If you’re an incoming freshman, the fight for the
diversity requirement at UCLA may be older than you are.
Student supporters of a general education diversity requirement
have fought for the past 18 years to get the requirement
implemented, but after failing yet again in a faculty vote last
fall, campaigners are turning up their volumes.
First introduced and endorsed by then-Chancellor Charles Young
in 1987, the proposal of a diversity requirement was an idea to add
an ethnic and gender studies requirement to general education
curriculum at UCLA.
Over the years, it has been reformed into an effort to create
cultural awareness.
Every other school in the University of California system has
some form of a diversity requirement, which some say is an issue
for UCLA.
According to the most recent proposal for the diversity
requirement, submitted to the Undergraduate Council of the Academic
Senate in 2003, an important reason for the implementation of a
diversity requirement is to put UCLA on the same level as the rest
of the UC system.
The proposal says that without the diversity requirement, UCLA
is “particularly vulnerable to the charge that it has
remained insensitive to the world around us.”
The academic affairs commission has taken charge of the campaign
in recent years, and is making it one of their foremost interests,
said third-year political science and public policy student Steven
Ly, chief of staff of the academic affairs commission.
The proposal will be presented to the Undergraduate Council of
the Academic Senate again, before it can go on to a faculty vote.
Ly expressed confidence in the body, where four students hold
seats.
The most recent defeat of the proposal was during a UCLA faculty
vote last fall, where it failed by a 141-108 vote.
Many of the voting faculty said they felt that the enacting the
requirement was unnecessary due to already sufficient coverage of
matters of diversity in the classroom and others did not find the
proposal specific enough, especially in terms of approved
courses.
Ly said the proposal fell short because the campaign did not
lobby enough to faculty ““ turnout was extremely low with only
249 faculty members voting out of more than 1000.
“Most of it has to do with faculty members not being
educated on the issue. Faculty members are misinformed and
it’s our job as students to be advocates for the diversity
requirements,” said academic affairs commissioner Michelle
Sassounian.
This year, the commission is working hard to repair acrimonious
feelings between lobbyists and faculty, and foster a healthy
relationship to promote their cause. Melvin Jimenez, a fourth-year
history and political science student, was recently appointed
director of the campaign by Sassounian.
Jimenez and others are currently doing research on the diversity
requirement, with hopes of a successful vote to enact the
requirement later this year.
Sassounian explained that there are many misconceptions about
the proposed requirement, the foremost being that students have to
take more GE classes.
Sassounian envisions the diversity requirement as being similar
in structure to the Writing II requirement. This means that no
extra classes will be required; instead a class selected from a
list of approved courses with diversity content will be taken in a
preexisting GE field. The course, in effect, will count for both
requirements.
“Almost all of the classes are already there. It’s
about grouping them under the requirement,” Sassounian
added.
Some wonder why there is a need for a diversity requirement if
the classes that would fulfill the requirement already exist and
students are already taking them, often as GEs.
And some faculty members who voted down the requirement last
year also expressed this sentiment, saying that formally creating a
diversity requirement unnecessarily complicates the GE
curriculum.
However, many students feel that the emphasis is what’s
most important.
“(The requirement) sends a message and makes students
aware of (diversity). The requirement brings it to the
forefront,” Sassounian said.
She went on to explain that the most important thing is opening
people’s eyes to diversity, and bringing it to a level of
higher consciousness and understanding.
Yaeer Lev, a third-year mechanical engineering student, said he
feels that diversity is something truly learned outside of the
classroom.
“I’ve learned most about diversity by meeting and
talking to people,” Lev said.
The diversity requirement is unnecessary, because students
aren’t really going to learn about diversity in the
classroom, he said.
The academic affairs commission is pushing for another faculty
vote on the issue sometime during winter quarter.
They are currently evaluating the proposal submitted to the
College’s Faculty Executive Committee, and analyzing last
year’s vote, as well as working with the office of the
external vice president to develop an implementation strategy, Ly
said.