Casting Diversity In Stone

The U.S. Supreme Court may have tried to derail efforts by The University of Texas at Austin to make their law school more ethnically diverse. However, the Diversity Police at UT is moving ahead to make the statues on their campus more diverse. Yep, according to the Austin American-Statesman, the university has launched as effort to diversify their outdoor statuary.

This effort is very important as the Statesman explains:

The university, which is trying to expand the number of minority students, subsequently convened a task force on racial respect, and that led to the appointment earlier this year of Gregory Vincent as the school's first vice provost for inclusion and cross-cultural effectiveness.

I'm not sure how much the job of, "first vice provost for inclusion and cross-cultural effectiveness" pays. But I'm pretty sure UT could pay me half what their paying Mr. Vincent, and it would still be a bump in income for me.

Of course, the biggest problem with the current statues on campus are that some of them were leaders in the confederacy. So in response UT is doing two things. First, the are putting up signs apologizing for having the offending statues of confererate leaders on campus. Second, they have come up with a plan to add statues of Barbara Jordan and Cesar Chavez to the mix of statues, to be more, "diverse." Okay, if the lesbians on campus need a statue to feel more included, I'd say Barbara Jordan was a good choice. Not only did Ms. Jordan serve the state in numerous public offices, she was a professor at UT as well.

But Cesar Chavez? Come on. Could we not find a Hispanic that, oh, let's say actually did something of note in Texas? Does walking by the image of a California union organizer (and not a very successful one at that) really inspire Hispanic students on campus?