Black Student Union President D’Andre Q. Curtis said the recent Title VI discrimination complaint filed against UNM reflects a reality at UNM: African Americans aren’t treated equally.
“I feel discrimination has been an issue for a while (for students),” he said. “I know I’ve had my fair share of ordeals.
When you speak out, you feel like your issues are thrown under the rug because professors aren’t as culturally sensitive to what you are going through. Being the minority in college is tough.”
Curtis said discrimination at UNM isn’t always intentional, but misunderstandings of minority culture create an environment that negatively affects student learning.
“African-American students are not only misunderstood, they are treated differently,” he said. “Caucasian students are generally more privileged, and that is not necessarily a bad thing, but what we want is fair treatment … a level playing field.”
Curtis said he doesn’t want to be seen as complaining or demanding special treatment.
“I don’t want it to be all about African-American culture, because then we are complainers,” he said. “We are not asking for special treatment, we are just asking for the rights we deserve and the things our ancestors have fought for. We aren’t asking for anything for free, we just ask for the same respect.”
UNM released an African-American/Black Climate Review Report and an Equity Report in April calling for recruitment, promotion, and retention of African-Americans, but Curtis said the documents have no real commitment behind them.
“I want to see something concrete, not just a climate report where nothing gets done,” he said. “I want something with numbers and faculty and a timeline.”
The Albuquerque chapter of the NAACP, in conjunction with the Minister’s Fellowship of Albuquerque and Vicinity, filed a complaint Nov. 10 with the Justice Department and the federal Department of Education which claims UNM is biased against African Americans.
The complaint says African Americans have been excluded from upper administration positions, that African-American women have not been placed in positions of authority within UNM and that African-American faculty face salary disparities. The complaint specifically targeted UNMH, where Bishop David C. Cooper, who helped file the complaint, said African-American doctors, teachers and nurses were forced to work in a hostile environment.
In a statement issued jointly by UNM President David Schmidly and Health Sciences Center Chancellor Paul Roth on Tuesday, the administration denied the accusations of discrimination.
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“We do not discriminate against African Americans,” it said. “We do not discriminate against any individual or group based on race, religion, sexual orientation, age, gender or ability.”
Schmidly has refused to comment on the complaint since he released statement.
Faculty Senate President Tim Ross said he isn’t aware of any discrimination.
“In my direct observations and in anything reported to me as the Faculty Senate President, I had not heard anything about unfair treatment until I read the news reports on this matter over a week ago,” he said. “In my 25 years at UNM, I have not seen any unfair or misdirected behaviors toward African Americans.”
Ross said attracting minority professors and administrators at UNM is a difficult task.
“It is still not easy to get faculty from various underrepresented groups to come to UNM. … not many individuals from these groups stay in school long enough to earn the terminal degree in their fields, usually a PhD,” he said. “Second, when we do identify faculty of color or female faculty in fields like engineering or the hard sciences, where the numbers are really scant, we have to compete on a national level to get them to come to UNM. We struggle to match the salaries or the ‘start-up packages’ that other more affluent schools can provide.”
ASUNM President Jaymie Roybal said she is not sure if the claims are true, but said promoting and retaining individuals from multiple cultural backgrounds is vital to education at UNM.
“Having a diverse staff is important for a number of reasons: It’s important for students, it’s important for staff and it’s important for the over-arching University environment,” she said.
