Clemson University has allocated nearly $27,000 on diversity training materials for professors.
The taxpayer-funded school in South Carolina purchased the online training materials from an outside vendor, reports Campus Reform.
The training materials are a series of slides depicting scenarios with fictional characters.
One slide features a guy named Alejandro who plans a meeting between two groups. Each group contains foreign professors and students. One group shows up 15 minutes early. The second group shows up 10 minutes late.
A question-and-answer section then instructs Clemson’s professors that Alejandro would be insufficiently “inclusive” if he were to “politely ask the second group to apologize.” Alejandro would also be wrong to advise the straggling, late people who aren’t respecting everyone else’s time that “in our country, 9:00 a.m. means 9:00 a.m.”
The “inclusive” thing for Alejandro to do, the taxpayer-funded diversity materials instruct Clemson professors, is to “recognize cultural differences that may impact the meeting and adjust accordingly.” Alejandro must understand “that his cultural perspective regarding time is neither more nor less valid than any other.”
A second online slide is a strange meta-response to people who think diversity training courses are dumb and poitnless. The slide features a woman named Maxine and a guy named Henry. Maxine says that training about “political correctness” is a stupid waste of time that prevents people from getting actual work done.
The “answer” portion of this section declares that Henry should “discuss how diversity can lead to better decisions” and “decrease employee turnover.”
The training slides instruct Clemson professors that it is very wrong to “say nothing” to Maxine.
A third slide warns Clemson’s faculty that “freedom of speech and academic freedom are not limitless.” Then there is odd Orwellian threat: “Language that is derogatory with regard to race, sex, or other protected or emerging forms of diversity does not belong in a university that values inclusion.”
The Texas-based vendor which provided the diversity training materials is Workplace Answers. The company received payments totaling $26,945 from Clemson.
Clemson’s chief diversity officer, Lee Gill, appears to have approved the $26,945 order.
Gill brings home a taxpayer-funded salary of $185,850 each year, according to The Tiger Town Observer, a conservative-leaning student newspaper at Clemson.
Last April, Clemson University president James Clements vowed that “all employees will participate in diversity education and training,” according to Campus Reform.
The $26,945 training provided by Workplace Answers does not appear to be mandatory. It is strongly suggested, however. Professors who complete the training check a box at the end indicating that they “acknowledge and certify that I have read, understood, and will comply with Clemson’s Anti-Harassment and Non-Discrimination Policy.”
An anonymous Clemson professor provided the slides to Campus Reform.
Clemson University is most famous, of course, because school officials swiftly apologized in for serving Mexican food during a food-themed “Maximum Mexican” night in campus cafeterias in 2015. Two students had complained about the ongoing cafeteria fiesta. One of them tweeted an image of cafeteria workers wearing sombreros. The caption of the tweet — which later appears to have disappeared — was: “Our culture isn’t a costume and we will not be mocked!” (RELATED: Taxpayer-Funded University Apologizes For Offending Mexicans By SERVING TACOS)
Follow Eric on Twitter. Like Eric on Facebook. Send education-related story tips to erico@dailycaller.com.
