The following email was sent by President Frohnmayer on Friday 21 April to the members of the FAC and the Senate Executive Committee. It was a copy of an email sent to the Diversity Interns giving an update.

Dear FAC Members and Senate Exec:

I thought you might be interested in this informal message that I just sent to the interns who worked so hard last summer on issues of diversity and community.

Best regards, Dave


Date: Thu, 20 Apr 2000 17:36:29 -0700
From: pres@oregon.uoregon.edu
Subject: update on diversity initiatives

April 20, 2000

Dear Diversity Interns,

Almost a year has passed since I met in the lobby of Johnson Hall with a group of students who were deeply concerned about an act of intolerance and racism on our campus. We agreed that we, as a University, needed to sharpen our focus on our agenda to diversify our institution, and we established the framework for the important work for which you provided leadership throughout last summer.

Because many of you have graduated and gone on to other pursuits, I want to take this opportunity to update you on our progress and to identify further challenges for our work together. Increased diversity and tolerance on our campus continues to be a central agenda for us. This centrality is underscored by the articulate vision of speakers such as Edward Olmos, Bobby Seal, Tim Wise, and Frances Fox Piven that our institution invited here this spring.

In the past eleven months we have been working hard. This work began with the productive ten weeks that you labored on our behalf and has continued as the agenda permeates our University. I would like to list some of the areas of success and then convey some of my sense of "next steps."

I will also update you on some events for these next two months. In late May, I assemble formally my President's Advisory Board for the University of Oregon Native American Initiative. This Board, consisting of the chairs of all nine federally recognized tribes of Oregon, as well as national leaders on Native issues, will provide even sharper focus to our work with Native peoples and will guide us in our efforts to build the new Many Nations Longhouse. (By the way, we now have a very large anonymous challenge gift that gives momentum to our fundraising efforts for that project.)

In June, we close the year with Marian Wright Edelman as our commencement speaker and as the recipient of our fourth honorary doctorate in the last fifty years. Ms. Edelman's civil rights work and her leadership of the Children's Defense Fund make her an ideal recipient and a wonderful focus of our commencement gathering.

In late June, the Office of Multicultural Affairs will move to new space on the first floor of Oregon Hall, resulting in greater visibility and outreach from this office for all students learning about and supporting diversity and multiculturalism.

I am proud of the work that you did and the follow-up that we have put in place. I am simultaneously reminded of how far we have to go. As Christopher Edley stated in his remarks to the American Council on Education last November, "Working on diversity is not rocket science.....it is much harder." It is, indeed, hard work because it involves social change, but together we are making progress; therefore, I thank you.

Please feel free to contact me directly at any time to keep in touch with our continuing work. I wish each of you individually -- in whatever pursuits you are now engaged -- the very best.

Sincerely, Dave Frohnmayer President University of Oregon (541) 346-3036 FAX (541) 346-3017 pres@oregon.uoregon.edu


MESSAGE ENDS
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