Carlos Rivera-Anaya & Rohini Khanna: New requirement is needed

Many of us enter our four years at Penn excited and willing to meet anyone and everyone. As we settle into our comfort zones with a few of the people we find along the way, the chance to gain from the range of experiences on campus slips farther and farther out of reach. What then, is the benefit of the diversity of people and their unique experiences that make up our community? Has our appreciation of multiculturalism been reduced to an overextended Benetton commercial with flashes of different faces with different backgrounds without interaction or interpersonal growth?

Then we ask why the campus climate is so unwelcoming to issues such as class, race, ethnicity, gender and sexuality. As students on campus today, we are given the opportunity to learn from one another. It is long overdue for the University to actively engage in the collective drive to highlight a multifaceted subcurriculum as a goal towards a more representative and socially conscious undergraduate education.

We are confronted with the bevy of requirements and sectors set before us as "necessities" for a well-rounded experience in various fields and disciplines -- among them, a language and a quantitative analysis requirement. As we, the Student Movement for Change, draft the proposal of the American Cultural Analysis Requirement (ACAR) in conjunction with the Asian American Studies Undergraduate Advisory Board, we hope that this opportunity for a focus on the diversity of the American experience is recognized and translated into a pedagogical necessity.

It would be no different than the quantitative analysis requirement in that it is a course of choice that can fulfill a sector requirement and/or a major requirement. ACAR introduces neither a new mandatory course, nor one monolithic "diversity class"; instead, it is a single requirement that draws from a variety of departments to bring together a range of courses that embody an examination and reflection of race, ethnicity, gender, sexuality and/or class in American society. This endeavor cannot be confused with a community service requirement, as learning about disadvantage is not equivalent to episodic "aid-giving" interactions. While community service can be a very noble action, as was intended in the proposal set forth by Kevin Collins' column ("A New Way to Teach Diversity at Penn," The Daily Pennsylvanian, 1/26/04), we must be cautious in requiring such action.

In attempting to increase our commitment to diversity through community service, we make dangerous assumptions about the communities we are hoping to impact and ourselves as agents of service. When we are asked to step out of what some of us might consider comfortable without a deep understanding and heightened awareness of social factors contributing to needs for service, biases and misinterpretation can be more detrimental than helpful for either party involved. Therefore, an understanding of the U.S. social structure through a broader framework is in line in order to better inform our interactions within and beyond our community by bringing marginalized concepts of culture into the academic discourse in a way that has not been emphasized at Penn before.

This is a revisionist look at American history, overlooked stories in American literature, social statistics that fail to be fully understood, and an irreconcilable past and present that is the reality of so many Americans -- ultimately, these are voices that have not had a chance to speak confidently and assertively heretofore within the curriculum of the University of Pennsylvania. In a time of transition, ACAR can prove to be a great step and can follow in the lead of schools that have recognized its importance -- including Stanford, Columbia, Yale and Duke -- towards the betterment of our scholastic career.

Unlike common misconceptions about the hackneyed word "diversity" ACAR will highlight the intricacies that shape its concept. Namely, more than just different faces on the cover of a brochure or a range of skin colors represented by a picture of linked hands, diversity is variety in experience, perspective and story.

Thus, it is the goal of the Student Movement for Change to encourage dialogue across the student body, the faculty and the administration about what aspects of humanity are essential for all of us, as undergrads, to step away with from our four years here. It is our responsibility to decide how far removed from the reality of American society we would like to be at Penn; ultimately, our understanding and awareness of each other are at stake.Carlos Rivera-Anaya is a junior political science and sociology major. Rohini Khanna is a junior urban studies major. They are both members of the Student Movement for Change.

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