Last July, former Texas A&M president Michael Young announced the formation of the diversity, equity, and inclusion commission.
Monday afternoon, the board of regents accepted the report from the 45 member committee.
Click HERE to read and download Texas A&M’s executive summary of the commission report.
The commission, composed of current and former students, faculty, and staff members, was charged to address racial intolerance, historical representations, and campus climate and culture.
The 113 page report generated one conclusion, “that this report be only the beginning of the Aggie community’s shared responsibility and commitment to continued conversations, forward progress, and renewed commitment to diversity, equity and inclusion for all Aggies.”
Commission members heard from more than 450 individual participants, and those participating in listening sessions, and receiving comments via e-mail, a website, letters, and phone calls.
The report stated “the existence of rigid stereotypes surrounding the Aggie definition, leading some individuals on today’s campus (especially those from marginalized groups) to find the historical identity of “Who is an Aggie” to be limiting and not reflective of their experience.”
Interim president John Junkins told the regents “In my 35 years here has been a time of incredible growth. The intensity of the core value and uniformity of the core value buy-in has decayed somewhat, going from half our size to the current size. The diversity of the student body albeit not changing so much percentage wise, we are just a larger place. And it’s harder to feel included. It doesn’t matter what your pigmentation or chromosome is, it’s just a big place.”
The regents approved the interim president’s recommendations to spend $24.75 million dollars over the next four years to expand five existing academic programs and add two new projects. The regents also approved a recommendation that did not have a price tag to “document and communicate the success of our many former students of color.” A table showing the eight line items is at the bottom of this story.
Dr. Junkins told the regents “The largest area that we need to improve, is to improve the demography by increasing the fraction of the African-American students that we are attracting from Texas and we also want to improve the demography of the faculty by attracting more outstanding faculty who are from underrepresented groups and especially African-Americans.”
Junkins also said “Everything we described here is not…underlined, italic, bold…anything like a quota system. It is a meritocracy. We’re trying to increase the competition by attracting stellar people at all levels, including the faculty. It is a selective process. These will be very meritorious people that we are bringing here.”
As part of the regents unanimous support of Dr. Junkins’ recommendations, the board also issued a statement that says in part “Based on what we have learned from the Commission’s report, we believe we cannot achieve unity of pride and purpose for all Aggies unless we strive to ensure no Aggie is disrespected, mistreated, or excluded. If there are students, faculty, staff and former students who believe we fail to include them in the Aggie family, we are not yet what we aspire to be.”
Click HERE to read and download the statement from the Texas A&M system board of regents.
Texas A&M’s Association of Former Students and the Texas A&M Foundation issued a joint statement to “support and endorse the actions today of our university governance and leadership”.
Click below for comments from Texas A&M interim president John Junkins during the January 25, 2021 meeting of the Texas A&M system board of regents.
Click below for comments during the January 25, 2021 meeting of the Texas A&M system board of regents from commission co-chairs Dr. Jimmy Williams and Dr. John Hurtado.
Click below for comments during the January 25, 2021 meeting of the Texas A&M system board of regents following the commission’s presentation from board chair and commission member Elaine Mendoza and fellow regents and commission member Bill Mahomes.
Click below for comments during the January 25, 2021 meeting of the Texas A&M system board of regents from Texas A&M system chancellor John Sharp, followed by comments from regents chair and commission member Elaine Mendoza and regents vice-chair Tim Leach.
