UMFK criticized for lack of diversity

FORT KENT – Simply enrolling students from different cultural and ethnic backgrounds does not a diverse campus make, according to a member of the University of Maine at Fort Kent Board of Visitors.

“It is not about having those students here as demonstrations of our good hearts,” Marguerite Kisseloff said Friday during the board’s regular meeting on campus.

Rather, UMFK needs to take the lead in exposing the region to people of different ethnic backgrounds.

“It should not be a startling experience for the community when I walk through the door, as it obviously is,” Kisseloff told the other board members in unexpected comments following a discussion on the president’s role. She said that it is time the community’s center of higher education does more to promote diversity and acceptance in the area.

“When I came on the board, I suspected the reason I was here was to provide some sort of social diversity,” she said. “I have not heard much about diversity since then.”

The resident of New Mexico, who summers in Maine, is a nationally recognized graphic artist and member of the Long Island Black Artists Association.

“It has become manifestly clear to me it is important to know about other people, their cultures and how they function,” she said. “Closer to home, it is important for this community and this campus to have social exchanges with blacks, with Jews, with Asians and other cultures.”

Other board members at first didn’t respond to Kisseloff’s comments. Paul Bouchard, board chairman, eventually cut her short. “I have a role to play and that is to see that we stay on target,” he said before handing the meeting over to UMFK’s president and a presentation by a faculty member.

Kisseloff’s comments came in the wake of Interim President Don Zillman’s presentation on the status of the presidential search at UMFK. Zillman noted the new campus leader would have as his or her primary undertaking private fund raising and development.

“I’m troubled that one of the chief functions [of a new president] is fund raising,” Kisseloff said. “I know it is important, but it is troubling.”

Fort Kent, Kisseloff said, is a delightful and comfortable place to visit, and therein is the danger. “Perhaps it is too delightful and comfortable in too insular of a way,” she said. “Maybe we should rub shoulders with different people.”

The place to begin the emphasis on diversity, Kisseloff suggested, is among the faculty.

Administrators and staff were quick to defend UMFK’s commitment to diversity during the meeting. Roughly 24 of the 896 students on campus come from countries other than the United States, John Martin, campus director of enrollment management and assistant to the president, said during the meeting. An additional 24 represent distinct ethnic groups from within the United States.

The new director of residence life has been charged with developing diversity initiatives on campus, Scott Voisine, director of student activities, said during the meeting.

That push extends to the classroom, he said. “A new general education requirement for new students is a humanities seminar which focuses on diversity issues,” Voisine said.

People of the St. John Valley area are accustomed to ethnic profiling, Judy Paradis, board member, said following the statements by the UMFK administrators.

“There is a huge ethnic population here that was undervalued not long ago and subject to ethnic cleansing,” she said. “We were not allowed to speak our language, and if you were French, you were considered stupid.”

Broader changes in the manners in which people from the valley perceive different cultures are happening, albeit at a slow pace, Paradis said.

“We can’t afford to be too slow about it,” Kisseloff responded.

According to figures released by the U.S. Census, Maine’s population is 97 percent white and it is the least diverse state in the country. One in five state residents described themselves as “multiracial,” with the most common being white American Indians. One half of 1 percent of the population is black, according to the census data.

While UMFK keeps no formal records of ethnic diversity among faculty and staff, the ethnic backgrounds of more than 100 employees on campus include one Iranian, one Gambian and one American Indian, according to Jason Parent, UMFK public relations spokesman. An overwhelming majority of the staff is of Franco Acadian or Canadian heritage, he said after the meeting.

Immediately after the discussion was halted, Kisseloff took a few moments to expand on her points during an interview outside the board session.

“I would like to see a higher consciousness on the part of the chancellor, president and director of admissions,” she said. “Then work can begin on the curriculum and what it means to have the kind of society the U.S. has.

“We need to come together and learn about our common humanity,” Kisseloff said. “We have cultural differences, but we are all born, we all laugh, love and marry. People go at these things in different manners, and that is the cultural tract.”