According to President Potter’s office, $146,652 of SCSU’s general fund was spent on the C.A.R.E. Initiative, aka the Community Anti-Racism Education Initiative. According to SCSU’s website, “students, faculty and community participants [overwhelmingly] tell us this is one of the best workshops they have ever attended because the workshops are relevant, engaging, informational, comfortable and eye opening!”

That sounds great but there’s no quantifiable, objective numbers to match with SCSU’s statement. Without verification, we can’t be certain that quote isn’t anything more than happy talk. It wouldn’t be the first time a public institution had issued a statement that was pure blather.

 

Further exploration of SCSU’s website shows that the first “C.A.R.E. Leadership Team Meeting” was held on Sept. 1, 2006. According to the minutes of that meeting, things got off to a fantastic start:

Convocation week CARE Orientation Workshops were well attended and response from new employees was good.

It’s odd that Sept. 1 and Sept. 21, 2006 are the only meetings of the C.A.R.E. Initiative executive board. That is, they’re the only meetings on the SCSU website.

Here’s the text of President Potter’s email:

From: President’s Office Date: Mon, 11 Feb 2013
To the Campus Community

As we continue our efforts to create an anti-racist culture with a commitment to diversity and inclusion, I offer this report on the resources we have devoted to this effort over the last several years. A shared understanding of what has been invested in diversity initiatives is all the more critical as we come to grips with a significant reduction in the external resources supporting the Center for Access & Opportunity, the largest single diversity initiative on campus.

An examination of the three most recently completed fiscal years, FY 2010, FY 2011, and FY 2012, reveals that we have a multitude of activities underway that are helping us advance these initiatives. In addition, it should be noted that there are numerous efforts in all areas of campus operations that are embedded in programs which are not included in the financial data in this report. A few examples of such efforts include programs in ethnic studies, African Studies, Global Studies, and Latin American Studies in the College of Liberal Arts; dedicated advisors for students of color in the Center for Advising; and the School of Education’s targeted recruiting program for students of color who are interested in teaching careers. Though critical to our community, these activities cannot be readily identified from an analysis of expenditure data.

University funds that support diversity initiatives have been divided into three groups based on the sources of funds that support the initiatives:

• M&E (also known as University General Fund)
• Student fees
• State and private grants.

Each year, about twenty-five different programs have expended resources in the promotion of diversity at SCSU. Total expenditures across all these programs from the three major sources increased each year from $4.16M in FY 2010 to $4.24M in FY 2011 and $4.32M in FY 2012. The largest segment of programs and resources are supported from the University General Fund which comprised 96 percent of the total expenditures in FY 2010 and FY 2011 and 92 percent of the total in FY 2012. Student fee supported programs increased from 4 percent of the total expenditures in FY 2010 and FY 2011 to 6 percent of the total in FY 2012. The table on the next page provides the expenditure history in each of the programs supported by the three major fund sources during FY 2010, FY 2011, and FY 2012.These important questions weren’t answered:

• How are the program results being measured?
• What are the stakeholders getting in return for their $4.3 million?
• Could some programs be combined or eliminated?
• Could some services provided by programs like the SCSU Women’s Center be handled by Stearns County Social Services?

It’s time that these and other questions were answered.

Comments welcome at Let Freedom Ring.