After passing a House committee 10-5 and the House 42-26, the South Dakota intellectual diversity reporting bill passed the Senate State Affairs Committee today 6-3. The ACLU, the teachers' unions, and the higher education bureaucrats opposed the bill. The six votes in favor of the bill all came from Republicans. The ACLU continued to say that there would be a "chilling effect" on speech if South Dakota asked universities to file a report on how intellectual diversity on campus is promoted.
This 50-page report on ethnic diversity at the University of South Dakota became
the subject of a contentious exchange this morning in the SD Senate's State
Affairs Committee.
Apparently, USD does tons of work writing reports on ethnic and gender
diversity, but it's too much to ask for universities to write an intellectual
diversity report. See this exchange below where Senator Lee Schoenbeck of
Watertown gets the head of the SD Board of Regents to basically concede that the
intellectual diversity reporting bill would not be a problem:
February 22, 2006, South Dakota Senate State Affairs Committee
Hearing on HB 1222, Intellectual Diversity Bill
Exchange between Senator Lee Schoenbeck and Tad Perry, Executive Director of the South Dakota Board of Regents:
Schoenbeck: And do you agree that currently at least one of our universities has a need to make considerable improvement in its diversity?
Perry: Not necessarily.
Schoenbeck: I’m just reading from one of these reports. Would you agree “that diversity is an area that needs considerably greater attention because of the richness it provides to every aspect of university life and because The University of South Dakota has the responsibility for leadership in the area of diversity”? Do you agree with that statement?
Perry: Probably.
Schoenbeck: Did you see the report that some of us have had an opportunity to see on diversity produced by the University of South Dakota? It’s on your website.
Perry: That’s fine. I haven’t had read it word for word at least in the last 24 hours so I can’t recite it to you.
Shoenbeck: You know that the university currently produces some diversity reports, don’t you?
Perry: Certainly.
Shoenbeck: And what South Dakota group requires them to do that?
Perry: I don’t know.
Schoenbeck: Is the North Central Association a South Dakota group?
Perry: No it’s not.
Schoenbeck: And they are the ones that require you to do these diversity reports aren’t they?
Perry: The diversity report that is included in the accreditation report I think is a little different report than one that you were citing, that is the substance of this piece of legislation.
Schoenbeck: I am a little curious about why some diversity reports are ok with Mr. Perry and some aren’t. And if I might, maybe you could explain what’s different about the one that’s on their website and what’s so dangerous about the two sentences in the bill.
Perry: Senator Schoenbeck, when North Central does its diversity reports as part of its accreditation process it is looking largely at ethnicity, issues of diversity, both student and faculty populations, and that is basically the sole part of the diversity look from North Central. The substance of this bill is more a political/ideological diversity statement.
Schoenbeck: Has studying ethnic diversity had a chilling effect on your attempts to have an ethnically diverse campus at USD?
Perry: When you say studying are you making a reference to an academic study or an administrative study of where we stand?
Schoenbeck: We’ve heard here that looking at diversity reporting has a chilling effect. You’ve said you’re doing a report on ethnic diversity and so would we be right then to understand that you’re having a chilling effect on ethnic diversity at our universities?
Perry: Absolutely not. We do everything we can to encourage ethnicity diversity as we recruit both students and faculty. I have an ongoing diaologue with the people in the accrediting world because they have to put that in context in South Dakota. They can’t be too critical of South Dakota institutions for not having enough black students or Hispanic students or whatever classification you want to use when we don’t have those kinds of populations within our market pool from which to draw our students in. Generally, when we get into those reports and we get into those accreditation reviews it is exactly that. We don’t have enough members of any specific ethnicity group in terms of national standards and we say fine we understand that. It’s not that we resist doing it, it’s just the reality of the world that we live in.
Schoenbeck: What I want to understand is has studying diversity by this out of state group had a damaging effect on our regental system.
Perry: No, because that is a standard within the higher education community which is accepted.
Schoenbeck: Tad, do you have a copy of the bill handy?
Perry: Yes.
Schoenbeck: I’d like to ask you a couple of questions about just what exactly this bill requires. If you ignore section two, I think it only requires three things and I want to see if I’m reading this right. On line 6 it requires you do an annual report to the legislature. Do you see that?
Perry: Yes.
Schoenbeck: Do you agree, on line 7 and 8 it says that the report shows you’re taking steps to insure intellectual diversity and the free exchange of ideas.
Perry: I see that.
Schoenbeck: And that lines 8 through 10 give you a definition of intellectual diversity. Do you see that?
Perry: I do.
Schoenbeck: Is it a bad thing to do a report to the legislature?
Perry: Absolutely not.
Schoenbeck: Is it a bad thing to take steps to insure intellectual diversity and the free exchange of ideas.
Perry: Absolutely not.
Schoenbeck: And do you agree that intellectual diversity is the foundation of a learning environment that exposes students to a variety of political, ideological, and other perspectives.
Perry: I agree.
Schoenbeck: I don’t have any other questions.
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