Facing down big brother

A new report printed in the Indianapolis Star this week showed IU spends less than 2.5 percent of its budget with minority-owned firms. \nA state law that took effect mid-summer requires all state-funded universities, including IU, to report the money they spend with minority- and female-owned businesses. But the law also "monitors" and "encourages" IU to meet a government-driven quota of available firms in the Bloomington area laid out by a study.\nWhile the editorial board at the Indiana Daily Student agrees with the intentions behind this law, we inherently disagree with its means and purpose. \nWhen IU spends money with firms, it contracts outside businesses to do jobs like moving furniture from point A to point B, among many other things. The University celebrates the idea of diversity, and we wholeheartedly agree a diverse campus is beneficial for everyone. But we wonder how hiring minority- and female-owned firms contributes to IU's diversity, especially since the focus should be on the student body and faculty.\nIU, as a business institution and publicly-funded school, under all circumstances should pick the lowest bidder when considering contracts. This practice automatically excludes many small businesses, where the most minority and female ownership exists. \nThe University budget is tight right now, and we, as students, don't care who is moving furniture from Ballantine to the Kelley School. If IU put forth more of an effort to hire these businesses, it would be spending extra money.\nThis extra money has much more potential in other areas of promoting and increasing diversity. It could be spent on recruiting more minority students or bringing a diverse group of speakers to campus. \nContracting more minority-owned businesses might be a good thing for the firms themselves and for the state. But IU can produce these same effects by making college more affordable and attractive for minority students, thus graduating more of a potential for minority business owners in Indiana. \nWe also disagree with the quota program. The fact that 26 percent of businesses in Indiana are female-owned is just a statistic. Does that mean these firms are best suited for the job? We applaud the law's intended outcome of creating more business for minority and female-owned firms, but we discourage a quota system that will, indirectly, just make IU students have to pay more. \nThe state can "monitor" IU all it wants, but forcing it to spend needless amounts of extra money on contracts isn't fair during tight-budgeted times. The state will just end up losing more students at the University -- the prime place to foster and nuture its diversity -- and its future.