Staff Editorial: Stonewalling equity

Phoebe Leboy ran into a problem while researching how Penn was doing in terms of improving gender equity: the University was not terribly interested in divulging the data she needed, which was how many women are on the faculty.

Absurd as it is, Penn's secrecy should not surprise Leboy, a biochemistry professor, or anyone else -- it is pretty much par for the course among current administrators.

Secrecy and quiet are, of course, appropriate in a number of delicate cases, but it has become an obsession within the Rodin administration. College Hall is enveloped in a caustic culture of secrecy that fetishizes keeping people in the dark, often seemingly just for the sake of keeping people in the dark. Remaining tight-lipped about even the most trivial issues is practically a loyalty test for administrators, deemed as important by the higher-ups as always towing the party line.

Everyone knows that gender equity among faculty is a problem at Penn; it is no secret that we lag far behind our peer institutions in terms of progress toward fair gender representation.

Leboy compared her statistics for the University to those released by other, less secretive, institutions. Sure enough, "we're towards the bottom," as she put it.

The stagnation in the number of female faculty members is troubling. We hope the administration is developing real, meaningful plans to address it behind its closed doors.

Provost Robert Barchi has cited the recent death of Associate Provost Barbara Lowery, who was spearheading Penn's effort, as a reason for the tardiness of the long-promised update on gender equity. Devastating as her death was, it would certainly be strange to find out that Lowery worked on the project alone.

With less than half the semester left for administrators to produce a report by the promised fall deadline, let's hope that the University is as good at coming up with a solution as it is at keeping secrets.

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