"INTERNATIONALIZE now!" we cried. The lilt of our voices crescendoed up the stairs of Old Cabell Hall and reverberated down the Lawn. We are the students of the University and our voices will be heard.
Maybe you didn't hear. Maybe you were too busy in your provincial little life, as History Prof. Erik Midelfort put it, to care. You were too satisfied with the assumptions and culture of your place of birth to attend our rally.
So you didn't show up. Except for the last 10 minutes, when classes let out, there were never more than 25 people at the rally, excluding organizers and press. Too bad you don't care enough to expand your horizons. Like Anthropology Prof. Ellen Contini-Morava told us, "If we knew more about the world, we wouldn't have to drop bombs." The progressive, committed activists of the University have the power to end all war, and you couldn't even spare an hour of your time.
If you had bothered to look up, you would have seen the bright orange flyers. They were plastered in the Student Council offices in Newcomb and draped over plenty of Lawn rooms. "Internationalization Direct Action" they proclaimed. The Minority Rights Coalition and the Committee on Curriculum Internationalization organized this rally because they have the needs of students in their hearts.
Those of us who braved the cold were warmed by the words of third-year Bernice Ramirez. She told us that ethnic studies are "not the mere tool of interest groups." Council has all our needs in mind. This is the will of the people, not an elite group that's utterly dissociated from the average student. The fact that 25 out of 24,257 students at the University showed up doesn't mean that Council's priorities don't reflect the student body's. It means you don't care enough.
At noon last Friday, you were probably sitting in your comfortable room, enjoying your comfortable assumptions. Maybe you were even playing Halo or Madden. We vanguards of the liberal education were, in the words of Wyatt Fore, letting the "decision-makers know what we're demanding." We want more courses about the experiences of ethnic minorities in the United States and more courses about remote parts of the world. As History Prof. Brad Reed upbraided the narrow-minded: "Not everyone cares about American society and culture." So clearly it is not the job of an elite American university to specialize in it.
After listening to nine different speakers extol the virtues of curriculum internationalization, I couldn't understand why the administration isn't supportive. Ramirez said that she "felt cheated." We all did. What kind of a school is this where I can't even take a course in endangered, indigenous languages. What a sorry excuse for an education. Reed said comparing us to Berkeley was a joke. But then it hit me: Everyone else is suffering from false consciousness.
The handful of student leaders who go away on retreats must make major decisions for the students. In fact, the less they interact with the plebian students who didn't even show up to a rally for their benefit, the better. Then they won't be tainted by the false ideology perpetrated by Casteen and his minions that the University is providing a good education. We who stood before Old Cabell Hall on a windy Friday afternoon are starting a revolution to remake the University.
In this, Patrick Lee took the lead. He bemoaned that the administration was cutting the Asian Pacific American Studies minor. This "vibrant" program has been an astounding success but, of course, the myopic administration wants to axe it. Why? Apparently the fact that only five people are in the program means there isn't a need for it. We need leaders like Lee to demonstrate that numbers don't matter. Those thousands of students who aren't minoring in Asian Pacific American Studies are just suffering from false consciousness and we need to change the curriculum to keep courses that people aren't taking.
But the real coup de grace that revealed the administration's insidious prejudices was delivered by Ryan McElveen. He showed how the space allocations of New Cabell Hall represent the hierarchy of classes. The upper floors hold departments like Sociology, French, and Politics. Meanwhile, the Department of Middle Eastern and South Asian Languages and Cultures is relegated to the basement. In the face of such obvious discrimination and the administration's refusal to acknowledge his report filled with flawed statistics, McElveen has resolved to "show the feeling and emotion behind the numbers." I have never felt more alive.
But you weren't there. You probably take classes in subjects that give you so-called job skills while refusing to acknowledge the Western hegemony prevalent in your world. You need student leaders like the ones who gathered last Friday to make your decisions and free you from your pathetic life. They truly represent your interests.
Josh Levy's column appears Mondays in The Cavalier Daily. He can be reached jlevy@cavalierdaily.com.
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