There is a cycle the University goes through every time a racial incident occurs. Shock, outrage, e-mail from the administration; rhetoric, rally, race forum. Then the talk wanes, discussion peters out, and the stultifying complacency to which we always eventually surrender sets in again. Time passes. Then the next thing happens, and the cycle repeats itself, and nothing ever changes.
Nothing ever changes -- except that as we continue to allow racism and intolerance to exist at the University, the "next thing" that happens is a little worse than the thing that came before. In only the past few years, we have gone from medallion parties to people dressing in blackface to alleged hate crimes.
It's time we admitted that we have a race problem, a bad one, and one that won't be solved unless we make a permanent change to try to fix it, now, before complacency takes hold of us again. One such change should be to add a race and ethnicity requirement to the curriculum. Every student who enters the University should have to take one class that challenges them to think about race, ethnicity and tolerance in general.
Though concerned students have tried their best to create organizations and host forums and rallies with the aim of increasing racial understanding and awareness, recent events should make us realize that these efforts are not enough. Rallies, race forums and discussions can only benefit those who attend. Average Joe University student will not go out of his way to put himself in an uncomfortable situation like a race relations forum even if he genuinely cares about race issues. And it's probable that the people who have the most to learn from these events are the ones who never show up. The University student who doesn't care about improving race relations may go out of his way to avoid such forums.
One can also question whether these events even do a good deal to benefit those who do attend. Usually, there is a great deal of frustration on the part of African-Americans and a good deal of ignorance on the part whites, with the result of little progress made.
Students have tried self-medication on race relation problems through self-education, but -- as recent events have shown -- informal, voluntary measures are not enough.
The University must be proactive in helping to educate its students -- not just in literature and chemistry, but also in what is a kind of civic education: Helping students to become aware of racial issues and increase their levels of tolerance and understanding.
The University administration must make thinking about and discussing race relations something every University student must do before he or she graduates. Relying on students to educate themselves and increase their tolerance on their own hasn't worked, either because students don't act upon their good intentions or because they don't have good intentions in the first place.
These are drastic times, but the University's implementation of a race and ethnicity course requirement should not even be seen as a drastic measure. More accurately, the University's implementation of such a requirement would be one step in catching up to other public universities of its caliber -- catching up in the amount of attention and energy given to diversity issues, and, hopefully, in terms of the amount of tolerance on campus. Of the top five public universities in the country, the University is the only one that does not require students to take a class on racial and multicultural issues in order to graduate. The University of Michigan has a Race and Ethnicity requirement for which students must take a course that deals with the development and effects of racism and provides discussion on the meaning of race, intolerance and inequality as well as discrimination based on factors like religion, social class and gender. UCLA requires students to take a social analysis class and choose from classes concerning everything from Afro-American studies to gay, bisexual and transgender studies. UNC-Chapel Hill students must fulfill a Cultural Diversity requirement.
Finally, all undergraduates at Berkeley must take an "American cultures" class in which students address issues relevant to understanding race, culture and ethnicity in American society and are given "the intellectual tools to understand better their own identity and the cultural identity of others" (www.berkeley.edu/catalog/undergrad/requirements.html).
The American Cultures requirement is one of only three requirements Berkeley asks its students fulfill. Clearly, the school has made developing understanding and tolerance among their students a priority. It's time the University follow the lead of its peers.
By making it a requirement for students to take a class on race and tolerance issues, the University will ensure that every student gets some exposure to thinking about these issues and take one step toward permanent, positive change. Spending a semester considering life from a minority student's point of view will have a lasting effect on most University students by increasing their understanding and awareness, and the University administration can no longer afford to ignore -- or leave up to chance -- this aspect of students' education.
(Laura Sahramaa's column appears Tuesdays in The Cavalier Daily. She can be reached at lsahramaa@cavalierdaily.com.)
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