[Updated (7/31/2013, 8:01 p.m.) to include details from the college’s statement.]
Larry P. Arnn III, president of Hillsdale College, was criticized on Wednesday by some Michigan lawmakers for referring to minority students as “dark ones” in his comments at a legislative hearing, MLive.com and the Detroit Free Press reported.
Mr. Arnn made the remarks at a committee hearing on Michigan’s adoption of the Common Core State Standards. He spoke out in opposition to the standards, prefacing his remarks by describing a letter he received in 2000 from the Michigan Department of Education. The letter, he said, stated that Hillsdale had “violated the standards for diversity because we didn’t have enough dark ones, I guess is what they meant.”
Mr. Arnn said department officials had visited Hillsdale before he became president to collect demographic information about its students. “The State of Michigan sent a group of people down to my campus, with clipboards ... to look at the colors of people’s faces and write down what they saw,” he said. “We don’t keep records of that information. What were they looking for besides dark ones?”
Democrats on the committee called his comments offensive.
In a written statement, the college said “no offense was intended by the use of that term except to the offending bureaucrats,” adding that Mr. Arnn was “sorry if such offense was honestly taken.” Mr. Arnn believed, the statement said, that the greater concern was “the state-endorsed racism” his story illustrated.
Hillsdale, a private college, is known for refusing all federal and state money and for espousing conservative values. Its Web site says the institution was the first American college to prohibit in its charter discrimination based on race, religion, or sex.
Before moving to Hillsdale, Mr. Arnn helped coordinate a successful 1996 ballot measure in California barring the use of racial preferences in state agencies.