GUEST COMMENTARY: “With All Thy Getting, Get Understanding”
Ten days ago at Utah State University, a display offended a university employee who worked some 50 feet away in the Taggart Student Center Cashier’s Office. The employee requested that a barrier be set up to shield her from the material. The display, which featured articles and photographs from popular newspapers and magazines about gay-right issues, was in a public traffic area. It was a university-authorized display sponsored by the Pride Alliance, a registered student club on our campus composed of gay students and their allies.
When university officials were alerted that a barrier had been placed, it was promptly removed.
Since then a misunderstanding has arisen that employees have been pressured to participate in diversity or “sensitivity” training on our campus. No such requirement exists; no employee has ever been pressured to participate in this kind of training. It has always been voluntary.
A colleague, who oversees the Cashier’s Office, did express a desire to make available to his employees the opportunity to participate in “diversity training.” That is all. The idea that he mandated this training is incorrect. Incidentally, this superb service, which is training on how to deal with differences, has been provided on our campus for a number of years on a voluntary basis for all USU employees through our Affirmative Action/Equal Opportunity Office. It is a free service offered to individuals, departments and groups. Similar learning opportunities are also available to the entire campus twice yearly in a President’s Diversity Forum. Since this forum began in 1994, our faculty, staff and students have been treated to dozens of thought-provoking topics ranging from hate crimes to religious differences.
We are sorry to see the misunderstandings, divisions, resentment and hurtful language that have since appeared in columns, articles, letters and e-mails based on this incident. We know many people hold strong feelings, pro and con, on the issue of sexual orientation. With this in mind, the university welcomes the dialogue this incident has precipitated because discussion leads to better understanding and hopefully to tolerance, if not acceptance of differences. We hope to continue the education process this has precipitated in future forums.
Conflict is a product of ideologies that bump up against each other. It may be as simple as a disagreement with a teenager or as complex as the current strife in the Middle East.
None of us escapes these collisions in the course of our lives. Our democracy was born from such conflict and our freedom today is partly the result of an early resolve for lasting resolutions. At the heart of such desire, we find tolerance and the ability to live together in peace through understanding. At USU, we take this principal to heart. Learning to tolerate differences and accept others for who they are grows out of knowledge and understanding of ourselves and those different from us. It is a core value in higher education and even canonized on our library entry: “And with all thy getting, get understanding.”
We do not intend to force beliefs on anyone who attends or works at our university. We seek knowledge, and in the process the removal of barriers that accompany misunderstanding. Enlightenment is the result. Consequently we do not eschew differences, but embrace them. It is why we aggressively recruit students, faculty and staff of different perspectives and different parts of our world to come and live among us. It is this diversity that enriches our lives and educational experience through increased understanding and appreciation.
Conflicts that continue at home and abroad attest to the fact we still have a long way to go. However, defining moments in our history are often found where great differences are resolved. In a world where too many barricades already exist, we hope this incident at USU becomes one such defining moment – the moment we chose to tear down barriers, not build them up.