The College Fix

Adding several staff members, new training

Yale is expanding its diversity office, responding to the results of an independent survey that recommended adding staff to the school’s diversity bureaucracy as well as updating its diversity policies.

The school’s president, Peter Salovey, announced this week that the university “will rename and expand the Office for Equal Opportunities and Programs, or OEOP, and hire a new deputy secretary who will help implement diversity initiatives across the University campus,” The Yale Daily News reports. 

Salovey undertook the changes following the conclusion of a report authored by Benjamin Reese, Jr., the Vice President for the Office for Institutional Equity at Duke University. Reese, Jr. was commissioned to investigate the school’s diversity apparatus following a racially charged incident on campus last year.

The report recommends, and the university will be implementing, several new policies:

As per the report’s recommendations, Yale will add staff to OEOP to ensure that the office can conduct timely investigations into harassment and discrimination complaints as well as further educate administrators and staff across the University on issues related to diversity and equity, Salovey said. Yale will also hire a new deputy secretary who will work with members of the University Cabinet to implement diversity and equity initiatives across Yale’s different schools and units…

[T]he deputy secretary will supervise specialists who will train student leaders and dean’s designees — those who receive student concerns related to alleged discrimination and advise administrators on how to promote diversity — to respond to discrimination and create a healthy, inclusive campus culture. The report also recommended establishing a group to advise senior University administrators on how to respond to sensitive incidents of harassment and discrimination.

The incident last May involved a student’s calling the police on a napping student; the former was white, while the latter was black. The incident generated a racially charged controversy on campus, with thousands calling for the expulsion of the student who had called the police.

The school launched numerous new “diversity and inclusion” initiatives following the controversy.

MORE: Spokesman says police responding to call about black student ‘followed protocols’

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