Editorial:

Administration needs diversity training

Published Feb. 17, 2009

Administrators' lack of sensitivity and awareness in regards to diversity issues is both appalling and embarrassing. Students have been fighting for a long time to include the protection of transgender members of the MU community in the nondiscrimination clause and they continue to run into ignorance from the administration.

Something that wouldn't be happening if administrators even understood the issues surrounding this push from students.

Chancellor Brady Deaton's comment at a recent Four Front meeting regarding his lack of understanding of the needs of transgender students is just one display in a long line of embarrassing comments and actions made by administration in regards to this issue.

And it seems as if robots were being sent in the places of Deaton and Vice Chancellor for Student Affairs Cathy Scroggs with their continual and ineffectual four-word response: "We'll look into it."

It's time for student groups on campus to push the administration harder and realize the empty promise in that response. The once-per-semester meeting between Four Front and administrators clearly isn't going to cut it. And seriously, this is just the beginning. The faster we can get this through MU's administration the better. Do you know how long it takes to get stuff through the Board of Curators? Let's just say that from our previous observation, it's not going to be easy.

The administration clearly has no real grasp on the gravity of this issue and to combat that, it's time they go through more rigorous diversity training.

Important issues to the student body will continue to surface and there is no excuse for the administration's inability to understand the issues. It's the administration's job, as the leaders of a university, to actually understand the needs of all students in order to effectually deal with them and make MU an inclusive community.

The administration needs to take the time to be better equipped to actually have conversations about students' needs instead of pathetically revealing that they haven't spent any time thinking about the issues that impact some students on this campus.