IUP President Michael Driscoll says he and the university’s senior leadership team met twice last week with “a small group of concerned students” who “threatened to go public and reveal IUP’s secrets” if he did not agree to their demands to not allow so-called “hate groups” to speak at or receive support from IUP. Driscoll responded that, as he has said previously, there is no place for hate at IUP, but that as a public university, IUP must follow the U.S. Constitution’s guarantee to the right of free speech, as well as federal and state law.
Driscoll says he doesn’t think the challenges that IUP faces are secret anyway. He admits the university has a long way to go, noting racism especially, but says they are making progress. He cites the university’s Diversity Action Plan, which was developed with involvement from across the IUP community, and says ongoing student concerns reinforce the need to move ahead with the plan’s most urgent recommendations.
As outlined in Driscoll’s mid-semester briefing last month, the plans’ next steps are to have a small group work this summer to put in place a system for reporting and responding to incidents for the fall semester; implementing next spring a task force’s recommendations for resolving disputes before resorting to “legalistic, adversarial” measures; establishing a central office to lead IUP’s efforts to become more diverse and inclusive; and the drafting of an “IUP Pledge” that reinforces that there is no place for hate at IUP.
