Responding to accusations that it has failed to encourage a sufficiently diverse campus community, the University has hired Cheri Lawson and Robert Martinez to recruit more minority employees and address accusations of on-campus harassment.
Their new positions comply with recommendations from the Diversity Working Group, which President Tilghman formed in 2004 to focus on recruiting more minority employees. The working group is co-chaired by Vice President for Campus Life Janet Dickerson and Executive Vice President Mark Burstein.
"Princeton's certainly a much more diverse institution now than it was when I was here as a student, but that doesn't mean we can't continue to improve on that," said Vice President and Secretary Bob Durkee '69, a member of the working group.
The group concluded its work over the summer, leaving secretary Terri Reed and her colleagues to implement its proposals. Reed is also the vice provost for institutional equity and diversity.
"The group agreed early that we needed to focus our efforts on more than representation and making sure that individuals feel welcome," Reed said.
The group concluded that expanding the number of administrators who focus on diversity was a necessary next step.
As director for equal opportunity programs, Lawson will help respond to campus accusations of hostility toward women and minority groups. "My primary focus will be on streamlining how the administration responds to internal complaints of harassment and discrimination," Lawson said in an email.
Lawson's other role will involve publicizing the University's "equal opportunity and other diversity-related policies," she said, adding that she plans to create a website to showcase these efforts.
Some say her work in this area is badly needed. Despite the University's recent attempts to adapt faculty, administrators and students to a less homogeneous campus community, there have been accusations that these policies have not been adequately publicized.
"The University on some fronts has been hailed for its diversity policies, but in essence I believe that the University could market [its] devotion to diversity more," Black Student Union communications director Rafael Telahun '10 said.
While Lawson works on publicity, Martinez, who will serve as manager of diversity and inclusion, will strive to draw more minority employees to campus. To reach this goal, Martinez will "participate in some of the very creative work ... to attract a more diverse pool of applicants for the jobs that become available at the University," he said in an email.
Another one of his tasks will be to foster cooperation between student groups representing different ethnicities. "One method of [doing] that has been the policy of the purse," Telahun said, citing the need to fund programs like Dialogue@Princeton that bring together student groups representing different cultures.
Despite Lawson's and Martinez's new roles, administrators stressed that the two posts are a logical continuation of previous programs. Recent work to promote diversity on campus has been "more evolutionary than a departure from previous practices," Durkee said.
"This is a matter of building on previous efforts," Durkee added. "It is one of a series of steps over a long period of time."
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