Brown U. Plans to Invest $100-Million to Address Diversity

[Digital Puppy]

Found this interesting news post while reading the Chronicle of Higher Education:

Brown University expects to spend more than $100-million over the next ten years to address issues of racism and diversity at the institution, officials announced late this week.

The university’s president, Christina Paxson, unveiled a draft “action plan” with a series of planned steps intended “to promote diversity and inclusion and confront the issues of racism, power, privilege, inequity and injustice that are part of the Brown experience for so many members of our campus.”

Campus leaders at Brown have faced calls from students in recent weeks to do more on the issue. Last month a student visiting the campus from Dartmouth College to attend a conference on Latino students says he was forcefully detained by one of Brown’s public-safety officers. In response, Ms. Paxson quickly apologized and promised a full investigation of the incident. As she made that apology, however, students shouted “That’s not good enough,” according to a report in the Providence Journal.

In a statement announcing the new action plan, Ms. Paxson said the effort to create the report was already underway before the recent incident. But she added that the plan “has been profoundly informed, and substantially improved by recent campus conversations about structural racism.”

Among the measures outlined in the draft plan:

- Aim to double the number of professor from historically underrepresented groups by 2024-25.

- Create an orientation program for new faculty and staff members, as well as workshops on “race/racism, gender/sexism, sexual and gender identity, ability.”

- Provide more diversity and sensitivity training for public safety officers on the campus.

- Expand mentoring programs for students of color and “LGBTQ+ students.”

- Create a Diversity Visiting Scholars Program to bring scholars from historically underrepresented groups to teach and do research on the campus.

- Establish a center for first-generation college students.

Read the entire post here: http://chronicle.com/blogs/ticker/brown-u-plans-to-invest-100-million-to-address-diversity/106867

It will be interesting to see if these students will be labeled "Rich/privileged/troublemakers" for making their voice heard on Brown's campus. It seems that the administration not only recognized there was an issue, they didn't wait that long before taking further steps to draft and publish a plan of action.

[yeoman6987]

1. Id like to see assurances that the money doesn't come from tuition money

But the huge endowment they sit on.

[Digital Puppy]

2. Most likely...

...the money identified will come from some categorical fund being spent over a number of years. Tuition (and other revenue like federal, state, investment income) are itemized in budgets as well as Expenditures like salaries/benefits, programs, operating expenses, etc.) I'm not sure how much revenue Dartmouth gets from "non-tuition" money, but I wouldn't be so upset that this new diversity initiative is funded from money derived from their normal income sources - including tuition.

My guess is that Dartmouth will allocate new money to be spent out of their "Sponsored Programs" or "Institutional Program" (or something akin to that) account.

Most Higher-Ed institutions do not want to dip into their endowments since that is something that you can not do on a sustained basis. Any suggestion of using endowments for these kinds of costs are a bit silly (with all due respect) and not fiscally responsible. Of course, institutions do use the interest off of their endowments as income in their budget.

I do get (and agree with) your ultimate point, however, that you (like I) feel that the student's should not directly fund these activities with any sort of an increase in their tuition or reduction in overall student services.