RE: Cronin: ‘New league won’t change recruiting’
There's never a need to make things "racial." However, as an institution that shapes its own culture and priorities, UC is absolutely saturated with the Diversity issue. It permeates everything that the university says or does.
The men's basketball team is the most visible representative and ambassador of the university, and President Ono has been enthusiastic and determined in describing athletics as the university's front door and opportunity to make an impression on all sorts of audiences, near and far.
And apart from the one white walk-on that usually (but not always) sits at the end of the bench, the squad is not integrated. Coach Cronin has not recruited a single scholarship white American since he came back to UC, and from all the prospect names and profiles that we see for the next few years, that trend is continuing. Not only is this entirely contrary to what the university claims is important in its very fabric, it can also be argued that it does a disservice to the culture of the basketball team, as well as its ultimate play on the court. We are not unique among the teams in the upper tier of college basketball in this way, but we do stand out for not being integrated. And as the last several years have proved, there are quite a lot of contributions toward the ultimate prize that UC cannot have that schools like Louisville, Syracuse, Michigan, Butler, Duke, Ohio State, Kentucky, Florida, Kansas, etc., do have, even as they are putting forth a "face of the university" that is at least somewhat diverse.
We supposedly aren't supposed to talk about this stuff, but it seems pretty inconsistent, hypocritical, and self-defeating to continue this strategy, and I'm surprised it's being allowed to continue.
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