Students must rally behind diversity requirement proposal

Friday, January 23, 1998

Students must rally behind diversity requirement proposal

DIVERSITY: Support will prove to Academic Senate necessity of
improvement

By Vy Nguyen

As some of you may remember, last year many student
organizations and the Academic Affairs Commission organized
extensively around the campaign for a diversity requirement at
UCLA. Issues of curricular reform are hot topics, with concepts of
diversity challenged by the elimination of affirmative action, the
formation of a new set of general education requirements,
discussions over the future of ethnic studies and a new chancellor
thrown into the bargain.

UCLA has long toyed with and finally rejected the supremely
reasonable and long overdue idea of including a class about race,
gender, and class as one among the other classes considered
important for every student to take. Ironically, UCLA, which is one
of the most ethnically diverse universities and which is located in
a major urban center, is currently the only UC school without such
a requirement.

A long and productive year was spent resurrecting what was once
a dead issue by raising students’ awareness of local history and
the critical importance of taking control of our education. This
was accomplished by engaging in productive debates with one another
in various forums – so many students have wondered at the relative
silence last quarter. Where has this campaign gone since then? Have
student activists, in stereotypically fickle form, enthusiastically
adopted a cause only to leave it unfinished?

Since last year we have entered a different phase of the
campaign, moving beyond the groundwork of campus education. In
light of the inactivity of the Academic Senate on this matter,
students have taken it upon themselves to write their own proposal
for a diversity requirement, which builds upon past proposals
written by faculty task forces.

The student proposal is still in its rough stages, but it would
most likely be a one- to two-quarter class covering:

1. The anthropological and socio-historical foundations for such
categories as race and gender.

2. The modern-day manifestations and ramifications of those
categories in the form of racism and sexism. The requirement would
be campus-wide and could either be incorporated into the new
general education program or it could be separate, such as the
foreign language requirement.

The proposal has to undergo a process of discussion and debate,
as students and faculty together decide what exactly an
academically rigorous, socially relevant, and institutionally
feasible requirement should look like. We hope to be at the final
stages of this process by the end of the quarter.

The battle truly begins once the proposal is submitted to the
Academic Senate, where factions of resistance and support have
traditionally existed. It is then that students will need to be
extremely well informed and well organized. Large bureaucracies are
built to resist change, and we expect to hear the old, tried and
essentially evasive arguments that always point to ubiquitous
budget cuts and financial problems, or the merits of "integrating"
the curriculum with race and gender studies instead having a
specific requirement.

In the meantime, students who are interested in becoming
involved in the campaign can contact the Academic Affairs
Commission. Significant progress has been made, but much work also
lies ahead.