The Office of Equal Opportunity and Diversity (OEOD) E-News
A quarterly electronic newsletter with the latest information on policies and programs related to diversity, discrimination, retaliation and sexual harassment.

The training completion deadline for academics and supervisors to complete the state-mandated sexual harassment prevention training requirement (AB1825) has been extended to FEBRUARY 29, 2008. To sign up, use the TED system. For more information, including answers to FAQs, go to www.sho.uci.edu.

Doing the Math for Diversity:

Scott E. Page, a Professor of complex systems, political science and economics at the University of Michigan has recently published a book, “The Difference: How the Power of Diversity Creates Better Groups, Firms, Schools and Societies” (Princeton University Press).  Page uses mathematical modeling and case studies to show how variety in staffing produces organizational strength.  When making predictions, a group’s errors depend in equal parts on the ability of its members to predict and their diversity: collective accuracy = average accuracy + diversity. Diverse groups of people bring to organizations more and different ways of seeing a problem and, thus, faster and better ways of solving it.  Learn more at http://press.princeton.edu/titles/8353.html.

More women than ever before are competing on college sports teams, but they remain in the minority among top administrative and coaching positions in athletics departments.  According to the latest findings in the study, "Women in Intercollegiate Sport: A Longitudinal, National Study", while opportunities to play college sports continue to expand for women, as they have consistently over the 31-year history of the study, the growth in women's representation at the highest levels of the administrative ranks has been much slower.  Twenty-one percent of college athletics directors are women.  That figure is the highest percentage since the mid-1970s but reflects an increase of only 2 percent since 1998.  More information on this study is available at http://www.womenssportsfoundation.org/binary-data/WSF_ARTICLE/pdf_file/906.pdf

OCR Requires Equal Access:

Recently four California State Universities have been audited by the Office for Civil Rights regarding accessibility of paper and electronic-based instructional materials, including the Web. The key finding was that the universities must provide equally effective access to instructional materials for individuals with disabilities. This means that access must be equal regarding timeliness, quality and availability. If a resource is available 24 hours a day, 7 days a week for individuals without disabilities then it must be available 24/7 for individuals with disabilities. Also the quality of the reading experience must be equal.  This means addressing readability problems caused by all style influences: style sheets, inline style, layout tables and images.

Don't Let Fooling Around Make a Fool of You:

An honors student at Northeastern Illinois University was disciplined for touching the breast of a classmate during a dance class.  The student admitted that he had made an “inappropriate attempt at humor” involving “physical contact of an insulting nature.”  Not only was the student found to have violated the university’s sexual harassment policy, but he was criminally prosecuted by the Cook County District Attorney’s Office.  A 2006 survey released by the American Association of University Women found that the majority of college students who engaged in sexually harassing behavior did so because they “thought it was funny.” Horseplay, pantsing, pinching and other physical behavior done in jest could create a hostile environment.  For more information on the AAUW survey, go to http://www.aauw.org/research/dtl.cfm.

Integrity Matters:

Detroit Mayor Kwame M. Kilpatrick has balanced the budget of America’s 11th largest city and led Detroit to its largest economic development boom in five decades, so why do 43% of voters think he should resign?  Kilpatrick’s popularity with voters has declined sharply in the wake of revelations that he lied under oath about an extramarital affair.  Text messages between Kilpatrick and then-chief of staff Christine Beatty indicate that the two were having an affair and lied about it during a 2007 trial over the dismissal of two Detroit police officers.  The UCI Policy on Conflicts of Interest Created By Consensual Relationships addresses potential conflict of interest situations applicable to all members of the University community and requires that any member of the University community who enters into a consensual relationship with someone over whom they have authority shall take effective steps to eliminate any potential conflict of interest.  You can review the policy at http://www.policies.uci.edu/adm/pols/700-16.html.

The UCI Police Department has partnered with the Office of Equal Opportunity and Diversity (OEOD) to train its officers on racial profiling. The workshop provided an opportunity for the Department’s officers to enhance their knowledge about this subject and stay current with the Peace Officer Standard and Training (POST) requirements. Additionally, the session increased awareness of the various ethnic, cultural and religious groups that encompass UCI’s campus community. Some of the training segments included: definition of racial profiling, legal considerations, history of civil rights, impact of racial profiling, the difference between criminal and racial profiling, and what law enforcement needs to know about issues related to Islam and Muslims.

Chancellor Drake Speaks for Diversity in Medicine

Chancellor Drake made an appearance at the Diversity in Medicine class to address health care disparities from the University of California to the global perspectives.  For more information about his talk go to http://www.chancellor.uci.edu/chancellor_dim_lecture.shtml.  For the schedule of the lecture series on Diversity in Medicine, please go to http://www.eod.uci.edu/dimsched.html.

Upcoming Events

To find diversity-related events taking place at UCI, check out the calendar at www.eod.uci.edu.  If your department is sponsoring a diversity-related event, please email information about the event to eod@uci.edu to be added to the OEOD event calendar.

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