Blacks Assail SDSU President on Hiring Practices : Affirmative Action: Thomas Day called a rare press conference to defend himself and his commitment to hiring minorities after the scathing report by a university employees group.

Frustration over the small number of nonwhite faculty and staff members at San Diego State University burst into the open Friday, when a special commission of the university’s black employees issued a scathing report criticizing President Thomas Day for his lack of imagination and leadership on affirmative action.

The report from the Study Commission on Black Affairs assailed Day for not pushing his deans and department heads harder to hire more black professors during his 11-year tenure, saying that “meaningless rhetoric” has been substituted for “meaningful progress.”

The report says the number of black employees--from professors to custodians--increased from 204 to 210 from 1975 to 1988, a 3% increase; that, out of 1,196 faculty members, 24, or 2%, of the professors are black, and that no black faculty members who applied for promotion from 1986 to 1988 were granted approval. (Nonwhites account for about 12% of the total faculty--4% Latino, 5% Asian and 1% other.)

Stung by the outcry, Day held a rare press conference Friday after release of the document, both to defend his management style on affirmative action and to argue, with unusual passion, that he is personally committed to increasing nonwhite representation at the university.

Day refused to discuss specifics in the report, in part because they involve individual personnel issues, saying instead that he will talk privately with commission members about the allegations.

But he strongly denied charges of “rampant racism” at SDSU and said that, although racism exists on the campus, he has established adequate grievance procedures and policies to deal with it. He called SDSU’s progress “good” in hiring minorities during the past several years, saying he prefers to look at numbers of new professors hired.

“I take this seriously, and the faculty takes this seriously,” he said.

Among new faculty members, Day said, the percentages of ethnic minorities hired at SDSU exceed the percentages of qualified candidates throughout the United States. The university hired two tenure-track black professors in 1986 and 1987, three in 1988 and two in 1989. That represents about 5% of total new hires in that period, contrasted with the estimated 3.8% black Ph.Ds that exist in the nation’s doctoral pool available for recruitment.

“We want to be ahead of (the percentages available in) these skilled pools of professors,” Day said, adding that there is a vicious cycle of under-representation of blacks and Latinos in undergraduate and doctoral programs, meaning the number of potential applicants to faculty positions also will be inadequate.

But, although both Day and the campus’ black employees agreed on the need for more nonwhite representation, their back-to-back press conferences Friday displayed a wide gap in perception of Day’s style and commitment on affirmative action.

Commission co-chairman Percil Stanford, who heads the university’s Center on Aging, said the strongly worded report is intended to give affirmative action “a more visible approach on campus.”

Political science professor E. Walter Miles said that Day has not pressured departments to recruit effectively among blacks. After sitting through Day’s 90-minute press conference, Miles labeled his statements “just a continuation of the propaganda.”

Professor Shirley Weber, a 17-year member of the Afro-American studies department, said that, “while I don’t think he (Day) really disagrees with the report itself, there is disagreement about his style.”

“They say they can only make limited progress, but as (black poet) Langston Hughes said, ‘They say go slow while the bite of the dog is fast’ . . . . We can’t go slow.”

Weber, who is also vice president of the San Diego city schools board of trustees, cited in particular the School of Education, saying that, until this year, only one of its 123 faculty members was black. She pointed out that the pool of black Ph.Ds is almost 8% of the national total, since blacks receive more doctorates in education than in any other discipline.

“And that specifically is an issue that SCOBA has raised privately with Dr. Day every year for the past five years,” Weber said, adding that SDSU provides more than 60% of all new teachers each year to the city school district. The district is constantly falling short of its own goal to hire more nonwhite kindergarten-through-12th-grade teachers as role models to push higher achievement for minority students.

“And, even now (with three new black professors in the department), none are in the teacher training area of the Education School,” Weber said.

Day later acknowledged that more should be done in the School of Education.

“I have talked to the dean personally and privately, I have emphasized my concerns, I have spoken to the faculty at large, have talked to department chairs about where to recruit, and I’ve urged the public essentially to pressure the college.

“The (three) professors we have brought in is a step, and, although it might seem to be small numbers, it is progress,” Day said.

But he acknowledged that his approach continues to come under criticism.

“There are people who disagree with my style, who would be more outspoken or take sanctions,” Day said. “I share some of their rage” and realize there has been insufficient progress nationwide, “but it doesn’t solve the problems to rage.”