According to USF officials, more than $15 million in budget cuts will force a “culture shift” at the university that will take the form of reduced course offerings, bigger classes and fewer adjunct professors and perhaps support staff as well. Layoffs are in the offing. A hiring freeze will only be waived when the job is “justified.”
All this, including holding classes at rented movie theaters at University Mall, is regrettable but understandable with a $1.3 billion state budget shortfall.
But there will be money — and more than $100,000 at that — available for USF’s first diversity chief. It’s not enough that universities, including USF, are already enclaves of political correctness and citadels of ethnic-racial-cultural-sexual orientation-but-not-ideologic-diversity.
USF needs a $101,000-a-year associate vice president for diversity and equal opportunity the way it needs more black basketball players. Hmmm. Actually, isn’t this part of a too-much, too-late public relations campaign to help distance USF from that embarrassing racial discrimination suit brought by all those black women’s basketball players?
Call it reparations money. Or just call it an institutionally “justified” hire.
What “culture shift”?