Goodbye Diversity, Hello Involvement

It would appear that Stetson prefers to do its spring cleaning in the summer. As you might already know, we are short two rather important positions in our favorite administrative body. First, Anthony Bouno is no longer the Czar of our Residential Life and "Fraternity and Sorority Affairs" Department.

Our returning students will no doubt remember what a pleasure it was to work with Residential Life towards the latter end of last year. Others will remember how efficient and easy it was to pick housing for the upcoming term. Some were so confident in the powers at be that they went home for the summer with no idea where they would be placed on move-in day, trusting that the administration would actually have a bed for them in the fall. I wish Bouno well in his future endeavors; hopefully, Residential Life will never be the same again! I am confident, however, in the ability of Rina Tovar, who has now succeeded him. Hopefully the new queen of students will not make the same mistakes.

The real wonder is the departure of Shelley Wilson, former director of the office previously known as The Department of Diversity and Leadership. She most notably oversaw the comings and goings of the Cross Cultural Center. The department has since been named Student Involvement with Dean Leonard Nance as the director.

Under the new system, the seat of power for the program will begin and end with Dr. Nance. While he has always been the overseer, he now is the direct link to the students through this. The previous link was Shelley Wilson. In theory this should expedite the procedures of the department; however, when was the last time something worked, in theory, for Stetson? The frat houses would be redone in theory; in actuality they are only being renovated. The water damage in the apartments would be fixed and the trashed belongings would be replaced in theory Residential Life will have their act together this year, in theory…

The administration is eliminating bureaucracy and gaining speed. While I will be the first person to admit that bureaucracy is slow and inefficient it also provides a large system of checks and balances that will be lost if control is solely in the hands of a Dean that already does too much. This phenomenon is what I like to call the "Band-aid" effect, where Stetson finds a quick fix for a problem, but what the injury really needs is a suture.

Stetson is also ranked among the worst in all things diversity according to Wikipedia (I know, can't use it on a research paper so it does not exist). But we are also rated quite poorly in our very own Nethersole Cultural Diversity Reports, which outlined every way in which diversity on campus was de-prioritized. Here we are, almost ten years after that report, and things have not changed all that much. It would appear that Stetson truly does not care as much about diversity as it claims and simply has other, more pressing matters to occupy its time and resources. We will just have to trust that the administration knows exactly what it's doing and knows what's best for this school. They have never steered any of us wrong before, right?