The Campus Conservative

  ("Court Gavel - Judge's Gavel - Courtroom", by wp paarz via Flickr) In 2016, student senators amended student government’s constitution to greatly expand the executive branch’s powers. At the time, the senators said that the change was to bring the student forum in line with The United States’ government and other student government models. To do this, they endowed the student body president with the power to veto any senate action he disliked. Likewise, they gave the senate commensurate powers to override the president’s veto provided it has a three-fourth’s majority. Yet, blindly copying for the sake of copying, reformers kept the SGA president in charge of running the senate’s business meetings. This means the very officer who can kill all of its business decisions also runs its meetings. I mean, talk about an injury to the senate’s independence. The presidential veto was a mistake. It makes an authoritarian out of the SGA president and places an unnecessary barr...

  ("Fork roads" by Osmar Miranda via Flickr)  On March 29, UT-Tyler Provost Amir Mirmiran took a question from student government about how the administration would protect respect for cultural diversity in the classroom. Mirmiran replied, “We need to make sure that from admission all the way to retention and everything else, we have policies and processes in place that would ensure a diverse student body.”  Admissions policies that “ensure” a diverse student body? Wow, really? How would they do that? In my mind, the only way to do this is through race-conscious admissions. How else will the university “ensure” that the student body is acceptably racially diverse except by intentionally considering race in each applicant? Currently, UT-Tyler has a merit-based admission standard that allows anyone with a GED (or equivalent) and a 2.75 GPA to attend. But could Provost Mirmiran really be suggesting a change from merit-based admission standards to racially-conscious ones inst...

("exam" by Karl Baron via Flickr ) As UT-Tyler takes on consideration for socioeconomic status, the interest in race and in racial groups increases as it also comes under pressure to support a diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) culture. Thankfully, DEI (or JEDI) is no longer a part of the university’s strategic plan. However, popular acceptance of DEI leads to considerations for identity groups, including racial ones and also to looking at others through their skin color, rather through their character and individual characteristics.  Along with this concern, comes an interest in “doing something” for presumably oppressed groups. Affirmative action is just such a thing. It’s the policy that gives Blacks preferential treatment, usually in college admissions, when selecting who can receive admission to a prestigious school. Harvard does it. Yale does it. It is a popular way for universities—as well as employers or other entities—to claim that they are “doing something” for ...

("No" by Felipe Skroski via Flickr) On March 29, UT-Tyler President Kirk Calhoun and Provost Amir Mirmiran answered questions from the student government in which they seemed to indicate that they would consider race in their decision-making about university policy.  Calhoun said he wanted UT-Tyler to intentionally reach out “to students of color” and Mirmiran said that the university would reach diversity by purposefully hiring “a diverse faculty.”  Both of these university officials said—or at least appeared to say (if “diversity” is a reference word to race and racial composition, which it appeared to be in the conversation)—that they would factor considerations of race into the decision-making.  As a state school, UT-Tyler should in no way consider either student applicants or prospective employees on the basis of their race. This language from UT-Tyler’s president and provost is troubling and gives the startling concern that the university will adopt an oppressive m...

  Canada's fireworks at the 2013 Celebration of Light in Vancouver (Source: Wikipedia Commons) They changed it!  UT-Tyler has removed a provision within its strategic plan that was set to enshrine Critical Race Theory into its institutional mission. The provision that once read that the university will advance a campus climate that cultivates “justice, equity, diversity and inclusion” now reads that it will advance a climate “of equal opportunity and success” instead.  This is a huge win as it removes the institutional bias that would have entered the university's  philosophy (and then spread throughout the entire institution) as a result of this language. What Is Critical Race Theory? For those who are unfamiliar, critical race theory is the theory that white people built Western society through systematic racism to benefit white people. Therefore, the very DNA of Western institutions is racism, and the appropriate way to remove discriminatory bias from within Weste...

(Ritter Tower at The University of Texas at Tyler // Source: James Hescock) The University of Texas at Tyler (UT-Tyler) has proposed a new institutional plan that puts critical race theory at the center of its approach. The plan states that the university’s new commitments (among others) are [to advance] "a campus climate that cultivates justice, equity, diversity and inclusion” (or what's know as JEDI).  While these traditional terms sound positive, in reality, they are applications of critical race theory (CRT), a toxic ideology that claims Western society exists to benefit white people through systematic racism and that equality of outcome is a desirable goal. Sadly, CRT’s introduction into the university’s strategic plan introduces a biased ideology that corrupts the soundness of the university's judgement and makes it wholly untrustworthy with respect to its decisions. The unfortunate result is that the university’s current stakeholders—students, parents and local emp...

(Source: Pexels.com; public domain)  In the coming months, UT-Tyler will propose its new strategic plan to its oversight board, The Board of Regents. In the new plan, the University intends to include a provision to adopt a "JEDI" orientation (a commitment to pursue "justice, equity, diversity and inclusion") as an institutional commitment. This is a big deal. The JEDI tenants all appear nice until one realizes that this is an ideology, not a rational response to fact and evidence.   Ideological commitments blind a person from the real world since they start with hypotheses rather than facts. In the case of the JEDI framework, the foundational assumption is that disparity of outcomes is always the result of discrimination. Adopting this false assumption in the JEDI ideology into the intuitional plan will create a blind spot in the university and ultimately lead UT-Tyler to be irresponsible with its mission. UT-Tyler should reject the JEDI commitment from its strateg...