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March 01, 2005
Letter to the Editor: Hamline's cultural breadth inadequate
Colin Smith may not have taken Racial and Cultural Minorities this past fall, but I did. And I am deeply disturbed at the way this has turned into a campus-wide debate about one professor. This issue started as concern over the ability of the class content to meet the cultural breadth requirements. Maisue Xiong made several attempts to meet with Martin Markowitz to discuss the class content; I was with her on one such occasion (during his office hours) when he refused to engage in dialogue with us about our concerns. He still has not met with either of us to hash out these matters.
However, this issue is not about Markowitz or his teaching style. The debate over the subject matter of his course is only one example of a systemic problem. So let’s all stop and look at the real issues. First, the content of the cultural breadth needs serious evaluation. Dean Alzada Tipton told the HUSC general assembly last week that this is something that will be happening in the upcoming year. Evaluation of the cultural breadth has never been performed, and is long overdue. Students have been critical of the content of many of the cultural breadth requirements for years. However, it took an incident like this to call serious attention to this deficiency. Second, in a purportedly student-centered university, why are students discouraged from voicing misgivings and having a say in the content of their education? Are we not supposed to think critically of the information that is being presented to us? Why are students denied dialogue with professors about course content? Where do the lines of academic freedom and responsibility to students intersect? Smith and Xiong’s words were designed to draw attention to a serious, curricular problem that has been overlooked for far too long.
The Hamline community is believed to be safe. However, on a campus that parades the slogan “diversity matters”, the issues that people of color face are overlooked and brushed aside. White people are pushed through the system with classes that are supposed to teach them how to be “compassionate citizens of the world.” I see these classes leaving the majority of white people feeling like they’ve done their part. This causes more hurt and anger on the part of people of color that have to deal with so many white people who still just don’t get it.
Diversity is a term that is thrown around repeatedly on this campus, but in reality, what have we done?
Those who do not have power conferred upon them by the institutions of our society are not the ones who need to learn, and they certainly are not responsible to teach the rest of us. Why aren’t we white people teaching ourselves about race instead of always looking to people of color to provide the answers for us? This is something that we should know already; after all, whites (myself included) take advantage of the system of racism in this society every single day. It’s time to make it stop. Are we as a community going to continue to endorse the power that white people have over people of color, or are we going to plant the seeds of racial justice and make the commitment to truly be compassionate citizens of the world?
Shannon Malone
CLA Senior
Posted by msveum at March 1, 2005 07:47 PM
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