Dartmouth's faculty will discuss and possibly vote on a proposed new World Cultures distributive requirement entitled "Race, Ethnicity and Migration" at the Winter term faculty meeting this Monday.
Under the current system, Dartmouth students must complete one course in European culture, one in North American culture and one in non-Western culture. If the proposed system is adopted, students will instead be required to complete one course in Western culture, one in non-Western culture and one in Race, Ethnicity and Migration.
However, only members of the Class of 2006 and later -- or possibly even the Class of 2007 and later -- would be required to fulfill the new requirements, Student Body President Molly Stutzman '02 said.
According to former Student Assembly President Jorge Miranda '01, who helped to develop the new requirements, any course that examines how people construct race and identity would fulfill the new requirement. A number of such courses already exist, he said.
"An anthropology course about the definition of whiteness would fulfill it," he said. "A course on the Jewish-American experience or the African-American experience would fulfill it. Even Ed 20 [Education 20, "Educational Issues in Contemporary Society"] depending on the content, could fulfill it."
If the proposal passes, the faculty Committee on Instruction would be responsible for reclassifying existing courses.
Stutzman anticipated that the reclassification process might take a long time. "There's a great deal of debate about what's Western and non-Western, for example," she said.
As under the existing system, one course could fulfill both a World Culture and a distributive requirement. For example, one course might fulfill both the Race, Ethnicity and Migration world cultures requirement and the social analysis distributive requirement.
Edward Berger, former Dean of the Faculty, said that enhancing students' appreciation for cultural diversity was a primary goal of the new requirement.
"The events of the past six months have demonstrated that ignorance exists here," he said. "I'd like to see the student body become more aware of the differences that exist between cultures."
Stutzman described the purpose of the new requirement in similar terms. "We hope to get people to see the role that race and ethnicity play in different parts of the world and to see the effect that race and ethnicity play in our own community here."
Miranda said that the debate over the proposed requirement has had a long history.
The original proposal for the new requirement was drafted by the Student Assembly during the 1998-99 school year and was submitted to several faculty committees for review in the spring of 1999, according to Miranda.
Under the original Assembly proposal, students would have been required to take a course in race, ethnicity and migration in North America.
Miranda said that the requirement was changed to allow students to "learn about the formation of identities in a comparative context, rather than in isolation."
Berger stressed the importance of this change in the proposal. "The new requirement is less geography-based and more cultural," he said. "This way, students' appreciation of race, ethnicity and migration cuts across maps."
Miranda noted that, due to the proposal's long history, of the four classes currently on campus, only the '02s would remember the public debate over the requirement.
"I'm excited to see how three new classes will react to this," he said.
