
                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: THURSDAY, March 7, 1991                   TAG: 9103070450
SECTION: VIRGINIA                    PAGE: B-3   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: Associated Press
DATELINE: FARMVILLE                                LENGTH: Medium

EDUCATION CHIEF: PROMOTING DIVERSITY RISKS SEGREGATION

In an effort to promote cultural diversity, many Virginia colleges risk creating a "modern-day version of `separate but equal' " on campuses, state Secretary of Education James Dyke says.

"We have to be able to see the difference between respecting diversity, promoting self-pride and fostering alienation," Dyke told Longwood College students Tuesday. "By channeling people into narrow ethnic or lifestyle categories we are, in fact, forcing people to classify themselves by those very categories. Isn't that just another form of segregation?"

Dyke said houses for African-American, Latin American and Asian-American students are cropping up on Virginia campuses, and some students can spend most of their out-of-class time at those facilities.

"In fact, many of these groups are now splintering even further: The East Asian-American Alliance, Gay Men of Color, Jewish Students Opposed to Hillel," Dyke said.

Some students "can pass directly into and out of college while staying in these ghettos . . . without ever living in an integrated dormitory," he said.

"To accept this voluntary resegregation as somehow required in order to be free is to perform what I refer to as an intellectual moonwalk - looking ahead, but walking backwards," Dyke said.

Dyke, speaking as part of Longwood's Civility Week program, challenged students to change the tenor of campus "from suspicion to trust."

The week of events at Longwood was prompted by Gov. Douglas Wilder, who in January urged the state's colleges to develop plans to make their campuses more civil places.

Repeating comments by Wilder, Dyke said the state wants to avoid pressuring anyone to be "politically correct."

"In striving for the promotion of civility and diversity, I think it is important that we stay forever on guard against the creation of any entity or policy resembling thought police," Dyke said.

"It is not our mission to insist that members of the university community are, to use the jargon of the hour, `politically correct.' Our fundamental obligation is to ensure that they are politically free."

by CNB