[ Golden Gater Online - October 2, 1997 ]
Bill Blackwell II
Staff writer
"BRRRING! BRRRING! BRRRING! Your call has been forwarded to an automatic voice message system. Office for Human Relations is not available. At the tone, please record your message. BEEP."
Anyone calling the Human Relations office will have to leave a message and wait for the new staff to answer. The office is unstaffed, and its future is pending an in-house review by a presidential commission. While university president Robert Corrigan mulls over its future, the Human Relations office floats in a state of limbo.
According to a statement released Wednesday by the university's public affairs office, the former dean of Human Relations, Joe Julian, is on paid professional development leave before he starts a teaching position as a professor of sociology.
"Finally, like all top administrators, Dr. Julian served at the pleasure of the president," according to the statement.
Fred Castro, the former assistant to the dean, is assisting the president's office in a "major office project."
Julian's leave is like a faculty sabbatical. According to the president's office, it allows the administrator "to regenerate, to study, to get ready to bring fresh perspectives and energy to the classroom."
The office of Human Relations was created by Corrigan six years after a university commission recommended strategies to better group relations on campus.
The office is budgeted at $15,000 a year, not including salaries, to promote diversity and ease racial and ethnic tensions. Julian will be earning his salary -- $98,400 per academic year --
while on leave until next summer.
Privately, many faculty, staff, and students agree the office was charged with a daunting task, regardless of its funding. They say SF State's history of group relations compounds the difficulty.
The office was created after a contentious year in race relations. In 1994, the Malcolm X mural created controversy after some groups thought it contained anti-Semitic symbols and slogans. Eventually, the mural was replaced but only after it attracted national attention during a semester of rallies and protests for and against it.
Last spring groups stirred up controversy when members of the Pan Afrikan Student Union unfurled an Israeli flag with a swastika drawn in the center of the star of David. Members said the action was in protest of the Israeli government's alleged training of Peruvian troops used to rescue hostages held by guerrillas in Lima.
Corrigan recently chastised faculty for not responding to a visit last spring by Khallid Muhammad, the controversial ex-Nation of Islam speaker. Muhammad's speech was a fund-raiser for PASU, and the fliers advertising the event had a sliding scale for admission fees: $7 for students with identification and "$15 for Uncle Toms, Zionists & other white supremacists."
A commission led by Student Affairs Dean Penny Saffold was formed early this semester and aims to reevaluate the Human Relations office and determine its future.
The commission's report is expected to hit the president's desk soon. Sources close to the administration say the commission is recommending that a national search begins for a new dean of Human Relations with the kind of experience it takes to handle the job.
SF State has the only Human Relations office of any California State University, according to the statement issued by Ligeia Polidora, director of public affairs.
"We know no other like it in higher education," Polidora said.
"The president continues to support the office strongly and, in fact, is looking ahead to its further growth," she said.
According to Mark Phillips, academic senate chair and on the commission to review the Human Relations office, the commission did not focus on Julian or whether his office did a good job.
The commission was most concerned with the future, Phillips said. "Where do we go from here
and how do we strengthen the human relations office," he asked rhetorically.
[ Golden Gater - October 02, 1997 ]