The Chief
Chief activists meet with NCA
By Craig Colbrook | Staff writer
Published Tuesday, April 27, 2004
Student groups on both sides of the Chief Illiniwek issue met with representatives from the North Central Association Committee on Accreditation (NCA) Monday, in response to both the recent sit-in at the Swanlund Administration Building and the longstanding concerns the NCA has had about diversity on campus.
While the meetings were affected by the sit-in at Swanlund in mid-April, Jeff Unger, University spokesman, said the NCA, the group that decides if the University will remain an accredited institution, had planned the Monday visit before the protest and was not limiting its meetings to the Chief issue.
"The NCA meeting was a scheduled meeting. It didn't come about because of the protest," Unger said. "They've been meeting all day. As part of that process they meet with all sorts of representatives on a variety of issues."
Karen Solomon, assistant director for accreditation services with the NCA, also said the meeting had been planned before the Swanlund sit-in.
"This is a follow-up visit to our comprehensive visit in 1999," Solomon said. "Our team then had two concerns — the institute's mascot and how the mascot affects the University's diversity programs."
However, Solomon said the recent controversy has affected the nature of the meetings.
"We always anticipate that students on both sides will get to be heard," she said. "Originally, we had planned just one session for students from both sides. We actually expanded that so both groups have longer time."
Solomon stressed that the University's accreditation was not at stake.
"This is not an accreditation issue," she said. "This is to see if the institution has continued the work our previous team suggested in our last visit."
Information from Monday's meetings will be gathered by a three-person team that will write a report for the NCA within 10 weeks, Solomon said. The report will review what has happened on campus since the NCA's 1999 visit and make recommendations on how the University can continue to address those issues. NCA approval for action will take another three months after the report is written.
Solomon said she was pleased with the meetings.
"It's been a fabulous day," she said. "We're meeting with a variety of administrators, we're meeting with faculty, we're meeting with students, really trying to gather information to give the team a broad perspective."
The student groups were also pleased with the meetings. Dan Bolin, a senior in LAS and a member of the six-person pro-Chief group that met with the NCA, said he was happy with how the meetings progressed.
"I thought it went very well," Bolin said. "It was a great opportunity for people to describe to the NCA how the University has handled the Chief issue and how it's worked with many groups to build a consensus."
Kristina Ellis, spokesperson for the 10-person, anti-Chief Multi-Cultural Coalition that also met with the NCA representatives, said the fact that the meeting even took place was positive for their cause.
"We feel the fact that the NCA deemed it necessary to send a special task force here to discuss the Chief issue is powerful in and of itself," Ellis said. "We feel the representatives of the NCA were responsive to our concerns about diversity here on campus."
Bolin said his group described to the NCA steps the University had taken to foster discussions about the Chief on campus.
"Today we weren't advocates for Chief Illiniwek, we were advocates for the University of Illinois," he said. "The NCA was just here to assure the quality of education and student life here, and that quality is top-notch. We told them about numerous debates and forums on the Chief and even the student referendum. We told them education had been impacted by the issue, and provided evidence that Native Americans were actually second only to Hispanics as the safest minority group on campus according to campus crime statistics."
Ellis said her 10-person group discussed Chief Illiniwek in terms of campus diversity as a whole.
"What we discussed with them were issues of diversity on campus as it impacts African-American, Latin-American, Asian-American and most importantly Native American students on campus and how Chief Illiniwek impacts our education and how it impacts our social consciousness here on campus," she said.
While Ellis said the group was pleased with the meetings, she also said the group's work was not done.
"We know this report will go to the Board of Trustees," she said. "We're going to use this report and our other political ties to put pressure on the Board of Trustees so they can act on this issue and not be stagnant on this issue as they've been in the past."
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