The odds of a quarter coming up with heads just once in 17 flips are less than one percent. It's about a hundredth of one percent actually. But Auburn's board of trustees selection committee managed to do almost just that.
Just one woman is on the short list of 17 candidates for the two opening positions.
Of course, an interview process is not just flipping coins and the odds weren't exactly 50/50 to begin with.
Of the 101 candidates prior to the field being whittled down, 93 were men, which means men were chosen at about a one in six clip, and women, just one in eight.
And although the application process did not make candidates' race readily available, a quick online search of the remaining candidates shows each one with photos on their company website or public personal profile is white. Alabama has the sixth highest proportion of black residents at over a quarter of the population.
Right now one black member sits on Auburn's board of 14 trustees.
Because of the recent changes to the nomination process, we do at least have a lot more information available on how the trustees are selected than we did in the not-so-distant past. That was a good move that now has made it easier to shed further light on the process, but that light will inherently find other areas that need improvement. Diversity is one of them.
To pass to the final interview round candidates had to have their application pulled and recommended by at least one of the five members of the selection committee, who are all men. The one female nominee, Melissa Herkt, had her application pulled by one member. Four of the other male candidates had their applications pulled by all five committee members.
Committee member Jimmy Rane said after the field was narrowed, "I'm not running for political office, and I'm not very politically correct," following that with "You can make anything an issue."
We say this is a real issue, not one that is made up by people who are too "politically correct."
Bentley asked the committee about only having one female nominee, "Is that an issue?" to which no one said it was. He said, "We do have a policy in our state of inclusiveness, and we try to make sure on all boards of trustees that we have diversity, and we already do on the Auburn board."
If by "we already do" he means that he is satisfied with the one trustee of color and the two current female trustees (and these two groups overlap) on the board of 14, then his comment must raise questions of his seriousness towards inclusivity.
Auburn as a university and a city stands out in our state for being a place where people from all over the country and world come to learn, grow and work together. People come from places like Turkey, Brazil and South Korea to mold Auburn into what it is. All students, staff and faculty of all backgrounds do their part. It'd be nice if our board of trustees reflected this.
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