Tuesday night, a large group of students, staff, and faculty gathered in the TV lounge of New House for the latest “Speak Your Mind” diversity discussion and dinner. Now in their fourth year, these discussions are sponsored by the Office of the Dean of Student Affairs and usually take place once a month. This meeting’s topic was “The Current State of Affirmative Action” and was facilitated by University President Jared Cohon.

President Cohon began by reviewing the current history of affirmative action, including the recent University of Michigan cases in which that school’s use of race in the admissions process was contested (Carnegie Mellon filed a friend-of-court brief in support of affirmative action).

He highlighted some important points: “The issue of affirmative action applies only to a small group of universities, namely to those that admit less than half of their applicants, such as our own.”

Cohon explained Carnegie Mellon’s admission process: “We review each application individually; we don’t have a scoring system…. Diversity of perspective has always been important to us.”

Following Cohon’s remarks, the meaning of diversity was disputed by some in the audience.

“I have a problem with someone saying that white people cannot be diverse,” said one student.

“But what is the problem with focusing on race?” asked David Blake, a master’s student in information systems management. “The meaning of diversity should not be diluted.”

Lorraine Lyman, a doctoral student in chemistry, expressed her aversion to those who would call affirmative action an exclusive, discriminatory practice: “Affirmative action has actually helped out white women more than anyone else…. We have this to level the playing field. The purpose of affirmative action is inclusion, not exclusion.”

But some members of the audience expressed doubts about how much affirmative action had helped. ”We [African- Americans] still have to be better and smarter to be seen as equal. It is still about the color of your skin. If you are black, you have to work twice as hard to be accepted,” said Gwen Martini, a guest at the discussion.

Monique Lanaux, a master's student in public policy and management, asked President Cohon about a recent editorial from The Tartan that opposed the singing of “Lift Every Voice and Sing,” the Black National Anthem, at a recent event in honor of Black History Month.

“I thought the editorial was absurd and completely off-base” said Cohon. He again called attention to the University of Michigan case, where the court decision to uphold affirmative action was accompanied by a statement that affirmative action would only be a temporary measure.

One student voiced her support for affirmative action: “You can’t have the best pool of applicants if part of the population is not being represented.” 

“What would have to happen for affirmative action to cease?” asked another audience member.

“It’s going to take a couple of generations until the playing field is level,” said Dr. Malika Jeffries-El, a postdoctoral research fellow.

Despite the controversy surrounding this topic, however, the discussion was rather calm and subdued, with a marked focus on what can be done to increase diversity at Carnegie Mellon.

“It is hard to be as diverse as we would like to be in technical fields…. Our success at improving diversity in the faculty has also been slow,” admitted Cohon.

The conversation then shifted from undergraduate diversity to diversity at the departmental and faculty level.

“There seems to be an extraordinary disconnect between different departments and their efforts with diversity,” said Lanaux.

Cohen went on to explain the difficulties that Carnegie Mellon was having with recruiting a diverse faculty. There was much support for treating diversity not just as a University-wide problem, but as a problem each school and department should deal with independently. A Language Technologies Institute staff member said: “If you keep creating an open environment, you will solve the problem…. We should bring the process down to the department level.”