Rally promotes student, faculty support for diversity requirement
Jan Reiff, former chair of the Academic Senate, speaks to students at a rally to support the diversity requirement proposal, which faculty members will vote on starting Friday. (Kelsey Kong/Daily Bruin)
By Yael Levin
Oct. 23, 2014 1:44 a.m.
At a rally Wednesday night, event organizers urged UCLA students to demonstrate their support for the diversity requirement during the next week through a variety of campaigns.
The Diversity Requirement Lobby Corps, a committee in the Undergraduate Students Association Council Academic Affairs Commission, organized the event along with Allyson Bach, the USAC academic affairs commissioner.
“UCLA needs to make diversity in the classroom as important as it is outside the classroom,” Bach said. “I think UCLA already values diversity, but it needs to reiterate that in class.”
At the rally, members of the Diversity Requirement Lobby Corps spoke to an audience of about 20 students about ways they can encourage faculty to vote in favor of the diversity requirement.
Students can send their professors an email written by the Lobby Corps, attend club meetings and talk to club members about promoting the requirement. The Diversity Requirement Lobby Corps will also hand out fliers on Bruin Walk this week and host a faculty dinner on Tuesday at Bruin Plate, said Ashly Mohankumar, one of the Lobby Corps directors.
“I don’t want to be at a school that doesn’t have the diversity requirement passed,” Mohankumar said at the rally. “It’s up to us to show the faculty that this is important to us … and our education.”
Jazz Kiang, a third-year Asian American studies student who served on the committee to create the diversity requirement, urged students to fill out pledge cards at the rally to personally write to each of their professors about why faculty should support the implementation of a diversity requirement.
“We’re in a time when diversity is taken seriously,” Kiang said at the rally. “This has been an effort for almost 30 years and now we finally have a chance to really make it happen.”
Three faculty members attended the rally to speak about what has been done to put the requirement in place, and what future steps need to be taken.
Christina Palmer, the chair of the College’s Faculty Executive Committee and a professor of psychiatry and behavioral sciences, said she thinks it’s important for faculty members to hear what students think about the proposal before voting.
The Faculty Executive Committee unanimously approved the proposal in May. Since then, the committee has received more than 150 syllabi for courses that could potentially fill the requirement, Palmer said. And more keep trickling in, she added.
“There’s clearly some interest (in making this happen),” Palmer said, laughing.
Similar diversity requirement proposals were shot down in 2004 and 2012, but some faculty members said they think the most recent proposal will likely pass.
Jan Reiff, former chair of the Academic Senate and a history and statistics professor, said she thinks the student support for this proposal has surpassed any student involvement in trying to pass previous diversity requirements.
“Faculty take (that activism) seriously,” Reiff said.
Support from faculty for the requirement is manifest, said M. Belinda Tucker, co-chair of the College Diversity Initiative Committee, but for the requirement to pass, faculty need to actually get out and vote.
Even if the faculty votes to pass the proposal, the work is not quite done, Reiff said. USAC would still need to formally announce its support for the diversity requirement, which Reiff said is likely to happen. Next, the Committee of Rules and Jurisdiction would need to approve the proposal and make it part of UCLA’s curriculum. If it passes the committee, on Nov. 20 the Legislative Assembly would need to support the proposed requirement.
The proposal is likely to make it through these final steps, though, if enough faculty vote to pass it, Reiff said.
Members of the Academic Affairs Commission will hand out pledge cards on Bruin Walk on Thursday and Friday from 11 a.m. to 3:30 p.m. They will also use a whiteboard photo campaign to get students to support the requirement proposal, and put pledge cards in faculty members’ mailboxes.
The voting period for the diversity requirement begins Friday at noon and will end on Halloween – Oct. 31 – at noon.
“It’ll be ‘trick-or-treat,'” Tucker said, laughing.
