At its first meeting (August 29) the new Faculty Senate adopted bylaws that include a provision for the special election of a minority faculty member if none is elected in the normal course of events.

Why this special concern for minority representation? Apparently the Senate feels that, because the minority community at NIU is socially and culturally different from the rest of us, something must be done to ensure that its special needs and concerns are given voice in the senate.

But not all minority-group members are socially and culturally different in any way that need concern the senate. It is distressing to see the leaders of our university engage in such stereotyping of minorities.

Even worse, the stereotype used by the Senate is ludicrously inappropriate. “The minority community” is a very heterogeneous collection of Blacks, Hispanics, Asians, American Indians, etc.

And each of these groups is itself divisible into native U.S. citizens, naturalized U.S. citizens and foreigners. To treat the whole collection as if it were a homogeneous unit, with a common culture and common ideas about how NIU should be run, is silly.

As the senate adopted this racial quota, I looked around the room with a new interest in my colleagues’ racial characteristics. (One of the effects of racial quotas—even where, as here, they are of little practical importance—is to make everyone much more concerned with race.)

I saw no Blacks, no one who looked Hispanic (and I see no Spanish surnames on the list of senate members), and perhaps two Asians. (There are a couple of other senators with Arabic names, but I suspect that—for political reasons—they do not qualify as “Asians.”)

So we do, after all, have “minority” representation on the Senate; all is well! How ridiculous! Are these two foreign-born Asian men somehow “representing” the American Blacks, Hispanics and American Indians at NIU? Did they realize when they were elected to the Senate they would bear this responsibility? Is it appropriate to burden them with it?

The worst thing about racial stereotyping and quotas is that they take us even farther from the ideal of a race-blind community.

It may be utopian to think we will ever achieve that in society at large; but a university, with its shared commitment to greater abstractions such as learning and scholarship, is an ideal setting for genuine community across diverse races and cultures.

Racial quotas imposed by the authorities undermine that possibility, enforcing race-consciousness instead. I hope the Faculty Senate will see fit to reverse itself on this important matter.

James L. Hudson

Associate Professor and member of the Faculty Senate