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Monday, October 15, 2012
Scholar panel discusses Sikh temple shooting By Taylor Harvey The Daily Cardinal
shoaib altaf/the daily cardinal
Harvard law professor Yuni Guinier speaks in support of affirmative action and holistic admission processes in higher education at Friday’s Diversity Forum.
Annual forum explores diversifying campuses By Cheyenne Langkamp and Aarushi Agni The Daily Cardinal
University of WisconsinMadison faculty, staff and students gathered Friday in Union South for the 2012 Diversity Forum to begin preliminary discussions of a new strategic diversity plan for the university. Chancellor David Ward welcomed attendees with an address detailing his goals for the forum. “I wish a very creative dialogue with perhaps some very deliberative outcomes that can allow this institution to keep the history of being committed to civil rights, being committed to cultural pluralism, and now being committed to this center of equity which is even bigger than either of those two ideas,” Ward said. The forum included smallgroup discussions, performances by First Wave and five breakout sessions that focused on campus climate for LGBT and American
Indian students, dialogue about religious diversity, the human resources redesign and an initiative to increase faculty diversity. Additional coverage of the breakout sessions and the 2012 Diversity Forum can be found at dailycardinal.com. Harvard law professor Dr. Lani Guinier delivered the forum’s keynote address, which focused on the nuances of affirmative action and holistic admissions. Guinier said the college admissions process should lessen its emphasis on standardized testing, given that students of higher socioeconomic status typically perform better on these tests. Standardized college-entry exams, said Guinier, better correlate with “the model of your parent’s car” than future academic performance. “We are defending the use of a system that does not work,” Guinier said. Guinier said Fisher v.
University of Texas, a current U.S. Supreme Court case considering the use of race in college admissions, could further disadvantage students of lower socioeconomic status in college admissions. Guinier detailed a holistic admissions process, wherein the applicants are chosen based on their strengths relative to each other. “Say you have three applicants for two jobs. John, Jim and Jane apply. You give them a test… John gets seven out of 10 right, Jim gets six out of 10, and Jane gets five out of 10. You’d say, it’s a no-brainer. Hire John and Jim,” Guinier said. “But what if you looked at what they got wrong? What if John and Jim got the same questions wrong? What if the questions John got wrong are the questions that Jane got right?” A better system of admissions, said Guinier, would hire “John” and “Jane,” who would bring complementary perspectives to the table.
A panel of scholars from across the country met Friday to discuss ways to educate the public about the Aug. 5 Oak Creek Sikh temple shooting by connecting it to greater issues involving racism and violence. To connect what happens in smaller-scale terrorist incidents, such as the Oak Creek shooting, to current larger issues, UW-Madison professor Donald Davis said it is necessary to determine if such incidents are “just a weirdo acting out” or if they are linked to greater global and national problems. “The purpose [of the panel discussion] is to think about what scholars of South Asia can and should be doing to educate people about incidents like this to help make sense of why they happen,” Davis said. According to University of Pittsburgh professor Rashmi D. Bhatnagar, who chaired the discussion, the media did not provide sufficient analysis about
the Oak Creek incident for her to engage her students in a constructive discussion about racially motivated violent acts. “It doesn’t just happen, this kind of violence,” Bhatnagar said. “It happens when there are certain kinds of discussions already going on in the community and certain kinds of everyday hostility going on.” Bhatnagar referred to the Oak Creek shooting as a “wake-up” call for scholars and teachers to compare a current violent act to others throughout history. “[The discussion] outlined the work we can do in a scholarly way as academics,” Bhatnagar said. “But it did so by [highlighting] how we need to think of the Oak Creek moment as not just one more hate crime but as requiring some real historicizing.” Davis said it is important for scholars who often get stuck in the “proverbial ivory tower,” which refers to academics who
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City officials, police officers tour downtown bar scene By Leo Rudberg The Daily Cardinal
City officials and Madison police officers attended a different type of bar crawl Friday night, touring several downtown liquor establishments in order to have first-hand knowledge of local bars when granting alcohol licenses in the upcoming months. The city’s Alcohol Policy Coordinator Mark Woulf, Madison Police Department Lt. Detective Tim Peregoy and MPD Alcohol Liaison Officer Chad
Crose led Alcohol License Review Committee members on a “walkthrough” of approximately 20 of the area’s 28 licensed taverns. The group visited downtown bars such as the Nitty Gritty, Segredo, Johnny O’s Sports Lounge, Wando’s, State Street Brats, Logan’s, Paul’s Club and Osaka House and talked with bar managers. ALRC member Tom Landgraf said touring local bars allows committee members to “get a
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Employees criticize UW’s handling of diversity issues By Cheyenne Langkamp The Daily Cardinal
As the University of Wisconsin-Madison continues the process of redesigning its human resources system, one breakout session at Friday’s Diversity Forum sparked criticism over the new plan and current employee conditions at the university. Around 30 of the forum’s participants attended the Human
Resources Redesign & Diversity Initiatives breakout session to hear how the Diverse Workforce working group approached assessing campus diversity and making recommendations to the redesign project team. However, the conversation quickly became a critique of diversity related problems within the current personnel system and how the university would address those problems in the redesign plan.
Gretchen Caire, an office associate in the department of financial services, told the group about a personal experience in which her supervisor referred to her as “mammy” on multiple occasions. Caire said she eventually reached out to her lead worker for help, but was forced to wait over a month to hear back from anyone. “Where do you go for help?
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Madison Police Department officer Chad Crose led Alcohol License Review Committee members on a tour of downtown bars.
“…the great state University of Wisconsin should ever encourage that continual and fearless sifting and winnowing by which alone the truth can be found.”