Students rally to maintain support for diversity requirement
Students who support the passage of a new diversity requirement proposal rallied at Meyerhoff Park Thursday afternoon. (Conor Cusack/Daily Bruin)
By Nicholas Yu
April 3, 2015 1:09 a.m.
About 40 students recited chants calling for faculty to pass a diversity requirement proposal and handed out informational fliers at a rally Thursday to draw attention to an ongoing revote on the measure.
The rally, organized by the Undergraduate Students Association Council’s Academic Affairs Commission and External Vice President’s office, aimed to educate students about the proposal and encourage them to lobby their professors.
“We want to demystify everything that is going on with the diversity requirement,” said Kevin Casasola, campus organizing director in the External Vice President’s office and a second-year bioengineering student. “A lot of students are under the impression that it passed fall quarter, and not many know that a revote is happening.”
If passed by a majority of the faculty who are part of the Academic Senate, the diversity requirement would require students entering the College of Letters and Science in 2015 and transfer students entering in 2017 to take one course on a diversity-related issue such as inequalities in gender, race, ethnicity, sexual orientation or religion.
A broader faculty vote is taking place until April 10, after a group of faculty members challenged a previous vote in fall in which only faculty in the College of Letters and Science participated. All faculty, including those in professional schools, are able to vote this time.
Supporters of the diversity requirement spoke at the event outside Kerckhoff Hall to express their ongoing support for the requirement and their frustrations with the delay in implementing the policy change. Because of the revote, planning for the requirement has been stalled.
“This damn vote happening right now shouldn’t be happening,” said Jazz Kiang, assistant director of the Asian Pacific Coalition and a third-year Asian American studies student who helped create the requirement proposal.
About 63 percent of surveyed UCLA students voted in favor of the current diversity requirement proposal, Kiang said at the rally.
“What kind of disrespectful act is it if (professors who should represent the students) don’t pass it on behalf of us?” Kiang added.
Some speakers at the rally said they often feel marginalized at UCLA because they think some community members do not understand their backgrounds.
“Far too often in my three-year college career have I had to listen to people tell me my genocide didn’t happen,” said Morris Sarafian, advocacy coordinator at the USAC general representative 1 office and a third-year political science student. “(The requirement) is necessary so I don’t have to tell you that the Armenian genocide happened, I can actually talk about how that makes me feel.”
More than 600 supporters signed an online petition, which the AAC plans to send to the Academic Senate, according to information presented at the rally. Supporters also pledged to personally tell their professors at the event to vote for the diversity requirement.
Some students and faculty have organized protests against diversity requirement proposals in the past.
In January, Bruin Republicans protested the diversity requirement, saying they think it would reduce students’ academic freedom. Some students and professors have said they think the classes that would fulfill the requirement might have underlying liberal political agendas.
“I’m concerned that the requirement isn’t just there to expose diverse perspectives, which is definitely a great thing,” said Jacob Kohlhepp, external vice president of the Bruin Republicans and a third-year economics and political science student. “It’s been my experience at UCLA that classes which should only provide factual evidence often skew students towards one agenda.”
Movements to include a diversity requirement in UCLA’s undergraduate curriculum started about three decades ago. Different diversity requirement proposals have failed to pass faculty votes in the past until the College faculty approved the newest proposal in October.
UCLA faculty members can vote on the diversity requirement proposal online until April 10.
