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About Oregon daily emerald. (Eugene, Or.) 1920-2012 | View Entire Issue (Jan. 31, 2000)
Licensees continued from page 1 the contract will be drawn up in March. The committee will invite selected University trademark li censees to talk about the contract in April. The end goal is to have Frohnmayer review the code of conduct by mid-May so that it can be included in the 2000-01 con tracts that will be sent to licensees by June 1. The group of students, faculty and administrators reviewed the corporate codes of conduct from the Human Rights Consortium, the Fair Labor Association and the University of California. The codes covered similar cat egories such as equity, collective bargaining, wages and benefits, forced child labor, women’s rights, working hours and condi tions and ethical principles. The content of each category will be discussed in future meetings, Mc Donald said. “We’re starting a very good dia logue essential to incorporate in our code,” said Mitra Anoushira vani, ASUO vice president and committee member. Just over 100 of the University’s 278 trademark licensees have re sponded to the letter Frohnmayer sent Dec. 29,1999. Of those, more than one-third of licensees need ed more information about what was required of them. For example, some of the small er licensees may attach a Univer sity trademark to a hat they buy from a wholesaler, who bought it from a distributor, who bought it from an importer. These smaller businesses said they may have difficulty disclosing where the hat comes from originally because they don’t know. Bigger licensees provided the committee with their own codes of conduct. Diversity continued from page 1 sought out for opinion on diversi ty issues.” Carnahan’s departure is just the latest in a series of diverse faculty who have left the University for other jobs. In recent years, a hand ful of nontraditional faculty, from two to five members, have left the University for other schools or businesses, making a predominant ly white faculty even less diverse. Of 3,108 University faculty, 2,782 are white, 301 are minorities and 25 declined to respond, according to the 1998 University Profile. But these numbers don’t reflect faculty such as Carnahan who worked in diverse departments such as the LGBTA, Women’s Center and the Women’s Studies Program. “It doesn’t seem like that many, but when you look at how few fac ulty of color we have to start with it really starts to add up,” ASUO Recruitment and Retention Coor dinator Jason Mak said. The issue became so serious that in May 1999 Mak and about 75 oth er protesters staged a sit-in at John son Hall. They demanded the Uni versity meet a number of diversity objectives, including extensive sensitivity training for faculty and giving student groups at least $1 million to help meet their diversity goals. Eugene police arrested 31 protesters. Mak was later appoint ed to the summer diversity intern ship program, which was a direct result of the protest, to study mi nority recruitment and retention. Some, such as Associate Law Professor Robin Morris Collin — who is the only female African American faculty member at the University — say the racial cli mate on campus is to blame. “It’s like Germany in the 1930s,” Collin said. “People are disappearing all around us and no one asks why.” Money talks Some worry the University sim ply doesn’t have the funds to keep faculty from leaving for other schools or other jobs regardless of their race. As cost-of-living rates increase, the University has not increased faculty salary to compensate. The University pays its faculty 85.6 percent of what faculty at other peer universities receive, accord ing to the 1997-98 Annual Report on the Economic Status of the Pro fession by the American Associa tion of University Professors. Vice Provost for Academic Af fairs Lorraine Davis said an exo dus of good faculty is always a problem, and it is more of an issue when they are people of color. During informal discussions with faculty before they leave, however, she said she hears the di verse reasons from everyone, re gardless of their race or gender. “The experience for each indi vidual is different, and the reasons for leaving are varied,” Davis said. “But their reasons aren’t different from any other faculty member. It’s related to salary or size of de partment, for instance.” Quintard Taylor said he stepped down as the head of the history de partment in June 1999 for an en dowed history chair at the University of Washington for the same reasons. “I got an extraordinary offer ... and a research budget the Univer sity [of Oregon] couldn’t afford,” Taylor said. Robert Pena, former architec ture professor said he left the Uni versity at the end of spring term 1999 because he wanted an oppor tunity to step out of his teaching role and work at an actual archi tecture business. He also said the racial climate on campus had nothing to do with his decision. “I liked the University very much and couldn’t have asked for more support,” Pena said. “Doors were open for me here. ” But Taylor and Pena both agreed the racial climate on campus will im prove as soon as the University has more money to offer faculty of color. “Part of the problem is that the University is underfunded by the state,” Taylor said. “I can say if [the University’s history department] had the money, they would hire more faculty of color. But goodwill is not enough. We need a commit ment of resources from the state. ” Stifling diversity But students and faculty of col or do view the departures as a di versity issue and blame the ethnic climate on campus for pushing faculty of color away. “Part of it obviously is money, but [the departures] directly speak to how they are treated in terms of the worth of their work, ” Mak said. Despite the Johnson Hall protest and his suggestions in the summer interns’ report, Mak said he still feels faculty of color aren’t staying because of the way they are-treated. “Faculty of color get pigeonholed into all of these different commit tees because everyone wants them on their committee, and then they get burned out,” Mak said. Attitude adjustment Breslow said he isn’t sure what needs to happen to improve di verse faculty retention. “How do you change the entire atmosphere?” Breslow said. But he said the first step is for the administration to look at what other universities are offering their faculty. “Things need to change in the highest levels of the administra tion,” Breslow said. “Why are we an expert training ground and then they bum out and leave?” Mak suggested the University could find out where it’s lacking if it conducted formal exit inter views, which currently don’t hap pen. Provost John Moseley said having a formal process wouldn’t add to the current informal process. “In every case of any faculty we want to retain them, and we make a very strong effort,” Moseley said. “When we know of someone who wants to leave, we discuss it with them, sometimes for well overayear.” Morris Collin, the associate law professor, suggested the University offer other diverse faculty the same thing she was offered—a job for her spouse as well, who is an environ mental studies professor. She . warned, however, that her sugges tion could lead to institutional racism if spouses are not offered jobs that correspond to their skill level. “That’s why I stay, but I am look ing every day,” she said. Carnahan said while she is dis couraged by the University’s at tempts to address students’ needs, she’s optimistic that the diversity intern’s programs will keep the is sue in the spotlight. Mak said a campus plan for di versity is currently in the works, which will nail down specifically what the University needs to do to improve diversity and pinpoint who will be accountable and carry out the goals that are set. “Those who control the minds control the populace,” Mak said. “This is really about freedom of thought.”
