Students help faculty develop diversity requirement proposal

More than a dozen students are helping faculty members develop a proposal for a new academic diversity requirement by the end of this month.

The committee formed last month after the chair of the College of Letters and Science Faculty Executive Committee, Christina Palmer, asked several UCLA professors to work on a new diversity requirement proposal and present it to the College Faculty Executive Committee before the end of the quarter.

Along with the faculty committee, a student advisory group was also created to work with faculty throughout the process. To find members for the student committee, Vice Chancellor for Student Affairs Janina Montero reached out to members of the Undergraduate Students Association Council and a coalition of several cultural groups on campus known as the “mother organizations.”

Officials reached out to the mother organizations and USAC because students in those groups have been particularly vocal about the need for UCLA to have the requirement, said Professor M. Belinda Tucker, the vice provost of the Institute of American Cultures and one of the committee chairs.

The students and faculty involved in the process met for the first time Monday night to talk about the goals of the requirement, including decreasing prejudice on campus and introducing students to different perspectives on gender, race, age, nationality and ethnicity, among other issues.

University faculty members have voted down different forms of diversity requirement proposals twice before, but some students and faculty hope this effort they will be more successful.

While the details of the proposal are still unclear, Tucker said it will likely require students to take one course and will be “outside the G.E. framework” – more like a proficiency requirement. She added that the proposal will ideally not require students to take extra classes and will allow them to fulfill other College requirements at the same time.

The committee hopes to help facilitate the development of classes for the requirement, helping different departments revamp already existing classes or develop new ones so students have options for the courses they can take, Tucker said.

“We wanted to encourage broad adoption of these courses through all sectors on campus,” she said. “You don’t want to make (the requirement) too onerous. You want a lot of courses to meet the criteria.”

In addition to meeting with the student advisory committee, faculty members also gathered feedback from students about the requirement at a town hall last month.

Janay Williams, who helped organize the town hall and who is part of the committee, said she thinks the meeting with faculty Monday went well, and that committee members are listening to students input and concerns.

“We’re there to make sure that they really don’t miss anything,” said Williams, a third-year microbiology, immunology and molecular genetics student.

Throughout the process, students and faculty want to increase efforts to mobilize faculty to vote for the requirement. Last time the proposal came to a vote, just about 30 percent of faculty participated.

“We’re trying to get more faculty to vote because last time the faculty were very unaware and very uninvolved,” said Cassidy Little, a member of the committee and the youth conference and basketball tournament director for the American Indian Student Association. “This time around, we’re really going to try to make them realize that this is something that our college needs.”

Little, a first-year classics student, said she thinks implementing the requirement is an important step for UCLA to take.

“I hope to see that the prejudice on campus is greatly reduced because as an American Indian student, I see it every day – not only in what people say but also in their actions,” she said. “I don’t think students on campus are aware of the things they say half the time. I don’t think they’re aware when the things they say offend other students.”

Though Tucker is hopeful that the requirement will pass, she said she thinks that UCLA will have to take further steps to address problems with prejudice.

“It can’t be the only thing. You cannot put the burden of race or tolerance on one course,” Tucker said. “But one course does do something. It has a meaningful impact, but it’s only one part of the equation.”

The student and faculty committee members plan to continue meeting regularly in upcoming weeks to complete the proposal on time.