The UCLA School of the Arts and Architecture wanted a diversity requirement ““ and, in 2007, passed it.
Today, it’s the only school at UCLA with such a requirement, as other parts of campus grapple with how to introduce one.
The College of Letters and Science is once again attempting to put a “diversity-related” general education requirement into place after failing to put a similar requirement through in 2004. UCLA is the only University of California campus without a diversity component among its general education criteria.
The proposed change to the College GE requirements, called the “Community and Conflict in the Modern World” requirement, would ask students to take a course that focuses on conflicts in specific communities and cultures. Faculty will vote on the requirement later this month.
In response to the failed attempt to implement a diversity requirement in the College in 2004, faculty and administrators in the School of the Arts and Architecture decided to take matters into their own hands.
Steve Loza, a professor of ethnomusicology, initiated the push for the requirement. Loza worked with the School of the Arts and Architecture’s Faculty Executive Committee, the faculty’s governing body, to draft the language.
The requirement states that “students in the arts must be trained to understand the local, national and global realities in which they make, understand and interpret art.”
Faculty in the School of the Arts and Architecture saw it as a necessary part of the education of a student body whose work depends on understanding the world and other people.
“I’m a jazz musician ““ a bass player ““ but my doctorate is in cultural anthropology,” said Christopher Waterman, who has been dean of the School of the Arts and Architecture since 2002, sitting in his office with his bass propped up behind him. “I think that it’s hard to understand anything about culture ““ about creativity in the arts ““ without (a diversity requirement).”
One of the concerns Loza has with the current proposal in the College is its focus on conflict.
“Including the word conflict in there could be pejorative,” Loza said. “A diversity requirement could include conflict among different communities. But why focus just on conflict?”
The School of the Arts and Architecture’s diversity requirement wraps around a range of classes. Students can fulfill it by taking GE courses, courses within their major or elective courses outside of their major, said Tim Rice, director of the Herb Alpert School of Music who worked on creating the requirement.
Most students already take courses related to diversity in their time at UCLA, Waterman said. Still, the School of the Arts and Architecture wanted to make a stand, he added.
“We think this is one of the functions of a liberal arts education ““ to learn about people who are different from you as a path towards perhaps discovering commonalities,” Waterman said.
The proposed “Community and Conflict in the Modern World” requirement steers clear from explicitly using the word diversity ““ instead, opting for “communities” and “conflict,” because some faculty members thought the words diversity was too political and hard to define. The School of the Arts and Architecture does use the term “diversity.” It asks students to take a course dealing with topics such as race, ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation, age or socioeconomic background.
Patrick Chew, a third-year Design | Media Arts student, has already fulfilled the requirement by taking Afro-American Studies M5: Social Organization of Black Communities ““ a course that also counted toward his GE requirements.
Chew said he liked taking the course because it was a change from the usual courses he takes, but he said he doesn’t think a requirement will make a difference for every student.
“(The diversity requirement) opens your eyes to a different set of classes,” Chew said. “But you can still just go to the class and take the tests. It’s really on the students. I don’t know if putting a requirement is going to open everyone’s eyes.”
The School of the Arts and Architecture’s diversity requirement has been largely well received, Waterman said.
“We would welcome it if the College got on board with us,” he said.