Sacramento State’s Faculty Senate is proposing that changes be made to the university’s current Affirmative Action policy in regards to hiring faculty members ?” a motion that is getting mixed reviews.

A key factor in the proposed policy is an increase in departmental supervision and policy enforcement.

Rhonda Rios Kravitz, the head of Access Services, said the proposed policy builds accountability into the search process by defining the duties of Affirmative Action Officers and Equal Opportunity Representatives.

The proposal also states it is the responsibility of an officer or representative, if a bias is identified in the search process, to share the information with the search committee, the department chair, the dean and human resources, Rios Kravitz said.

The officer or representative must also confirm that no inappropriate actions have been taken, she said.

“This kind of accountability was not built into the original policy,” Rios Kravitz said.

The proposed policy also indicates the search process should use statistics or national availability data as part of the search process, Rios Kravitz said. It also states that training is mandatory for all search committee members, she added.

While the training process is expected to make current faculty members better-equipped to hire new members, it will also increase their workload.

Social Work Professor Sylvia Navari said the current recruitment and hiring processes for new faculty members requires an extraordinary amount of time on the part of current faculty members. Faculty members are happy to be involved in the process, but that doesn’t mean that they want to create an even bigger workload for themselves, she added.

“It doesn’t make sense,” Navari said. “The proposed changes would mean that the faculty would be doing what the current policy requires the dean and human resource employees to do.

“The proposed changes would mean that the faculty would be doing what the current policy requires deans and human resource employees to do,” Navari said. “Why would we want to add more administrative responsibilities? It just doesn’t make sense.”

Navari said another problem is the fact that no one really knows what’s wrong with the current policy. One explanation being given is that some department officers or representatives are not attending the Search and Screen Committee meetings, she said.

“This is a problem, but it is not evidence of a failed policy,” Navari said. “It is evidence that the current policy is not being enforced.”

The new policy also establishes criteria for who is eligible to be an officer or a representative. Other changes in the proposal include what the duties of an officer or representative are.

Although the current policy’s main problems appear to be connected to enforcement issues, another large factor is hiring.

“Hiring is one of the most important responsibilities faculty hold on this campus,” Rios Kravitz said. “Recruiting, hiring and retaining diverse faculty must go beyond rhetoric and translate into policy and action.”

Current enrollment for the fall 2006 semester stands at 28,529 students. Of this number, 16,910 are female and 11,619 are male, according to the Office of Institutional Researcher’s website.

The website states that of the 28,529 students currently enrolled at Sac State, 1,968 are black, 2,410 are Asian, 3,928 are Hispanic and 12,303 are Caucasian. Other ethnicities include 282 American Indians, 1,327 Filipinos, 256 Pacific Islanders, 1,176 Southeast Asians, 538 Foreign Nationals and 4,314 registered under other.

While the gender percentages for student and faculty members are similar, the numbers for race are not.

Of the 1,465 faculty members currently working at Sac State, 75.8 percent are Caucasian, according to the website. This differs greatly from the percentage of Caucasian students, which stands at 43 percent.

The student body is diverse, but the faculty is not, Rios Kravitz said.

“According to a survey done by the Bernard Hodes Group and Ph.D. Project, 96 percent of undergraduate and graduate students of color indicated that professors of color positively impacted their education and 83 percent of white undergraduate and graduate students indicated that professors of color positively impacted their education,” Rios Kravitz said. “At this university, students have a small number of faculty of color to interact with. The process of diversifying faculty at this university has been slow and discouraging.”

The diversity of the students is clearly not represented by the diversity of the faculty, said Juan Figueroa, a junior psychology major.

“A (mainly) white faculty cannot and does not represent the 57 percent of students here that are not white,” Figueroa said. “In my opinion, this proportion directly affects students because students are able to more easily grasp concepts coming from a professor that understands or is able to sympathize with their students’ cultures and upbringings.”

Rios Kravitz said diversity enhances academic quality and prepares students to live and work in an increasingly global and multicultural society.

Ashley Evans can be reached at [email protected]