‘That should not have happened.’ UK condemns training where students were ‘segregated’
An online diversity training session where University of Kentucky students were put into a mandatory break-out session “that segregated students by race,” should not have happened, a university spokesperson said Thursday.
The August incident, which was first publicly reported by an on-campus conservative student group and has sparked action from some Senate Republicans, is under review by the Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights, UK spokesperson Jay Blanton said.
“That should not have happened, and it will not in the future,” Blanton said of the training. “We have made clear our expectations moving forward. A community that values diversity and inclusivity is something to which we all aspire. And that means in our training having programs where everyone feels a sense of belonging, too. We fell short in meeting that expectation and value here.”
In late October, two Republican senators asked Attorney General William Barr to investigate UK, alleging the university violated the federal Civil Rights Act over the incident. Blanton said the letter to the Department of Justice happened after the university had already been notified of the DOE’s review.
Sen. Tom Cotton of Arkansas and Sen. Kelly Loeffler of Georgia — who is projected to face a run-off re-election for her seat — wrote a letter to Barr in late October asking the attorney general to investigate UK and the University of Michigan-Dearborn, alleging that both schools had created events that were “whites-only” and “non-whites-only.”
Caroline Tabler, the communications director for Cotton, said their office has not received a response from the DOJ. Blanton said the DOJ has also not contacted the university. A request for comment sent to the DOJ has not been returned.
In their letter, the senators referenced reports of the incident that were originally published in early October by the Young America’s Foundation, a national conservative student group which has a chapter on UK’s campus. The report was re-circulated among several right-leaning media outlets. The senators’ letter specifically cites an article from the Washington Free Beacon.
The student group said it had obtained an August email notifying UK resident advisers that they would be led through training on “microagressions and microinvalidations in the workplace and the harm they cause” by staff from the university’s Bias Incident Support Services.
The sessions were conducted online via Zoom, Blanton said.
As part of the training, the students would be put into two separate breakout sessions, according to one of the emails published by the student group. One session would be for students of color and the other would be for students who identified as white. Every student received invitations to both sessions, but were instructed to enter the session that they identified with.
“In those sessions, the intention is to be conversational and free flowing as opposed to structured presentations,” read one email from a UK staff member to the RAs, that was published by the student group. “Please know that these sessions will not be recorded, and the facilitators will be there to hold space for the participants to speak openly and honestly and ask questions.”
It’s unclear how the Young America’s Foundation obtained the emails, but the group said it learned of the incident through a student who contacted the group via the group’s Campus Bias Tip Line.
The training for white students was called the “White Accountability Space,” while the other for students of color was called the “Healing Space for Staff of Color,” according to the student group.
The conservative student group previously prompted an apology from the university in August 2019 after an open records request found UK employees emailing and messaging about the group as it sought to be re-registered as an official student organization.
This story was originally published November 5, 2020 at 4:11 PM.