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A 17-year-old struggle inched one step closer to a resolution early this quarter when the Academic Senate made a commitment to implementing a diversity requirement in fall 2005.

With the continuous slashes to outreach and the significant drops in minority enrollment this year, campus diversity has taken a sharp downhill turn, limiting the scope of cultural backgrounds to which students are exposed.

And required courses to expand students’ perspectives – transcending the narrow breadth of knowledge of Western civilization repeated throughout the primary and secondary education systems – would be invaluable. The efforts of several dozen students who built a tent city, camped out on a campus lawn for three nights, and rallied to bring a commitment to reality is also commendable.

But the requirement in its currently proposed form is not adequate, as it could be fulfilled by a majority of the classes already offered in the curriculum.

Faculty and students must continue to work together to make the requirement something more substantive than a mere check mark on the list of required courses.

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