Today's School of Arts and Sciences Faculty Senate meeting will be a flashpoint in an ongoing controversy over the role of cultural diversity in the school's curriculum.
Several leaders of minority student groups on campus plan to present College of Arts and Sciences Dean Dennis DeTurck with a petition to include U.S. cultures in a new "cultural analysis" curriculum requirement.
The group of student protesters -- which calls itself Engage Penn Locally -- says it wants material on American minority groups included in the College's curriculum. As it stands, the Cross Cultural Analysis Requirement only demands the study of foreign cultures.
Administrators have yet to determine how students would fulfill the requirement.
The minority-group leaders will present the petition tomorrow before the faculty vote not on whether the United States should be studied, but on the administrative language of the CCAR. Student Committee on Undergraduate Education Chairwoman Farrah Freis said that topic was not up for debate because the faculty Committee on Undergraduate Education decided last spring that the focus of the requirement should be foreign countries.
"The point of what they're protesting is a little off the mark," DeTurck said. "It surprised me, actually, last spring that things were so quiet ... that students didn't somehow react more like this when the requirement was actually being framed."
DeTurck added that the requirement was always intended to address the study of foreign countries and that students petitioning had misconstrued its meaning last spring.
But the students organizing the protest think otherwise.
"When it was first proposed, there was a tacit assumption that it would include a domestic minority," said College freshman Mia King, who helped organize the petition.
The group publicized the online petition -- which, as of last night, had 282 signatures -- primarily through listservs of on-campus cultural groups.
"The sub-committee on CCAR's blatant disregard of a domestic component implicitly devalues students' past efforts to inspire change within the curriculum," the petition read.
The petition also points out perceived ambiguities in the language of previous versions of the CCAR as "problematic."
DeTurck, however, said the petition will not influence the Faculty Senate decision because the issue is not up for debate. But the dean added that the College curriculum changes are far from being settled.
"I'm looking forward to the conversation," DeTurck said. "There's the notion that we're trying to sneak this by somehow and that's certainly not what's happening."
DeTurck added that because of faculty interest, discussion on ways to include American cultural studies into the curriculum will be the Committee on Undergraduate Education's highest priority after it decides on the final structure of the requirement.
Protest petition - Minority group leaders will submit petition today - Group protests U.S. absence from new requirement
