Details of Panther GOLD Retreat Revealed

You can’t read about it in The Pitt News and the University didn’t publish a press release hyping it on their website but the recent Panther GOLD Retreat represents a significant change in how University administrators, Student Government Board and certain student groups all interact together. Taking place the weekend before classes started, the Panther GOLD Retreat was an event sponsored by the University that required a select group of student organizations to send representatives to this “all-inclusive retreat” at camp Kon-O-Kwee/Spencer or lose University funding for the year.

You can read more about the details leading up to the event here and here (these accounts include the leaked retreat itinerary and the letter sent from SGB President Charlie Shull to select groups) but the crux of the matter is that the University created this retreat in an effort to mold an artificial elite of campus organizations and to do so with money taken from all students.

Separate anonymous sources confirm a number of facts regarding this retreat:

• The University revealed to student leaders in attendance the details of renovations being planned for the old Concordia Club building recently purchased by Pitt. A separate article will appear on our site in the near future regarding these renovations.
• Although student leaders attended the retreat because they were threatened that their organization’s funding would be frozen if they did not attend, SGB announced at the end of the retreat that they will not be enforcing this threat and organizations that did not attend will still receive funding this year.
• The decision not to penalize groups who failed to send representatives stemmed largely from the fact that a number of groups, including Resident Student Association, did not attend and SGB decided it could not penalize such a large organization.
• Kelli McLoud-Schingen, professional speaker and president of KMS Intercultural Consulting, gave one of the mandatory presentations. She wore a headscarf and asked the audience what religion they thought that she was. When the audience guessed that she was Muslim, she said that they were wrong, that she was a Catholic and that they were all racists for assuming that she was a Muslim. She went on to discuss how everyone was a racist and just needed to accept it.
• Much of the training that student leaders received could have, and traditionally has, been done on-campus. Student leaders agree that they did bond with each other more in the off-campus setting of the Panther GOLD Retreat than they would have on-campus. This bonding appears to be the only benefit to holding the retreat off-campus.

In choosing to hold the Panther GOLD Retreat off-campus, the University chose to spend a great deal of money on transporting, feeding and housing student leaders. The Publius Foundation estimates, based on the amount spent on a past SGB retreat, that Panther GOLD cost the University at least $20,000. We must also consider that, as a professional speaker, Kelli McLoud-Schingen and her absurd speech on how everyone is racist must have cost the University a significant amount of money at time when Pitt recently raised tuition.

Certainly, it is impossible to ignore the fact that this retreat did provide participants with some benefit, namely the bonding between student leaders who might not have otherwise made such connections. That being said, the fact that the benefits of this event were only available to an extreme minority of Pitt students selected by Student Life but paid for by everyone is troubling.

In short, it appears that the University is seeking to strengthen some student groups and not others, giving some student organizations the tools to become more successful than others and making sure that the leaders of the more successful ones have been exposed to politically correct, multicultural views. What makes this whole situation even more insulting is that we are all paying for it and the University refuses to tell students anything about it.