Who’s a minority?

Like everyone else on Valparaiso University’s student senate, Tia Kolasa was elected by her peers, but she was recently removed from her seat by college officials. As an openly gay student, Kolasa was elected to the minority designated seat. However, officials have decided that “minority” should apply only to racial and ethnic minorities.

In the fall of 2007, the student body removed such language from the minority seat’s description, leaving the term “minority” undefined. But rather than using the opportunity to think critically on minority issues, officials first stripped Kolasa of her seat and then eliminated minority-designated seating altogether.

There are many issues at work here. If school officials were concerned about the term “minority” becoming too inclusive, they should have redefined the requirement for the next round of elections. Removing Kolasa after she had already been serving for several weeks amounts to little more than public humiliation and was completely unnecessary.

It seems they might have realized the clumsiness of their response, and in an attempt to clean up the issue in a hurry, amended the bylaws to include no minority-designated seats. Again, this is certainly a topic worth exploring, but that exploration could have been done on a timetable more respectful to Kolasa and all minority students.

Maybe minority-designated seats aren’t a good thing, as many critics allege. Regardless, how to best represent all students is certainly a challenge for all universities.

In spite of this, we say Valparaiso officials could have better handled this particular incident.