Sonoma State Star

Issue date: 3/18/08 Section: News

Paul Gaston, (left) head of the WASC accreditation team, addressing the faculty during the Wednesday, March 12 forum. [Click to enlarge]

Last week, the Western Association of Schools and Colleges (WASC) came to SSU, for the first of their two accreditation visits. The team held two open forums for faculty, staff, administration and students, as well as toured the campus and held various business meetings.

Diversity was the main concern of students during the public forum held Wednesday, March 12, by the visiting six-member team of WASC.

According to the Associated Students, Inc. (ASI) Senator for the School of Social Sciences Tim Dondero, an Energy Management and Design major, students seemed most concerned about attracting and retaining students of all ethnic and cultural backgrounds, which would create a highly diverse campus community.

The team was as an audience, explained Dondero, but on the whole the students felt heard. A broad representation of students and individual groups of the student body, such as clubs, were in attendance. Dondero, however, did think that the forum could have been longer. The student forum was only scheduled to go from 3 p.m.-3:50 p.m.

This was also a major concern with the visiting WASC team of 2004, who wrote in their report that the University was "very much swimming upstream" in diversity efforts, and that for students the challenges were very great. They said that even though recruiting was succeeding, retaining the underrepresented student was much tougher.

"We noticed what may be a disconnect in the support offered within particular campus centers such as the LGBTQ (Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, Queer/Questions) and the broader campus community," wrote the 2004 WASC team. "In discussions with students in particular the question was raised whether discrete programs such as EMT and LGBTQ are really islands of support in a campus that is only modestly engaged in the pursuit of inclusion and active support in diversity and underrepresented students."

"While significant efforts by the administration to achieve diversity among students and faculty had characterized earlier SSU administrations, such real and productive efforts vanished with the current president's arrival on campus in 1992, replaced by what might be described as pro-forma appearances of effort that were entirely ineffective," said Noel Byrne, Professor of Sociology.

Continued...

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