Editorial: Hackney: 'Racism Stops Here'

If President Hackney is at all concerned about providing "equal opportunity" to all workers at the University, he should tackle these charges head on. The complaints leveled by the African-American Association for Faculty, Staff and Administrators should be cause for great concern. Hackney should consider the charge of discrimination in University Laboratory Animal Resources especially damning in light of the racism shake-up in that department's forerunner six years ago. The fact that charges of discrimination continue to reverberate against ULAR should be taken as a sign that racism still runs through the University's corporate culture. While no single person can erase pay inequities or increase the number of minority faculty members overnight, Hackney has the moral and the temporal authority to ensure minorities at the University are provided with every opportunity afforded to any other worker. Policy statements, committee investigations and bland, unreadable reports on the state of minorities at the University mean nothing unless the chief executive of the institution takes the lead. We hope Hackney will meet with representatives of the AAA soon to discuss their complaints. Unless and until Hackney clearly and repeatedly states that it is his goal to see "equal opportunity in the University workplace" before he retires, no amount of grass-roots organizing will overcome the discriminatory corporate culture of the University.

Please note All comments are eligible for publication in The Daily Pennsylvanian.