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BU President Brown testifies at City Council hearing about campus diversity

Boston University President Robert Brown attended a Boston City Council Committee on Education meeting Friday after being subpoenaed to attend last month. PHOTO BY MEILING BEDARD/DAILY FREE PRESS STAFF
Boston University President Robert Brown attended a Boston City Council Committee on Education meeting Friday after being subpoenaed to attend last month. PHOTO BY MEILING BEDARD/DAILY FREE PRESS STAFF

After receiving a subpoena to appear before the Boston City Council, Boston University President Robert Brown testified at a hearing Friday regarding the university’s student and employee diversity.

Boston City Councilor Tito Jackson, chairman of the Council’s Committee on Education, subpoenaed Brown on Nov. 24 after BU failed to send a representative to an October council hearing on race, gender and socioeconomic diversity in colleges and universities. BU requested — and was granted — a two-week postponement to the subpoena, which had originally required Brown’s attendance at a Dec. 2 hearing.

This hearing is the first of a series of Committee on Education hearings that will look into diversity at Boston’s colleges and universities.

A report from these meetings, written by the city council, is expected to be released in mid-July 2015, said a representative from Jackson’s office.

A panel of four, including Brown and Dean of Students Kenneth Elmore, represented BU at the Friday hearing. Michelle Consalvo, BU’s assistant vice president of government and community affairs, and Julie Sandell, BU’s associate provost for faculty affairs, were the two other panelists. Approximately 50 other people, including BU students and alumni, also attended the hearing.

“I was very pleased with the attendance of Brown,” Jackson told The Daily Free Press at the conclusion of the hearing.

The main goal of the hearing was to increase transparency about diversity at the university level, Jackson said. The committee wants to hear from post-secondary institutions about their plans to increase their community’s diversity.

University representatives fielded questions from Jackson and other City Council members about the school’s racial and gender diversity and measures it was taking to improve it.

Jackson presented a data report on the recruitment and retention of under-represented minority faculty at BU. Boston University’s Charles River Campus had 37 black and 36 Latino employees out of 2000 total full-time faculty members, the report stated.

In response, Brown cited the 19 percent minority population of the office of the provost and the 35 percent of service workers that represent minorities.

He also spoke about the diversity of BU’s class of 2018, which has a 32 percent minority population. The university also offers programs that promote diversity across campus, Brown added, such as the Menino Scholars program, named for the late former Boston Mayor Thomas Menino, that allows graduates of Boston public schools to attend BU free of charge.

Jackson said because of the size and prominence of BU and its impact in the city, BU’s administration needs to continue working toward increasing opportunities for diversity.

“There needs to be a vision, there needs to be leadership and there needs to be opportunities and access opened in this space,” Jackson said.

City councilors Ayanna Pressley, Salvatore LaMattina, Charles Yancey, Timothy McCarthy and Josh Zakim spoke to the BU representatives alongside Jackson. Zakim is city councilor for District 8, covering neighborhoods such as Back Bay, Fenway and Kenmore Square, and encompassing BU’s Charles River Campus.

“What’s your view of what obligation BU has?” McCarthy asked Brown. “What’s BU’s role in Boston?”

The school’s job, Brown said in response, is “helping the city become a great city where everyone works and goes to school and as an economic engine.”

Consalvo and Elmore spoke about BU’s involvement with local public schools, working with their guidance counselors and encouraging young students to succeed, but the city council members urged Brown and BU to do more.

“We need to significantly improve the numbers I’m looking at now,” Yancey said after reviewing the racial breakdown of the school’s employees. The officials, Yancey added, should be committed to ensuring that BU becomes one of the most diverse universities in the country.

Following the interchange between the city councilors and BU officials, Brown left to attend another commitment. The three remaining BU representatives remained at the hearing to listen to testimonies from the public.

Approximately 10 students from the BU People of Color Coalition read a statement on behalf of the student group, arguing that administrators may not be able to relate to the experiences of students.

“Because we are students, diversity and inclusivity exist as a part of our lived experiences in a way that they may not for administrators,” a representative from the Coalition read. “We would like to see more administrative support of student activists.”

Lesley Harris and Bob Marshall, both Roxbury residents and BU alumni, also testified about the importance of diversity at colleges and universities.

“We’re more committed to rankings of universities than to diversity,” Harris said. “I appreciate what BU does, but they can do so much more.”

David Castillo, a sophomore in the College of Fine Arts and a Menino Scholar who graduated from Boston Public Schools, spoke about his experiences and the significance of university involvement to students of color.

“I also strongly believe in the power of diversity,” Castillo said. “It’s so much easier for students of color when there’s someone in authority to tell them, ‘You can make it also.’”

Several other BU students attended the hearing to listen to Brown speak about diversity and emphasize the need for a diverse student body and faculty.

“I came because diversity is important,” said Sophia Michael, a senior in CFA. “It’s important to hear everyone’s voices.”

Paloma Parikh, a senior in the College of Communication, said she was frustrated that Brown did not stay for the public’s testimonies because some of those conversations were the main point of the issue.

“It’s very apparent in the way President Brown speaks about [diversity] that he doesn’t take it seriously,” Parikh said.

Namely, the statistical separation of women from minority groups, she said, ignored the largely vulnerable population of women of color.

Declan Bowman, a senior in the College of Engineering, shared Parikh’s uneasiness with Brown’s comments and said he “was glad President Brown showed up” even though Brown’s testimony was “a little bit wish washy, and I have no idea what will come of it.”

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One Comment

  1. The thing is, is that there aren’t a lot of black and Hispanic people with a PhD. BU could go out and recruit more black and Hispanic faculty by offering a higher than market pay rate, but then some other university will have even fewer underrepresented minority Professors. It’s a zero sum game for the country as a whole.

    If you really want more diversity in academics, you have to change the demographics of people graduating with a PhD. The same issue exists with woman in STEM. Every major university in the U.S. would love to hire woman for STEM teaching and research positions, but there are only so many qualified woman to go around. Woman are certainly smart and hard working enough to be equally (if not more) represented than men – but they by and large choose to not to go into these fields. Similarly, men, for whatever cultural reasons that exist, are choosing not to go into nursing at the same rate that woman are (and nursing is a wonderful career that anyone should be proud to have).

    If you want more diversity in academics, then I applaude you. Let’s do something about it. Let’s encourage underrepresented groups of people to go into these fields and provide resources to help them along (something Brown is already doing). The labor pool today, however, is what it is. I can’t cange it, you can’t change it, and Bob Brown can’t change it.

    Let’s not forget all that BU has done. I”ve been a student at three universities (BU as an undergrad, UNC and Vanderbilt as a graduate student). In comparison, BU was very welcoming and inviting to a wide range of people. LGBT, international students, underrepresented US minorities, woman in STEM, etc. From everything I’ve seen, BU has done a very good job of creating an inclusive environment for a wide range of poeple. Quite frankly, that was the thing I loved most about being a student there.