinate the campus community to abandon all thoughts of equality and declare their unwavering loyalty to the equity gods:
Be clear in campus-wide messaging about the opportunities and benefits of racial equity and inclusion on campus.
All key stakeholders should be able to articulate how racial equity and inclusion are tied to the key values and mission of the institution and its strategic plan.
Divert resources to what’s REALLY important (It’s not you, College of Science and Mathematics!):
Map the assets of your campus in terms of existing programs created to achieve racial equity on your campus. Identify existing gaps and shortcomings, which current practices perpetuate racial inequities, and what new efforts could be made if redirecting resources or working together in new ways
Adjust campus policies and resource allocations to rectify where racial equity goals are not being met
Train faculty and staff to break anti-discrimination laws:
Consider that all faculty and staff search committees should move beyond bias reduction training to instead integrate proactive measures throughout the life cycle of hiring, including retention and promotion, particularly of minoritized faculty
Compare historical admissions policies with current policies to explore how changes over time may have impacted admission and enrollment patterns and the diversity of the admitted class
Most importantly, completely ignore the realities of race on campus as reflected in the survey:
Practice race-conscious leadership, which includes engaging in authentic conversations and collaborations with people of color and developing an accurate understanding of the realities of race on campus.
Impact of External Environment
Finally, the last session. We’ll keep it short.
NACCC respondents reflect on their sense of security and on their encounters with racism in their hometowns, in the cities/towns surrounding their campuses, and in online and social media environments.
Key topics
Feelings of personal well-being in city/town surrounding campus and in hometown
Experiences of racism in external environments
For context, UMass Boston is located in Dorchester, Massachusetts, an area known for shopping, vibrant community life and high crime rates.
As a result, most students reported feeling safe in the areas surrounding the university, but it was not as decisive as previous questions.
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A relatively small number of students reported racism on social media and by the evil local police.
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The recommendations include, among others:
Ignore the evidence against the existence of pervasive systemic racism:
When assessing campus and external environments for issues surrounding race and racism, consider who the representatives and beneficiaries of existing racist systems are, and policies and practices that have a differential impact by race.
Change policies that disproportionately penalize marginalized student populations
When students are affected by incidents of racism and hate crimes locally or nationally, distribute messaging and notifications, similar to existing notifications for these types of incidents that occur on campus (should our Leaders report each and every racial incident?)
So, how do we sum it up? This was an ode, or maybe an elegy, to the George Floyd era university Leaders. They were selected during a time of national moral panic and tasked with promoting the most extremely ridiculous and simplistic version of “anti-racism”, based solely on identity politics and kendi-esque style DEI. They jump-started their careers pandering to the most vocal and radical leftist crowd, while abandoning merit, fairness, equality, and the wishes of the majority of parents, students, faculty and staff. When the racial climate survey was conducted in 2022 many people were still scared to speak up, or were still captive by the #DEIdeology (all rights reserved to the Babbling Beaver), but even the students who responded to the survey - who were probably those who cared mostly about the issue, showed no evidence of that rampant, irredeemable systemic racism our Leaders of doom and gloom have been pumping into our heads.
Much has happened since 2022 - the world had already started to wake up when October 7 happened, and the bacchanalia of Hamas fandom across university campuses pushed most rational people over the edge.
Where does it leave our Supreme Leaders? As Alan Dershowitz noted, courage is not one of their job requirements. Survival, on the other hand, most definitely is. So they hold on to their power by pretending, despite evidence to the contrary, that the problem of systemic racism still exists in full force and that it needs immediate, extensive remediation in the form of curricular interventions, resource allocation, and hyperfocusing on race and intersecting identity at the expense of merit, fairness and normal academic work. They’d do anything to hold on to their power and give rise to a new generation of fragile, frightened students and frustrated, burned out faculty.
Mind you, these are the same people who are yet to say anything meaningful about campus antisemitism.
Our only comfort is that they are better at words than actions, and that the law and FIRE are on our side.
I’ve said it so many times, but thank you again for these eviscerations of the incompetent, lying, and self-perpetuating Woke. This latest is a terrific summing up of the whole rotten affair. Submit to the Free Press.