For Immediate Release
May 6, 2005

San Diego Branch NAACP Questions Campus Report on Precipitous Decline of Black Faculty at San Diego State U

Civil Rights Organization Challenges Report’s Methods and Recommendations

San Diego, CA. On the afternoon of May 3, 2005, San Diego State University’s Faculty Senate unanimously accepted a university subcommittee’s report regarding the loss of African American faculty at SDSU. San Diego Branch NAACP President Douglas Oden was not surprised to learn that the heavily vetted report was so well received by campus leaders. Observing that the university had lost more than a quarter of its Black full-time teaching faculty (9 out of 34) in the past two years—some quite publicly—Oden remarked that SDSU had finally been forced to acknowledge there was an elephant in the room. “However,” he noted in reference to the report, “that didn’t stop university officials from putting a spin on how the elephant got there in the first place, or what needed to be done to get rid of it.” According to Oden, the report, drafted by the Faculty Senate Committee on Diversity, Equity and Outreach, “sidesteps critical issues that SDSU must address if it is ever to attract and retain qualified African American faculty members in proportion to their national availability.”

Among the failings of the report noted by the San Diego Branch NAACP is its analysis of SDSU’s high attrition rates for Black faculty—namely, its implication that the precipitous loss of Black faculty is due to voluntary retirements. According to Oden, the report glosses over the fact that as many Black faculty have recently quit or been forced out of the university as have voluntarily retired. Significantly, although the Diversity, Equity and Outreach Committee collected survey information from African Americans leaving SDSU for reasons other than retirement incentives, information from this group is not included in the report.

Nor does the report give voice to current SDSU Black faculty surveyed by the committee. Instead, the report’s assessment of campus climate issues for Black faculty at SDSU and its recommendations for attracting and retaining Black faculty to the campus are mostly taken from “boilerplate” literature. As NAACP Education Committee member Beverly Hudson notes, “While knowledge of the literature on recruitment and retention of Black faculty is important, that knowledge must be made context-specific. Literature is a complement to, not a substitute for, lived experience. By suppressing the voices of current and past SDSU Black faculty, the report has become less relevant and its recommendations suffer a disconnect.”

One of the issues of most concern for San Diego Branch President Oden is the lack of concrete actions and measurable outcomes and timeframes. “Failure to delineate timelines and to provide measurable outcomes in the report signals a lack of seriousness on the part of the university.” “Without them,” Oden continues, “the committee’s report is mostly show, with no substance. A lack of seriousness is also conveyed by the fact that the report never once mentions the words ‘racism’ or ‘discrimination.’” “This is a curious circumstance,” Oden says, “given the probable cause findings of racial discrimination against SDSU by the Equal Employment Commission, as well as the prominent national attention recently accorded by the American Association of University Women to Washington vs. SDSU/CSU.”

Oden states that the San Diego Branch NAACP will continue to monitor the status of Black faculty at San Diego State University and will carefully watch for any positive results stemming from the Diversity, Equity and Outreach Committee’s “Report on African American Faculty Diversity at SDSU.” The organization will host a community forum on the hiring, retention, and promotion of African American faculty and staff at San Diego State University in late August or early September 2005. Community members and university officials wishing to participate in or assist with this forum may call Education Committee Chair Dr. Pat Washington at (619) 582-5383 for more information.

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