This letter is written to correct certain misunderstandings about me in Sydney Epps' response (The Post, March 10) to my article about diversity in Ohio's public universities (The Post, March 5). Sydney's letter reflected misunderstandings of diversity policy as well, but I will let them slide for now. To avoid misunderstanding her, I afforded Sydney the opportunity to proof this letter, a courtesy that she did not afford to me and a responsibility to journalistic integrity that she as a journalism student will hopefully soon learn.
If she had checked with me, I would have clarified for Sydney that I do not detest the prospect of an increased minority enrollment at Ohio University. In fact, my article identified two different means for achieving precisely that objective in one fell swoop ' without a diversity policy. I also reported how Ohio universities would need to recruit 68,463 new white, non-Hispanic students to raise their representation to their proportion of the Ohio population. I did not say that I favored that idea. I don't. For the record, I am an equal opportunity man. I do not care who is admitted to Ohio University. I care how they are admitted.
Like Chief Justice John Roberts, I think that the way to stop discrimination is to stop discriminating. That is why I hope Barack Obama will be chosen as the nominee of the Democratic Party for the presidency of the United States. To use Obama's words, the slicing and dicing of Americans into competing demographic groups is the politics of the past. The politics of hope is to judge people by, to use Martin Luther King's words, the content of their character rather than the color of their skin.
I hope the Ohio University community has the opportunity in the future to debate the justification for the metrics and targets by which diversity policy slices and dices students and faculty. Provost Krendl has announced several forums promoting the implementation and celebration of a diverse university community. To the best of my knowledge, however, she has never announced a public debate of the justification for the metrics and targets that distinguish diversity policy from other student admission and faculty hiring strategies for achieving that objective.
Lyn Bowman is a research associate at Ohio University.
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Letter to the Editor
