February 24, 2004, 9:04 a.m.
Where Diversity Meets Debauchery
Seeing CU.

By Peter Wood

A few weeks ago I visited Colorado University Boulder to give a talk on "diversity." CU Boulder is saturated with diversity chatter; it has its full complement of diversiphile administrators; and the campus culture has elevated the ideal of "diversity" into a principle that trumps everything else: intellectual freedom, fairness in distribution of financial aid, and a cogent curriculum. In other words, Boulder was a good place to bring my message that "diversity" is really a doctrine that divides and stultifies.

But the timing wasn't great: The football scandal that was about to engulf CU Boulder had just broken. The district attorney was taking depositions in a lawsuit that, among other things, alleged that the CU football program had recruited players by taking them to wild parties and arranging for them to have sex with teenage girls. CU president Elizabeth Hoffman was busy assuring everyone in sight that she would get to the bottom of the complaints.

The scandal has, of course, now blown up into something even more serious. Katie Hnida, a 22-year-old former CU student who had been a place kicker for the football team, says she was raped by a teammate. Coach Gary Barnett, confronted with the allegation, responded by saying she a lousy place kicker: "Katie was awful. You know what guys do, they respect your ability...Katie was not only a girl, she was terrible." Five other women have now come forward to say they were also raped by CU football players. President Hoffman has put Coach Barnett on paid leave.

Arrogant coaches, sexual pandering to players, and saloon-style ethics are nothing new to college sports but, as I watch this story unfold at CU, I have to wonder. How does this happen on a campus on which day and night students, faculty members, and administrators drink deep from the cup of "diversity?" The diversity doctrine is ostensibly about sensitivity and respect for others, and diversiphiles endlessly preen themselves on their ethical superiority to the unenlightened. Does the Colorado University Boulder variant of diversity make special room for a culture of debauchery among jocks?

I have no doubt that President Hoffman and other CU administrators see no connection whatsoever between these two domains of campus life. They see themselves as fearless champions of diversity on one hand and haplessly blindsided by the coaches on the other hand. Big-time college sports after all is a force all its own and most college presidents prudently keep their distance and hope for the best. Besides, CU Boulder has been very busy fending off complaints from legislators stirred up by David Horowitz's campaign for an "Academic Bill of Rights."

At the very least, however, the CU football scandal demonstrates how ethically shallow the diversity doctrine really is. The "respect" for other people it fosters on campus stops with the officially recognized identity groups. Funding for identity politics at CU is exceptionally generous, and everyone knows how to play the grievance game. But as for a more encompassing sense of treating other people decently, well that's just not what the exquisite pseudo-ethics of diversity are all about.

Is there a lesson beyond the sleepy complacency of the CU Boulder administrators who were too busy refining the diversity message to notice what else was going on their campus? I suggest this: that legislators who want state college and university sports to be genuinely character building had better be prepared to look past the clichés and platitudes of campus administrators who try to calm every worry with the vacuous answer that they stand for the highest ethical standards and diversity. Nobody can stand for both.

— Peter Wood, a professor of anthropology at Boston University, is the author of Diversity: The Invention of A Concept.

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