Stay tuned for more whitesplainations. . . .

"Are we going blame her that so few minorities apply for the professor positions in the first place?"
Yes
" Should we point the figure at her because so few minority students are applying and attending 4 year universities?"
Yes
This is just recruiting 101. It is her obligation to do all this. The systemic aspect of the problem is that, another aspect. So, until systemic problems are solved, a university has no obligation to change?

Great that you guys are giving opportunity for different points of view to be expressed. But that text was terribly written and even more terribly argued. A farrago of half baked ideas and non sequiturs.

@2 what the fuck does the dean have to do with who is applying for professorships and 4 year universities

It's a Jesuit school. It's already a pretty white-folks school. Why is it this specific administrator's fault?

Angry and fucking ignorant every single time, you dumbass self-righteous babies...

The letter writer referenced in this article has learned a really important part of the philosophy of Jesuits. Go out into the world and do good. Sacrifice yourself and work for the underprivileged and the forgotten. That's the really great part of SU's culture. It shouldn't be forgotten in all this controversy.

What's this? A measured and rational approach to a thorny and convoluted issue?

I demand the removal of this post from the slog.

Maybe more minorities need to work harder in school, get the grades needed to get into what we are now calling "white colleges" finish their bachelor's degree, pursue their master's and then earn their doctorates? Or is that asking too much?

@2 you read that letter like you read Gregory's book. As is you didn't read either.

The letter writer placed herself in context - being a student at the school, knowing the professor AND identifying personally with some of the protestors - while also taking into account the complexity and unknowns of the situation.

That letter was a breath of reason in sea of Internet mob hysteria. So of course it will be ignored.

Being pointlessly angry and ruining the life of someone you can paint in your head as a cartoon racist is much more fun.

@6: delet this

We need to remember that these are 19-21 year olds doing the occupying . it's a hell of a lot easier to crash the deans office, listing to music and eating pizza then going to low income communities and trying to make an actual change in the educational development of people of color. Making a judgment call here but I doubt that a majority of these students have done limited social outreach to bring there view points to the world outside of there private higher education. I think it's crazy that universities are moving towards sheltering students from "micro aggressions" rather that confronting them face on. I believe this to be a West coast liberal phenomenon. I highly doubt this is happening in new York city (again making an assumption). Also for the students to request a sweeping reform to curriculum to essentially discredit and ignore the classics is wrong. Adding classes to promote diversity is great but these kids gotta wake up to the real world that has been created and defined by European colonialism. If find it completely ignorant and shocking that you could have a view that because an old white guy said it it must be wrong because of when he said it. The real world is gonna eat these kids up and spit them out if they don't see the bigger picture. Ahh but what do I know I'm a 40 year old white guy that went to the Seattle u school of business not education so I guess I'm the enemy here.

There their they're stupid auto correct

@7 It sounds like you need to do some research on how our current education system makes it much easier for white people to do well in school and is failing students of color. Here are just a few articles to help your uninformed statement. Why should we put the responsibility on young people to just "work harder" when it's our responsibility as educators to teach them and help them to do well. I'd say they're working pretty damn hard already, but we're failing them.

http://www.dailydot.com/opinion/racism-a…
http://thinkprogress.org/education/2014/…
http://www.discoverthenetworks.org/viewS…

Please join the many SU/MRC alumni that support Dean Kelly. https://www.change.org/p/seattle-univers…

I remember wanting to read Sandman comics when I was in college.

But when you sign up for British Literature I, they don't teach Neil Gaiman.

So I went to the public library and read Sandman comics on my own. I really enjoyed them.

College is not there to fill your head with specific authors and works. College is there to teach you how to learn things on your own, be your own scholar so you DON'T need to depend on other people and their ideas of what is best to read. You blaze your own trail, which is what academia is supposed to be all about.

It is sad that these students do not feel they can do so, or where not prepared by their college enough to do so.

Hang-on.

The assertion is there is a Grand White Conspiracy, coordinated to suppress black educational opportunity, as so marginalize their opportunity for growth and prosperity. And that this demonic scheme is effectively institutionalized and efficient in its results, nationwide, in every city and town government and school district where evil whitey has chosen to assert this anti-achievement plan.

(That would be fucking amazing, because wouldn't that appear to mean that white government and institutions are only capable of doing the most COMPLEX things really well. But can't do the basic shit at all.)

Or, wouldn't Occam's Razor be instructive.

Maybe black academic achievement is simply a matter of trying to get along, instead of rebelling. Of working harder on and for yourself, instead of fixing blame to others. Of building your own worth, instead of trying to carry the baggage of people who simply share your skin color. Of looking up and out educationally, instead of inwards and backwards – culturally.

Weird, because when you see young African Americans who actually DO these things, they do amazingly well in America, enjoying prosperity and abundant opportunity. Like everyone else. Particularly labeled 'people of color' – Asians.

But don't let us stop you. Keep going with your complex racial theories and rationalizations. Failure breathing the exhaust fumes of others' failure is unlikely to stimulate intellectual growth.

Proud of you, Maria.

Pitchforks and torches directed at the Dean of MRC? If it doesn't gel, it isn't aspic. And, brother, this ain't gelling.

I find it irritating that West Coast liberalism doesn't ask the reflective question: Is this the face of contemporary liberal progression?

Is the face of a forcibly deposed, hard-working, highly educated, Woman (mother?), who has stared down countless glass ceilings in her development in academia AND as a person, really the face of a modern Civil Rights protest? Should that be a collective goal of liberal individuals, to undermine and demean somebody else who, maybe, could instead attend a weekend workshop on diversity training, or just go out for coffee with the offended party to hash it out?

These kids should get out and see the world - see what ordinary hard working people have to endure in developing countries that are forced into committing horrible atrocities against their own kin just to stroke the American penis for a rise in their GDP. I've got an apartment in Istanbul anyone is welcome to visit, if you're interested in having your Western self-righteousness checked... but I'll ask you leave your cell phone behind, just to actually experience life a little better. Sincere offer, by the bye.

Stop SnapChatting your bullshit protest with your backpacks closed and faces stuffed with pizza (yes, I can see you, redhead with the Mickey Mouse tee, all the way over here). Get hip to solving the re-zoning and gentrification that has pushed 90% of Seattle's communities of poverty into neighbouring counties, and stop attacking safe targets like teachers on Cap Hill.