Beware, racist fraternity boys: your worst nightmare has arrived. The University of California, Los Angeles passed a measure Friday that would require most incoming freshmen and transfer students to take a class on diversity as part of their core requirements.
The measure was widely approved by the Faculty Senate, which is made up of all faculty members on campus. The measure first went to the faculty of the College of Letters and Science, who voted in favor of it by an extremely narrow margin of 332 to 303. Opponents petitioned for the entire faculty to vote instead, and the Senate then voted 916 to 487 to instate the new requirement.
The new course requirements specifically ask for students to take a class during their freshman year that covers the subject of racial, gender, religious or various other types of cultural diversity. This will begin for freshmen in fall 2015 and for transfer students in 2017, and will only affect students in the College of Letters and Science, which is UCLA’s answer to Boston University’s College of Arts and Sciences. The College of Letters and Science houses 85 percent of the school’s undergraduate population.
Efforts to implement the measure started 20 years ago, the Los Angeles Times reported, and UCLA faculty rejected the measure three times before it was finally passed Friday. It comes after most other schools in the University of California system, including the UCLA School of the Arts and Architecture, already require a course in diversity. The measure was backed by UCLA Chancellor Gene Block, who released a statement posted on UCLA’s website Friday.
“A diversity-focused course requirement has been a long-standing priority for me because of its clear value to our students, so I am very pleased with the campuswide faculty vote approving the proposal,” he said. “I want to thank the many faculty members and students who have worked hard for several years to make the diversity requirement a reality.”
However, it’s not all just blind support. Opponents of the new measure said that students are already overburdened with course foundation requirements, and that it’s out of the university’s budget. Additionally, some raise the question of whether or not teaching tolerance in a classroom is actually the best way to go about tackling bigotry.
One UCLA professor in particular, political science professor Thomas Schwartz, wrote in an online election guide that the course is unnecessary, especially for students who chose to come to a school such as UCLA.
“The idea that 21st century American 18-year-olds who have been admitted to UCLA are so afflicted with bigotry that they must be forced to endure an attitude-altering course is preposterous. It is like forcing Norwegians to get inoculated against malaria,” he wrote.
A course on diversity should absolutely be a requirement in this day and age, and if this were any other school besides UCLA, there would be no room for debate. Just by nature of being at UCLA rather than a small liberal arts college in the middle of nowhere, students are already immersing themselves in a diverse pool of people and gaining firsthand experience. At a school like this, you could argue that the real-life experiences beat out sitting in a lecture hall and listening to a professor talk about racism.
However, this is something that is really, really important. It’s strange that UCLA has to make a requirement to teach a social norm, but it is something that needs to happen. The decision of whether or not it should happen at a particular school due to its racial makeup becomes a moot point, and to say that a university is “diverse enough” that it doesn’t need to teach its students about diversity is naïve. You don’t know where these students originally came from, even if they ended up at UCLA. Diversity classes should be taught across the board.
And going off of that argument, just because someone has the opportunity to attend a school like UCLA, where the diversity statistics are promising — those who identified themselves as Asian/Pacific Islander outnumber those who identify as white, and the Hispanic population isn’t too far behind — that doesn’t mean they’ll take advantage of what the situation has to offer. “I’m not racist, I have a black friend” isn’t good enough. Real, enlightening conversations need to happen in order to get the benefit of a cross-cultural friendship.
There is a certain stigma, however, behind people who talk about these sensitive issues a lot; those who repeatedly point out racism in the police force are called out as “race-baiting,” those who take note of gender inequality are labeled “feminazis.” Classes like this will bring a lot of people from a lot of different backgrounds together, enabling people who may not have had experiences with racism, classism or sexism, among other things, to learn from other people. You wouldn’t necessarily talk about these things unless you’re prompted to, in a setting like a classroom.
It’s also nice to see a school add a course requirement that will actually help students grow as a person rather than just adding something to their academic portfolio.
UCLA and the University of California schools are taking a stand against those who write off bigoted comments as “ignorance” – ignorance can’t be an excuse anymore. If UCLA can do this right, schools everywhere should take note.
