Chief Officer of Diversity and Equity Bill Harvey addressed students at the Student Council meeting last night in his first official address.
Harvey said his three main diversity concerns of the University are faculty member representation, the western bias in curricula and graduate student representation. He added he hopes to improve those three issues.
Harvey said he has been at the University for six days and has been gathering information from students concerning their perspectives on diversity issues. Harvey said he hopes to be accessible to students, adding that he may visit sites such as fraternity houses to get student input.
Harvey also said he hopes to establish a tradition of annual diversity activities.
"I've been meeting with deans, and what I've suggested to them is that each school would have some activity every year that has diversity as its central focus," he said.
Following his speech, Council representatives asked Harvey five questions pertaining to his future goals and plans as a new officer at the University.
In response to a question about diversity concerns in the Asian-American community, Harvey said any form of racial intolerance is unacceptable and said he wants to remedy discrimination in all forms. He added that only students can fix discrimination through positive peer pressure to treat all individuals equally.
"What in fact we can do is to identify perpetrators and to create a climate where these incidents do not occur," he said. "I was surprised when I met with student leaders that there is a sense that the administration was going to fix the culture, fix the incidents so that there weren't any more incidents. I don't think that's possible. I think if anyone can do it, it is the students. I would argue that peer pressure can exert appropriate influence to cease this behavior."
UPC Speakers Chair Brian Gavron said he was impressed with Harvey and his talk.
"Up to this point, a lot of the student body didn't know what role he was going to play," Gavron said. "This was a good way for him to outline his role and some of the issues he is planning on addressing. He definitely brought to my attention things I hadn't considered before."
Harvey said he has been impressed with the University's commitment to diversity and plans to add to what the University has already been doing to improve race relations.
"The work that I'm going to be doing is not work that is going to diminish or even replace anything," he said. "My intent is to complement and supplement what already exists here."
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