AIM Support Group of Ohio & N. KentuckyUpdates and Announcements
Monday, September 23, 2002UND downplays harassment issue Editorial Board Argus Leader http://www.argusleader.com/editorial/Saturdayfeature.shtml published: 9/21/2002 It's not too difficult to tell what to make of a deal struck by the University of North Dakota and the U.S. Department of Education's Office for Civil Rights. After a two-year investigation found UND hadn't done enough to respond to complaints of discrimination and harassment - which got worse during discussion of the Fighting Sioux nickname and Native American head logos - the school abruptly agreed to several seemingly minor changes: • UND will take steps during the next two years to make it clearer to students, staff and faculty that harassment is not acceptable. • UND also will make it easier to understand how to report discrimination and harassment. Who will decide whether the school makes any progress? The efforts will be monitored by UND lawyer Julie Ann Evans and affirmative action officer Sally Page. So while evidence compiled in a two-year investigation seemed to indicate a hostile atmosphere, UND gets away with no penalty and little action needed. It will make it easier to report and make it clear discrimination and harassment are unacceptable. It has two years to make it clear that harassment is unacceptable - something that shouldn't take longer than about 5 minutes. And who monitors the progress? UND does. A student group called "BRIDGES" - Building Roads Into Diverse Groups Empowering Students - isn't happy about it. The group calls the deal a plea bargain to avoid public censure. That doesn't seem too far from the truth. But even worse, there doesn't seem to be any indication that much will change. UND President Charles Kupchella defends his school. "If they (the Office of Civil Rights) had found that we had discrimination going on here that was pervasive and severe, they would have shut off our federal funding," he said. "Fact is, they didn't find anything like that here." Fact is, if UND really thought discrimination and harassment were wrong, it would at the very least work to get at the heart of the problem. Instead, school officials simply will mouth politically correct words and clean up language in a procedures handbook. By the way, the nickname Fighting Sioux stays. posted by Webmaster@ AIM Support 2:22 PM Last updated:
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