Portland's White Male Diversity Training Includes Three-Night Stay at Golf Resort

The $56,000 spent by Mayor Charlie Hales' office and the Portland Police Bureau on a diversity training retreat for white men includes the cost of hotel rooms and food at a golf resort near Mt. Hood.

Hales, three City Hall managers and 11 command staff from the Police Bureau are staying at the Resort at the Mountain, a Welches hotel that describes itself as "a premier Oregon golf, ski and meeting resort."

WW first reported last month that Hales decided to spend $56,000 on a 3 1/2-day training seminar run by a Portland company, White Men as Full Diversity Partners.

Hales spokeswoman Sara Hottman confirmed today to WW that the costs of the seminar include rooms, dining and classes.

"I'm told there is some golfing between many hours of classes," Hottman says. 

The golfing is not included in the city's costs.

Any time on the links—or trail running, which other city officials are doing on breaks—must be squeezed in between 10 hours a day of diversity training courses.

"The schedule for each day is 7:30 a.m. to 12:30 p.m., then an hour for lunch, then classes 1:30 to 4 p.m," Hottman says. "From 4 to 6 p.m. they have free time and [Hales policy director] Josh Alpert thinks a few people golf then. Then they eat dinner from 6 to 7 p.m., followed by a night session from 7 to 9:30 p.m."

The Oregonian reported Tuesday that the seminar is being held at the Welches resort. The paper also noted that the director of the city's Office of Neighborhood Involvement, Amalia Alarcón Morris, is a paid consultant to White Men as Full Diversity Partners.

Hottman says, however, that the mayor's office first learned about the training from City Commissioner Amanda Fritz, who used to oversee the Office of Neighborhood Involvement.

The mayor's police liaison, Deanna Wesson-Mitchell, learned about the training from Fritz, according to Hottman.

"Deanna, who organized everything, got the idea from Amanda Fritz, who sent her parks director there and said it was fantastic," Hottman tells WW. "Gail Shibley had also read about it and so liked Deanna's idea when she pitched it. The ONI director is one of several people Deanna knows who lead classes there, so she quizzed all of them about what it's actually like to make sure it was the diversity training she was looking for.
 
"So that's how our four white men in a Prius ended up at the Resort at the Mountain," Hottman adds.

WWeek 2015