Faculty meets to discuss fate of requirements on campus

As faculty members debate the future of the multicultural requirement and other distribution requirements, students and faculty around campus have been gathering to express their opinions and make their voices heard.  Faculty members held a meeting on Wednesday, Nov. 13 to further discuss amendments to the APC’s (Academic Priorities Committee) proposal which provides alternative options to Mount Holyoke’s current distribution requirements.

Previously, the APC’s proposal required that all students take a First-year seminar.  However, this class would not be able to count towards any distribution requirements.  At the meeting, faculty members voted to amend this portion of the document so that First-year seminars could still fulfill distribution requirements.

Members voted on an amendment that would get rid of the third humanities distribution requirement as well as create a flexible system in which students could have the option of taking two language courses, two multicultural courses or one language and one multicultural course.

Unlike the current system, students would not be able to fulfill a multicultural requirement and another requirement with the same class. Although this was met with opposition from both proponents of the multicultural requirement and by those who expressed concern for the idea of students only taking one (or zero) semesters of language, the amendment still passed. According to the current proposal, while Mount Holyoke students would be required to take two science classes, they would not be required to take a lab science.

This voting does not guarantee that any of the measures proposed will actually transpire. There is still a possibility that further amendments could be added to the APC proposal in future meetings or that the entire proposal could be voted down.

Faculty members voted against an amendment that would get rid of P.E. requirements altogether.  As the proposal currently stands, Mount Holyoke students would only be required to take four P.E. units.

Several faculty members touched upon the idea of an open curriculum and moved to begin a discussion about this. The faculty members ultimately voted against a motion that would have tabled the APC proposal and allowed members to move on to discuss an open curriculum.  Because of this, any potential discussions about an open curriculum will have to occur at a later date. If this is to be further discussed, it would likely be part of a proposal that is separate from the current APC proposal.

Before the meeting ended, faculty members proposed another amendment that would involve students only being required to take one humanities, one social science, one science, one multicultural class and one language.  However, the meeting was adjourned before this could come to a vote.

To prepare for the Wednesday faculty meeting, on Monday Nov. 11 the Multicultural Community and College Life  (MCCL) Committee held a meeting in which they invited students to express their opinions on the multicultural requirement. Five members of the Committee met with six students.  According to Erica DeBlaise, Clinical Social Worker and member of the MCCL Committee, “Students shared their overwhelming support to keep the multicultural requirement as part of the overall curriculum and made compelling arguments for why they felt strongly about maintaining the requirement.”

Member of the MCCL Committee and English Professor Iyko Day further explained why members of the committee supported the requirement. According to Day, approximately three fourths of students take more than one course that fulfills the multicultural requirement. She mentioned that some argue that since most students take multicultural classes out of their own volition there is no need to have a requirement. Day responded to this point:  “Our argument then was [that] for those ten to twenty percent who do not want to take it and are actually forced to take it…[the requirement is] fulfilling its function. It creates a structure for students who, for whatever reason, are unwilling to think about questions of race, power [and] inequality in both domestic and international frameworks. [And] it helps to create a structure to reach the students who arguably need to be reached out to the most.”

Day further emphasized the role of the requirement and its importance for the diversity of Mount Holyoke. “We believe that the requirement does what it says it’s supposed to do—it introduces students to these questions of race and power and ethnicity and cultural diversity, but at the same time we also felt that given our findings in the campus climate inventory that it could actually be strengthened,” Day said.

As part of strengthening the requirement, the Committee seeks to “make it even stronger and more focused on questions of power and questioning and challenging predominate western assumptions” instead of only being about cultural appreciation. Day added, “our committee believes that the classroom remains a crucial site for domestic and international students to grapple with issues of racial, ethnic and cultural difference.”

At the faculty meeting, Mary Renda, associate professor of history and co-chair of the MCCL Committee, presented further reasons why students and members of the committee believed the multicultural requirement was necessary. Many students of color reported feeling excluded and discriminated against at Mount Holyoke in a variety of ways.  Additionally, when SGA reached out to students about issues on campus, a frequent response was “racism.” Renda further added that for many students, the first multicultural course they took changed the way they thought, which inspired them to enroll in other courses.

Day articulated, “our committee sees no benefit to removing the requirement.  Unlike other distribution requirements, the multicultural requirement neither impedes normative time to graduation nor affects the College’s ranking—these have been cited as reasons to reduce or eliminate other requirements. My sense also is that the requirement has little budgetary impact.”

Asian Studies Professor Ying Wang, who teaches several courses that fulfill the multicultural requirement and is a member of the APC, discussed the faculty’s process of deciding what to do about the multicultural requirement and the other distribution requirements in general.

“I feel like the majority of the faculty understands that it is important to have something like [the multicultural requirement] embedded in the curriculum,” Wang stated. “But how we’re going to accomplish this…I guess people have different kinds of opinions about how to do this.” Wang mentioned that some faculty members feel that if the College continues to have distribution requirements that the multicultural requirement should remain intact.

Yet, she also mentioned that there are faculty members who believe that Mount Holyoke can reach the goals laid out by the multicultural requirement even if there is not an actual requirement. “I guess the opinion is that we offer enough courses that already cover different cultural perspectives and many courses that are diversified enough.  [And they include] different perspectives and cultures, and [some] feel like the requirement is not necessary,” she said.

In her opinion, Wang believes that the College should keep the distribution requirements because they emphasize certain “fundamental” skills that she believes are important for students.  She also explained that she does not believe that the multicultural requirement, as it currently stands, is especially burdensome for students. “Students can do ‘double-dipping.’ For instance students can take a course that is fulfilling [another] distribution at the same time that it is fulfilling the multicultural requirement,” she added.

Wang does not think that her course enrollment would be affected if the multicultural requirement were removed.  She cited that students take her Chinese Literature courses for a variety of reasons. “It’s not for that purpose that I want to keep it,” she clarified.

According to Wang, the multicultural requirement is also important for faculty as they propose new courses.  She believes that the requirement guides the College in a certain direction of cultural awareness. “To keep the requirement will make faculty members more purposeful and more intentional when they propose a new course,” claimed Wang. “[They will] try to include diversity and different kinds of cultural perspectives in proposing the new course, and that’s good.”

Students have a wide range of reactions when it comes to changes to the distribution requirements with some feeling that easing up on requirements will alleviate the workload of Mount Holyoke students and others arguing that the requirements are an essential component of Mount Holyoke. Erin Reynolds ’14, an Africana Studies major at Mount Holyoke, selected her major after taking a course in African Studies during her first year.  While she initially took the course as a way fulfill the distribution requirement, Reynolds stated, “That class opened up…everything that I’ve done in college.  I’m an Africana Studies major, and it all happened because I took that class.”

Reynolds is not in support of removing the requirement.  While she thinks that some of the requirements are unnecessary, Reynolds mentioned, “The nature of the multicultural requirement and the things that it exposes people to, it’s way more necessary than some of the other core requirements which I could take issue with.” She is in support of having the requirement reinstated under proposals that exclude this requirement, such as the one by the APC.