LISTEN: Your browser does not support the audio element.

Taken from Wednesday’s edition of The Dori Monson Show.

Western Washington University president Bruce Shepard has declared that it is imperative that the school become less white.

Apparently, this is something that the president of WWU has been saying for some time now.

“I’ve said before, and I’ll say it again, that we as a faculty and staff, student body, as an administration. If we 10 years from now are as white as we are today we will have failed as a university in the commitment to meet the critical needs of our state,” Shepard has said.

There’s so much I don’t understand about this. First of all, I believe in Dr. Martin Luther King’s proclamation that we should judge people by the content of their character and not by the color of their skin.

The fact of the matter is whether it’s a college, university or basketball team, life is a meritocracy. If you’re not obsessed with race and if you are living the example and the words of Martin Luther King Jr. judge people by the content of their character not the color of their skin.

I think it is as ludicrous to declare we should be less white as it would be to say yeah we’ve got to make a historically black college less black. You’d be decried as racist if you said we’ve got to be less black, but to be less white is acceptable.

He is telling all of his white students that your presence there contributes to us being a failure as a university. I’m not exaggerating. That is exactly what he’s saying isn’t it? He said if we don’t get less white we are a failure.

So for every single white student at Western Washington University, his message is that you, by virtue of your presence, are contributing to us being a failure as a university. I think that is a horrible message for a university president to send to all of his white students and all of their families, that you are helping us fail.

What a slap in the face, what an insult.

It’s such a ridiculous proclamation.

Taken from Wednesday’s edition of The Dori Monson Show.

JS