University of Kansas Student Body President Stephonn Alcorn (left), a senior from Gardner; Vice President Gabby Naylor, a senior from Providence, R.I.; and Student Senate director of diversity and inclusion Abdoulie Njai, speak about Student Senate's diversity efforts on Wednesday, Nov. 30, 2016, at the Kansas Union.

A quasi-outside committee is being formed to review how the University of Kansas Student Senate does business, then recommend diversity and inclusion reforms that may include giving equal power to a separate multicultural student senate.

Several students — including the student body president and vice president — bristled at the idea, though they were out-voted on the matter.

“It says that the students can no longer be the active voice … that we need parents to hold our hand,” said Chance Maginness, a senior Student Senate representative and former University Senate member. “It will say to Student Senate that we are going to violate your autonomy.”

KU’s University Senate voted at its December meeting to create the University Senate Ad Hoc Committee on Diversity, Equity and Inclusion within University Governance. According to the recommendation — from the Faculty Senate Executive Committee, with a vote in favor — the nine-person committee will be chaired by a person chosen by Faculty Senate execs. Execs from each of the following groups will choose two people to serve on the committee: Multicultural Student Government, Student Senate, Staff Senate and Faculty Senate. (Multicultural Student Government currently is recognized only as a student club at KU.)

A few weeks ago, Multicultural Student Government leaders indicated they’d come to University Senate with a direct request to be recognized as a fourth governing body within University Senate, currently made up of Faculty, Student and Staff senates. But it appears that idea has been abandoned, at least for now, in favor of committee exploration.

Faculty Senate execs based their recommendation (I’m pasting the full text below, for the record, in case anyone wants to read the whole, long thing) on a portion of the Provost’s Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Advisory Group report that came out last spring and scathed the current Student Senate elections process as unfair to minorities and others outside the greek system — even suggesting that a University Senate committee might oversee student elections instead of students themselves.

“The Senate will have to take a stand to either accept, amend, or reject the proposed amendments,” the recommendation to form the committee says. “Given the current climate, sweeping the problems back under the rug with no political cost will no longer be an option.”

Sophie Wang, a Student Senate representative on University Senate, voted to create the committee, saying that although current Student Senate leaders are working hard on diversity, leaders change each year. She questioned how a group that is “not representative of the student body” could make needed changes on its own.

“You can’t really take the log out of your eye if you don’t think it’s there,” Wang said.

Brittney Oleniacz, a graduate student on Student Senate, also supported the committee.

“This isn’t parental hand-holding, this is just an outside entity looking in and saying maybe there are certain things we’re not seeing,” Oleniacz said. “There’s no harm in just getting opinions and more information on how we could better the process.”

Student Body President Stephonn Alcorn called the committee recommendation a “surprise” and lamented it was based on a report that doesn’t take into account anything his administration has put into place.

“Since April our No. 1 priority … has been shaping and molding a Student Senate that is open and accessible to all students,” Alcorn said. “Pretty much every single day is spent figuring out how we can make things better.”

“It is a little bit concerning that we’ve been doing all this work yet there was not consultation with us before this was created.”

Here’s the full recommendation:

The University Senate Ad Hoc Committee
on Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion
within University Governance

The purpose for this committee will be
to implement the April 2015
recommendation of the Provost’s
Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion
Advisory Group that the University
Senate “take special action to review
the structure of student
representation in University
governance to ensure equitable
representation between the MSG
(Multicultural Student Government) and
the current Student Senate, Student
Senate elections processes to
determine if Student Senate elections
might be best administered by a
University Senate committee comprised
of students, staff and faculty; how to
disrupt concentrations of power within
the Student Senate in order to ensure
that the Student Senate is inclusive,
representative, and allows for broad
participation from the student body;
and whether coalitions should be
abolished in the Student Senate
elections process, thus requiring
students running for Senator seats to
campaign directly with the constituent
students they seek to represent.”

Based on this review, the committee
shall consider, draft, and/or propose
amendments to the relevant governance
documents, including but not limited
to the University Senate Code and
USRRs, SSRRs, and FSRRs at the
University of Kansas, that can address
the problems the DEI Advisory Group
identified. The committee shall also
consider any alternative
recommendations for addressing the
problems identified by the DEI
Advisory Group that may come up during
its deliberations, including the
feasibility of a Multicultural Student
Government being recognized by the
University Senate and the Chancellor
as, in effect, a fourth constituent
senate within University governance.

The committee shall be comprised of
the following nine members. Two
student appointments shall be made by
the current Multicultural Student
Government Board. Two student
appointments shall be made by the
Student Senate Executive Committee.
Two staff appointments shall be made
by the Staff Senate Executive
Committee. Two faculty appointments
shall be made by the Faculty Senate
Executive Committee. A committee chair
shall be appointed by the Faculty
Senate Executive Committee. The
committee shall report to University
Senate with proposed amendments to the
relevant governance documents by April
15, 2017.

Rationale: The original proposal was
limited to “explor[ing] the
feasibility of a Multicultural Student
Government”‘s being recognized by the
University Senate and the Chancellor
as, in effect, a fourth constituent
senate within University governance.
The DEI Advisory Group’s
recommendations and concerns, however,
go beyond this idea to include several
other avenues for bringing currently
marginalized students into the centers
of decision-making. These avenues are
not mutually exclusive and could be
pursued sequentially or concurrently.
However, the realization of any one of
them will require amendments to the
Codes and RRs, so the committee is
charged with reviewing, developing,
and or and presenting these
amendments. While the approval,
staffing, scheduling and deliberation
of the committee will slow down the
legislative process, the committee
will be charged with developing
legislation, for the consideration of
SenEx and the full University Senate,
designed to remedy what the DEI
Advisory Group terms “the deep sense
of alienation” of students of color
and others from governance.
Accordingly, the Senate will have to
take a stand to either accept, amend,
or reject the proposed amendments.
Given the current climate, sweeping
the problems back under the rug with
no political cost will no longer be an
option.

*
• I’m the Journal-World’s KU and higher ed reporter. See all the newspaper’s KU coverage here. Reach me by email at sshepherd@ljworld.com, by phone at 832-7187, on Twitter @saramarieshep or via Facebook at Facebook.com/SaraShepherdNews.