Students Win Diversity Fight WSU Student Protests Help Push Through New Course

With high-fives and hugs, jubilant Washington State University students celebrated a faculty decision Thursday requiring three course credits of American diversity.

“When we’ve had to, we’ve opened doors and that’s what ASWSU is for,” outgoing student body President Neil Walker said after the vote, his face flush with excitement.

“We handled business the way it’s supposed to be handled and it has been a very long time coming,” said Symia Welch, a senior in business who worked on the issue since her freshman year.

The groundbreaking change in curriculum came after four years of political wrangling in four different university committees. It means after the year 2000, every WSU student must take a three-credit class that focuses on more contemporary American diversity issues such as race, gender, class, ability and sexual orientation.

Marching with signs to the faculty senate meeting - their final bureaucratic hurdle - more than 100 students chanted: “What do we want? Diverse curriculum. When do we want it? Now!”

Faculty were divided on the measure, which allows students to “double dip,” in several areas and achieve two requirements with a single course. For example, a student could take a required humanities class that also fulfills the diversity requirement. WSU already requires an intercultural course, but students wanted contemporary American diversity issues required in addition to global perspectives.

Accounting Professor Robert Greenberg fought unsuccessfully for an amendment that would have allowed the intercultural and diversity requirements to be interchangeable. Students will be exposed to broad diversity issues through intercultural courses, he argued.

The Greenberg amendment was voted down 35-23, with male faculty split fairly evenly and a majority of the female faculty voting against it.

The pressure of students, administrators and media monitoring the vote made one faculty member uncomfortable enough to call for a secret ballot. That motion also was killed.

Natural resources Professor Matthew Carroll supported the change, but not before chiding students for “intellectual dishonesty,” and “extreme political tactics.”

Pharmacy Professor David Sclar also voted for the requirement but expressed concern that additional requirements are keeping students from getting double-majors or developing depth in their studies.

“We have spread ourselves so thin that no one leaves here with a real solid education,” Sclar said. “It’s a smorgasbord approach.”

Faculty opposing the proposal argued it could hinder student flexibility, complicate transfers and lengthen the amount of time needed to graduate.

But communications Professor Robert Nofsinger said he was confident diversity could be incorporated into existing classes without much disturbance.

“I have faith in the ingenuity of the departments to devise courses in ways that will give us enough diversity courses without bending their four-year plan out of shape,” Nofsinger said.

The academic affairs committee supported the requirement because of its broad student backing, the current campus climate and because it would help WSU grads in the multicultural workplace.

It will put WSU’s general education program at the “cutting edge,” of higher education while requiring little monetary investment, committee members said.