NCSU diversity czar’s latest

Just in case any in the NC State community somehow didn’t get that “diversity” is just a euphemism for racial and gender bean-counting, Jose Picart, the new “diversity czar” (i.e., the head of the hilariously blatantly named “Office of Diversity and African-American Affairs”), has made it explicit:

Some areas “need more work,” Picart said while giving his presentation. The areas in need of “more work” are non-white, full-time faculty, female full-time faculty and students’ views on racial and gender equality.

Of the full-time faculty, 14.6 percent is non-white. “Now here’s an area we can do some work on,” Picart said.

Twenty percent of full-time faculty are female. Picart is already making plans to meet with faculty women’s groups to discuss recruiting and retaining full-time women faculty.

Picart also showed a table of undergraduate enrollment by ethnicity of similar universities across the nation, not including historically black colleges or universities. NCSU was shown as having 10 percent African-American students, which was among the highest for similar science and math schools. Picart said, “I understand the difficulty in moving these numbers,” but he repeated his commitment to helping them change and grow.

The last figures Picart presented to the senate were from a survey of the senior class of 2003 and the sophomores from the same year. The survey showed that for those groups, 71.2 percent of seniors and 76.2 percent of sophomores appreciated racial equity, and 72.7 percent of seniors and 76 percent of sophomores appreciated gender equity.

Picart said that NCSU has a “general commitment to diversity,” and he would work to “translate that commitment into reality.”