AU Town Hall Meeting on Diversity

["Office of Provost" <Provost@mail.auburn.edu>]

A Town Hall meeting on diversity has been scheduled for Wednesday,
October 23, at Auburn University.

The meeting, "Discussions on Diversity" will be at 6 p.m., in Telfair
Peet Theatre.  All faculty, staff, students, and the public are invited
to attend.

Panelists will include AU President William F. Walker; Kelvin Datcher,
outreach coordinator for Tolerance.org, the education wing of the
Southern Poverty Law Center; Heath Henderson, AU student government
association president; Auburn Mayor Bill Ham; David Wilson, associate
provost and vice president for outreach at AU; Mariyam Jamila, president
of AU's Muslim students association; civil rights activist C. T. Vivian,
and Felicia Hall, president of Hall & Associates.

Kevin L. Clayton, president of K. L. Clayton & Associates of Atlanta, a
diversity consultant retained by the university, will lead the panelists
in the discussion.

This meeting is being coordinated by AU's Diversity Leadership Council,
which was established in May and charged with developing a plan to
establish diversity as a core value at Auburn.

"The Diversity Leadership Council, which includes students, faculty,
staff, administrators, and alumni, has been working since the spring to
develop a comprehensive blueprint for diversity across the campus," said
Interim Provost John Pritchett.  "We want to make diversity a core value
of this university.  We want to make sure that there is a consideration
and appreciation of diversity in everything that we do here at Auburn."

AU has already begun to take steps toward addressing the diversity
challenges and opportunities on campus.  "We have an inventory on our
web site of every course taught here at Auburn that includes elements of
diversity.  We have completed construction on a centrally located
Diversity Center in the Foy Student Union building that will serve as a
focal point for a wide range of programming.  And, we've brought new
energy to our Office of Diversity and Multicultural Affairs with the
hiring of Keenan Grenell."

AU's survey of its course offerings identified more than 400 courses
that incorporate some elements of diversity and/or tolerance with regard
to race, disability, gender, and sexual preference.

The moves were prompted after photographs from two Halloween parties
hosted by Beta Theta Pi and Delta Sigma Phi fraternities showed some AU
students in offensive attire and poses were posted to the internet last
year.  Because of the incidents, the national and AU charters of the two
fraternities were suspended, and 15 students were temporarily suspended
from the university.  They were later reinstated following a court
ruling.

The Diversity Leadership Council defined diversity as "the coexistence
of people, processes, and functions, characterized by both differences
and similarities."

The council's mission statement says "The Diversity Leadership Council
is a team of students, staff, faculty, administrators, and alumni
empowered by the President to assist in establishing diversity as a core
value at Auburn University."

For a vision statement, the council wrote:  "Auburn University is
nationally recognized as a dynamic academic institution.  Auburn's
culture attracts and develops students, staff, faculty, and
administrators that represent multiple dimensions of diversity.  It is a
fair and equitable culture in which the talents of every member of the
Auburn University community reinforces its values and contributes to
achieving its mission."