Hillsdale College President
Larry Arnn Under Fire For Calling Minority Students 'Dark Ones'
The Huffington Post | By Rebecca Klein Posted: 08/01/2013 8:38 pm
EDT | Updated: 08/02/13 Hillsdale College President Larry
Arnn described minority students as "dark ones" during a state
legislature subcommittee hearing regarding the adoption of Common Core State
Standards. While testifying against the
Common Core, which have been adopted in more than 40 states in an effort to
standardize education, Arnn said he took issue with the idea of government
interfering with educational institutions and went on to describe a letter he
had received from the Department of Education shortly after becoming president
at Hillsdale. The letter, he told the committee, said his college "violated
the standards for diversity because we didn't have enough dark ones, I guess,
is what they meant." According to Michigan-focused
news site MLive, lawmakers at the meeting immediately criticized Arnn for using
“offensive” language, but he did not apologize. Instead, Arnn went on to say: “The
State of Michigan sent a group of people down to my campus, with clipboards ...
to look at the colors of people’s faces and write down what they saw. We don’t
keep records of that information. What were they looking for besides dark ones?" A Michigan Department of
Education spokesperson told the Detroit Free Press that officials visited
Hillsdale in 1998 for a routine evaluation of the school’s teacher preparation
program. During that visit, they noted the ethnicity of the students and
faculty members in the program. Several hours after Arnn made his
initial statements, Hillsdale College issued an official apology. “No offense
was intended by the use of that term except to the offending bureaucrats,"
read the statement, which was published by MLive. It further said that while
Arnn was sorry if offense was taken, his greater concern “is the state-endorsed
racism the story illustrates." Located in Hillsdale, Mich., the
small liberal arts institution over which Arnn presides was founded in 1844.
According to its website, the school "was the first American college to
prohibit in its charter any discrimination based on race, religion or sex, and
became an early force for the abolition of slavery.” Hillsdale does not receive
state or federal subsidies and avoids “federal mandates and control,” another
page on its site says. An alum told MLive he believes Arnn’s
comments were misunderstood. “I think this was Dr. Arnn’s way
to indicate that he was offended with what they were doing in taking clipboards
and walking around campus to record the color of students’ skin,” James Joseph,
a 2010 graduate, told the outlet. “He’s a very magnanimous man with a generous
and charitable spirit, but he doesn’t stand on public piety.” Hillsdale College is notably
conservative. In 2012, the Young America Foundation ranked it one of the most
conservative colleges in the country. The Hillsdale Collegian also reported
that in 2012, Arnn’s most substantial campaign donation was to tea party favorite
Congressman Tim Walberg.
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