The University of Tennessee rates as a pretty good state university. It likes to make headlines with winning football teams and basketball teams. It likes to be considered an above-average school. But it also is making headlines for all the wrong reasons.
On Aug. 26, Rickey Hall, the vice chancellor for “diversity” sent an email to all university students, staff and faculty, featuring a link to a webpage on “inclusive” pronoun usage. In order to ensure the so-called transgendered felt comfortable, instead of traditional prounouns, UT instructed people to use bizarre words such as “Ze, Zir and Xyr” to refer to the sexually confused.
The outrage was immediate and UT backtracked. School authorities took the webpage down and said the directive was only a “suggestion.”
Legislators for the State of Tennessee were outraged. A couple of years ago, the state threatened to cut funding over UT’s “Sex Week” program.
As promised, last week, state legislators held their promised hearing.
Republican State Sen. Todd Gardenhire complained about the fact that UT is spending $5.5 million on diversity efforts. Mr. Gardenhire told the leaders of UT, “I have a responsibility to look at the numbers” to see if the university is spending its money wisely. He finished by saying, “To me, it appears that you’re not.”
Another legislator, State Rep. John Ragan, demanded to know when enough would be enough. When would there be enough diversity so the money could be diverted to other priorities.
Of course, UT System President Joe DiPietro and UT-Knoxville President Jimmy Cheeks could not answer the question. It’s complicated they complain.
Really?
UT authorities can rattle off every statistic about UT football or basketball. They measure almost ever aspect of students’ lives but they have no metrics concerning diversity they could measure the success of diversity programs.
Of course they don’t.
What Messrs. DiPietro and Cheeks could not admit is the truth about university diversity programs. Diversity programs are nothing more than slush funds for left-wing groups. The university spends $5.5 million on diversity programs. That money has a lot of other good uses. In-state tuition is just shy of $12,000 a year. That $5.5 million could pay the tuition for almost 459 students. Assuming a compensation package of $100,000, including benefits, UT could hire 55 new professors.
There are an infinite number of uses for $5.5 million, other than wasteful diversity programs, which are nothing more than a slush fund for left-wing activists. One of the biggest problems facing American college graduates, other than the Obama Regime’s abysmal economic performance, is student loan debt. Universities could cut their costs by eliminating wasteful programs like these diversity programs.
Mr. Ragan said it best when he said, at some point you have to declare victory. “Your diversity goals should have numbers assigned to them so that you know when you’ve got to the goal line.”
The truth is these educational bureaucrats don’t want to know when they have reached the goal line. They never want to win. They do not want to succeed. All they want to do is to keep asking for more money and expecting students, parents and other taxpayers in the State of Tennessee to keep writing checks.
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