Enlarging the applicant pool

If, as Clopin declares in "The Hunchback of Notre Dame," "Good intentions are not enough; they've never put an onion in the soup yet," then Nassau Hall will not be serving potage d'oignon any time soon.

Chanakya Sethi's article in Monday's 'Prince' ably showed the difficulties facing University officials as they search for minority candidates for high-level administrative positions. The article pointed out that of Princeton's 18 vice presidents and senior deans, only one is a minority.

The solution the administration has taken seems to be to increase the number of all candidates that apply for senior administrative positions. As President Tilghman told the 'Prince,' "While I stand by the primary importance of hiring the best candidate, one can increase the likelihood that this will be a minority candidate by working more effectively to broaden the application pool itself."

Tilghman and the trustees have been careful to state that their intention is not to hire minorities simply because they are minorities, but rather to hire individuals who are, in a holistic sense, the best person for the job.

Many on campus have been skeptical of this formulation, believing it to be, for better or worse, a veiled policy of affirmative action. In the context of female appointees, last year the 'Prince' editorial board praised Tilghman for her advancement of women to senior positions even as it criticized her for not being open about what it thought was a clear case of gender preference.

Tilghman vigorously denied this charge, and I am inclined to believe her. There is no evidence that her appointees (half men and half women) were not each of them the best candidate for their position. Absent such evidence, it is simplistic and, frankly, sexist to assume that because the President is a woman she will naturally pursue gender-based affirmative action.

That is not to say it would necessarily be wrong for the University to adopt a more explicit policy of recruiting administrators of underrepresented sexes and races, though that would surely elicit opposition. Hostility to affirmative action remains strong. Just this week the College Republicans at Roger Williams College in Rhode Island announced a new "whites only" scholarship that asks applicants to write an essay on "why you are proud of your white heritage" and warns that candidates showing signs of "bleaching" will not be eligible. A less offensive — but perhaps more dangerous — critique came from the Supreme Court this summer, which found itself hard pressed to muster a majority for affirmative action, and even in doing so suggested that the days of the policy's constitutional legitimacy were numbered.

Regardless of whether it is due to political restraints or the administration's personal beliefs, the fact remains that the University's policy is not affirmative action but rather what might be called "purposeful recruitment" — expanding the applicant pool with the hope that more candidates of every variety will become available.

This strategy seems to be working for gender. Sethi's article shows Princeton's administration to be 50-50 male-female.

But even as the administration has pointed to the example of women with pride, it has cautioned against overly high expectations for racial diversity. An anonymous official Sethi quoted warned that "this is the sort of thing that takes a lot of time." Vice Provost Joann Mitchell pointed out that because most senior administrators are drawn from the faculty, attracting more minority professors was a prerequisite for a diverse administration. Even more broadly, Mitchell noted that if more people of color do not enroll in doctoral programs, the lack of minorities on university faculties — and thus in university administrations — will persist.

Can Princeton wait an academic generation to diversify its administration? I think not. We lose good students and teachers every year who do not consider Princeton because they are turned off by what Mitchell called the "This Side of Paradise" image. Because Princeton still has not earned a reputation for diversity, the University should be especially forceful in its efforts to recruit minorities. Minority candidates may not be numerous, but, as Sethi's survey shows, they do exist. The question is how to get them here.

The outreach efforts of President Tilghman and other officials are helpful, but we could do more. For example, we could pay our senior administrators more — much more — than anyone else. The cost of raising 18 salaries would not be much in relative terms, and a 50 percent pay raise would, I imagine, broaden the applicant pool more than any amount of wining and dining.

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Diversifying the administration is a difficult but not impossible goal. The University should be commended for its positive attitude toward the problem, but needs to realize that more methods are available to it than it currently employs. Tom Hale is a Wilson School major from Saunderstown, R.I. He can be reached at thale@princeton.edu.