CURRENT ISSUES-DIVERSITY IN THE WORKPLACE

A CAUSE95 CURRENT ISSUES SESSION

MODERATED BY 

Marlene Gomez 
Miami-Dade Community College

Albert L. LeDuc
Miami-Dade Community College


SUMMARY
     
A small but involved group met to discuss the 
central issues of diversity in the workplace in a 
current issues forum at the CAUSE Conference in 
New Orleans. One outcome of this discussion was 
that the group will meet together by Email during 
the year, with one of our objects being to jointly 
write a paper for possible publication in 
CAUSE/EFFECT.

Participants expressed disappointment that there 
was so little attention given to this important 
issue, as evidenced by the poor turnout for the 
current issues forum on this topic for the past two 
years. The Current Issues Committee clearly feels 
that diversity i a topic worth exploration, but 
consistently gives it a low priority, perhaps 
reflecting our industry anxiety about overpowering 
issues such as rising expectations for information 
technology in an atmosphere of budget constraints.

But there is still fertile ground for thinking and 
action on the subject of diversity, as evidenced by 
the widely-ranging topics discussed at this 
meeting, a few of which are outlined below:

  * Diversity is more than just obeying the 
    dictates of law or of relating to a legal 
    definition of minorities. As our student 
    population grows more diverse, reflecting that 
    diversity in the workplace is necessary.
     
  * Diversity means recognizing and rewarding 
    talent in all forms. An open workplace leads 
    to an openness of ideas, a key to 
    organizational excellence.  

      * Unconscious prejudice comes in many forms; 
        "sometimes you ought to hire the guy with 
        the turban."

      * How much do people who are "different" have 
        to change to fit in?

  * CAUSE and its members ought to be more 
    involved in women's advocacy groups, such 
    as Women in Technology.

  * CAUSE itself has a "visually obvious" 
    under-representation of some minorities.  
    This reflects a likely under-representation 
    of certain minorities in many scientific 
    areas.

  * Perhaps professional associations such as 
    CAUSE could start an outreach program to 
    encourage entry into academic disciplines by 
    under-represented groups. There is a growing 
    realization that some disciplines are 
    intimidating.

  * CAUSE may be too busy trying to attract 
    institutional membership to actively seek 
    diversity itself. (It was noted that the CAUSE 
    office has recently initiated dialogue with 
    historically black colleges, Hispanic 
    colleges, and Native American colleges.)

  * Some research on the subject of increasing 
    participation by women in CAUSE would be 
    helpful to understand trends. "CAUSE does seem 
    to be woman-friendly."

  * An issue related to encouraging diversity is 
    sexual harassment via EMail.

  * Is affirmative action a zero-sum game?  "This 
    country is about people making the most of 
    opportunity."

Clearly this wide-ranging discussion only opened 
doors for a cautious tiptoeing about the big 
issues An abiding and limiting concern is 
"political correctness." Further, the participants 
were much more intent on how CAUSE could diversify 
its self and its conference than they were in 
trying to deal substantively with workplace 
diversity; I.e., tips other institutions could use 
in trying to bring the values of diversity into 
their own workplaces.  Even so, our proposed paper 
(working title "What is Diversity?") may be a way 
of communicating important truths to a wider 
audience in search of answers to some very 
puzzling questions.