One college gains true diversity
Globe Editorial – March 7, 2010
WHEELOCK COLLEGE is without peer in diversity, with a tenured and tenure track faculty that is 23 percent black and Hispanic. A Globe survey found the percentage of such faculty to be between 3 and 8 percent at Harvard, MIT, Boston University, Boston College, Brandeis, Emerson, Northeastern, and Tufts. Not a single one of those private colleges and universities is even at the 9 percent national average for black and Hispanic faculty, in a nation that is 28 percent black and Hispanic.
Only UMass Boston, the city’s public university, offers Wheelock any competition with 13 percent black and Hispanic faculty. Boston University, the city’s largest private school, is only at 3.4 percent. Harvard may boast some black superstars such as Henry Louis Gates, Jr., but its faculty is only 5.8 percent black and Hispanic.
Wheelock proves that neither rocket science nor an undiscovered Dead Seas scroll is necessary to find the formula to achieve diversity. Wheelock President Jackie Jenkins-Scott, who is African American but says progress was underway well before her arrival in 2004, said that universities have to believe in diversity enough to have “a diversity officer with access to the departments [and] the ability to report situations to the leadership.’’
Grand jury hears claims coach abused teen in ’70s
By Michael Rezendes – Globe Staff / March 7, 2010
It was an overcast Saturday in the summer of 1976 and the Red Sox and Yankees were halfway through a doubleheader. Sam Albano, a New York television producer, was strolling down Lansdowne Street behind Fenway Park when he ran into a friend from home, Bob Oliva, and Oliva’s guest that day, a teenager named Jimmy Carlino.
It crossed his mind that it was odd to find Oliva with a 14-year-old, but Albano quickly dismissed the thought. And over the next 30 years, the two men became even closer friends, sharing a passion for sports as Oliva built a reputation as a standout coach for the powerhouse basketball team at Christ the King Regional High School in Queens.
Now, however, Albano is cooperating with Boston prosecutors presenting evidence to a Suffolk grand jury that Oliva repeatedly molested his teenage companion all those years ago, while staying at the Sheraton Boston Hotel. And in the aftermath of those allegations, Oliva has resigned from the job he held at Christ the King for 27 years, roiling the New York City high school sports community.
“This is a guy I looked up to, trusted, and had a lot of faith in, and even believed in when the initial allegations surfaced,’’ Albano said in a Globe interview. “However, because of his personal conduct there’s no way I can support Bob anymore.’’
