One student reported that at times he felt his peers looked at him like he "fills a quota." Another student reported that the atmosphere felt like he "fills a quota." And another student explained that he cringed every time a class discussion started with "I don't mean to be racist, but your people ."
The stark truth is that as a community, we have much work ahead of us in creating a wholly inclusive classroom environment. With minority representation and inclusion, the University is a progressive institution and a leader amongst its peers. But to ignore the problems that remain would be to sell short both the progress that we have made and our potential to continue progressing.
To better understand these issues, we formed the Working Group on Minorities in Undergraduate Education. Led by a team from the Undergraduate Assembly's Academic Affairs Committee and composed of leaders from the Asian Pacific Student Coalition, Lambda Alliance, Latino Coalition, UMOJA and United Minorities Council, we began a broadly consultative, highly pluralistic study on the status of minorities in undergraduate education. Through a comprehensive series of interviews with students and professors, we sought to answer two questions. First, are ethnic/gender minority students included in the classroom? Second, are our minority-studies programs being adequately supported?
Our results, which yielded a report and proposals for each of the coalitions involved, were surprising and disappointing. Students expressed a variety of sentiments about inclusion at Penn. One common theme described the conceit of forced ethnic roles. Many students felt that because of the ethnic identity they brought into the classroom, their performance or "suitability" for that class was questioned. At other times, they were expected to act in certain ways by professors and fellow students.
On the subject of minority-studies programs, students responded equally strongly. They felt that a University commitment to ethnic/gender minority studies represents a commitment to minorities themselves. About Latin American & Latino Studies and Africana Studies, students felt that the interest was there to expand current offerings and to advance the programs to department status, which would bring increased latitude to offer courses and recruit faculty. With the case of Asian American Studies, our participants believed that the University could do a better job in allowing courses to count for distributional and major requirements. And with lesbian gay bisexual transgender studies, our discussants believed firmly that this was an area with the potential for strong University leadership to round out the current core of renowned LGBT studies experts on Penn's faculty. Overall, we sought to expand the role of cultural diversity in the curriculum by shoring up support for minority studies, increasing minority representation in the faculty and promoting the study of cultural diversity.
Additionally, our avenue of approach in legitimizing and broadcasting our work was important in itself. In presenting our report and proposals to the UA, we sought support from an institution that has traditionally been passive to the concerns of different minority groups. After the UA meeting on the evening of March, 22 2009, in which all five of our proposals passed, we felt reassured that the UA was finally turning its eye toward communities that have historically been underrepresented both in student government and in the decisions student government makes. With UA support secured for our initiatives, we will continue our push for inclusion into the next year.
This is a new step in a discussion that has been long awaited among Penn's minority communities. Because of positive and negative recent developments - such as the Asian American Studies budget crisis and the development of the Africana Studies Ph.D. program - we aimed our report and proposals towards substantial, long-standing problems that we and our interviewees perceived in our interactions within the University community. While smaller, issues-focused gestures from the University are welcome, it is only when we work towards resolving the largest, most important problems in the largest, most important arena - the classroom - that we will become a truly inclusive community. Our goal is a simple one: We believe that it is time our community - whether administrators, faculty or students - reaffirmed and renewed its commitment to ethnic and gender minorities at the University.
G.J. Melendez-Torres is a Wharton and Nursing sophomore. He wrote this piece with the Working Group on Minorities in Undergraduate Education, an Undergraduate Assembly-organized group.
The Daily Pennsylvanian is an independent, student-run newspaper. Please consider making a donation to support the coverage that shapes the University. Your generosity ensures a future of strong journalism at Penn.
DonatePlease note All comments are eligible for publication in The Daily Pennsylvanian.
