Funny, I would have expected UNC students to be more woke.
Last week The Daily Tar Heel editors chose to write a story about a UNC graduate student who did not get appointed to a town advisory board. The town receives many applications for a limited number of vacant advisory board seats, so applicants are more likely to be turned down than appointed. Periodically, we get a flurry of applications from undergrads or grad students who believe serving on a town board will make their resume stand out, or they are applying as part of a class assignment.
But last week, a grad student who did not get appointed to the Transportation and Connectivity Advisory Board took umbrage because council members appointed someone who is completely dependent on public transit, instead of the grad student who rides his bike.
A little background on the makeup of the TCAB: It has very little turnover, and everyone on it is a serious cyclist. The recommendations that come from that board tend to be homogenous and focused on what’s best for bikes.
Because the best decisions come from groups that have members with different perspectives, council would like to add some diversity to boards — people who stand on different viewing platforms to look at an issue, so the group can get a more complete understanding of the problem and possible solutions.
But the UNC student expressed his hurt and frustration on Twitter, and apparently some council members responded, and before you know it, the situation becomes newsworthy.
It seems the tension comes from disagreement over what “diversity” means. The grad student, who identified himself on the application as black, objected to council members appointing the transit-dependent applicant, who described himself as white.
If we merely decorate our advisory boards with a sprinkling of people of color or ethnicities, we have not created a diverse board. Rather, we must pay attention to lived experience, career path, passions and outside-the-box ideas.
The DTH editorial board and the disappointed applicant are our future leaders. It troubled me that they seemed to focus only on appearances. Our leaders can’t make good decisions if they’re more concerned with how things look than on solving problems. Simply making our boards look like a Benetton ad (and note that Benetton’s diversity does not extend to people who are not physically fit) won’t necessarily give us the diversity we need.
— Nancy Oates