At Bakersfield College, some minority students believe that the BC faculty and employees do not fairly and accurately represent their own ethnicity.
SGA president John Lopez said that based on the fall 2007 BC employment ethnicity statistics, “We definitely need to increase the numbers of African-American employees.”
“I don’t want to advocate diversity for diversity’s sake,” said Lopez. “I also don’t believe that a certain race has better teachers than another.
“Is the goal of the administration to balance it out, to be ethnically diverse, or is it to simply be a reflection of the community?” Lopez asked.
Outgoing BC President William Andrews said, “The goal that any community college has is to try to create a faculty whose ethnic and gender diversity roughly matches that of the student population being served.
“Try as hard as I might, I know that I cannot understand the issues of a Latino who was raised in Bakersfield,” said Andrews. “I can read, and I can empathize, but I don’t really understand that. A Latino faculty member would have a better opportunity to understand the cultural issues that that Latino student brings to the classroom.”
Ernie Tichenor, a BC political science adjunct and president of the board of trustees at College of the Canyons, said that he believes it’s important to “provide a perspective that others may not see or may not have been exposed to.
“It is wise to provide different viewpoints and differences in thought,” said Tichenor. “The best way to provide that for the students is to expose them to as many different viewpoints and cultural issues as possible. And the best way to do that is really through a diversity of individuals.”
Returning BC student Thomas Johnson, a criminal justice major, said that he believes that the most qualified person for the job should be the one that’s hired but that “all things beings equal, you give a nod to the person with a more diverse background because they bring more to the table. That is a qualification.”
According to Johnson, although he could not recall for certain whether or not he has ever had a black professor at BC aside from one of his criminal justice professors, he didn’t think he had.
Andrews said that they are always looking for the most qualified person.
At BC, a committee reviews the applicants and verifies that the applicants are qualified for the job they are applying for. From that pool of applicants, two to five finalists are selected by the committee based on their qualifications and then present their top choices to Andrews. He then interviews them himself and decides whom he thinks is the right person for the job.
“At that point, I have an opportunity to pick out the best person in the group. It will be the one whom I think adds to the diversity of the department, who brings special skills, and who’s the right person at the right time for what we need in the department,” said Andrews. “There are multiple things you look for. Number one, I want to look for someone who wants to be here, that they’re not just applying, and just want a job.
“I always ask them what the climate’s like, and if they don’t tell me that it’s hot here, then I know that they haven’t looked at us because that’s really important.”
Andrews said that he has heard of candidates who have gotten off an airplane in 112 degree heat, walked into the airport, called the college, and said, “No,” then turned around and went home.
According to Lopez, who said that he understands that it is hard to diversify, to force it to balance out would mean that in some places they would have to hire the entire minority population in that city just to meet an equal diversity requirement.
Andrews said, “If you are a well-qualified non-Anglo looking for a position in higher education as a faculty member . if you are good at what you are doing, you can basically choose where you want to live.
“You know that you are in demand because you are non-Anglo.
“One of the realities of our business is that college professors, the qualified people in their field, tend to be predominately Anglo. The population of faculty out there is not as diverse as we’d like it to be.”