OVER THE past several years, a number of instances of racial intolerance have been perceived by the Minority Rights Coalition and other like-minded individuals to require solutions involving drastic action by the Board of Visitors. The request for such action has taken the form of the widely-circulated FORCE petition, a document that calls for the funding and implementation of a set of institutional changes aimed at fostering diversity in the University community. While the hearts of FORCE's supporters are surely in the right place, the specific measures called for by the petition are simply bureaucratic solutions that cannot truly create genuine diversity and equality.
Most glaring among FORCE's many requests is the call for the imposition of a mandatory diversity class on each of the University's 12,000 undergraduates. The aim here is to expose students to new ideas and discussions about diversity by requiring them to register for courses that integrate diversity into their curriculum. Despite what the Coalition has argued, this "diversity requirement," as it has come to be called, will never improve the race situation at the University. The vast majority of University students, who are already burdened by an extensive system of area requirements, are already racially tolerant and open to diversity. For these many enlightened students, a diversity requirement would not be needed to improve upon racial attitudes. The requirement would only result in stealing away another opportunity for these students to take a class in the subject of their choice.
On the opposite end of the spectrum, the few individuals at the University who are actively racist hold irrational opinions and will not be magically cured by involuntary enrollment in a diversity course. Does anyone believe that the thug who assaulted Student Council President-elect Daisy Lundy would have been deterred from his crime if he had taken a diversity course? Surely, a human being with that level of ignorance would find the willpower within himself to maintain an attachment to his deep-seated racism in spite of his diversity professor's teachings.
If anything, the diversity requirement would increase student resentment toward the concept of diversity-related institutions. One needs to look no further than current course requirements to observe this phenomenon. Most students in the College would be quick to express their hatred of the foreign language and non-Western perspectives requirements, and I know of few Computer Science majors who aren't bitter towards the field of Materials Science. The added constraints of a diversity requirement would no doubt breed a similar antipathy towards its subject matter as well, potentially increasing the already high levels of racial tension at the University. Steps to facilitate a greater understanding between students of different races can only work if they are taken voluntarily.
FORCE seeks to further alter the University's academic makeup by calling for the creation of major programs in Asian-American, Latino and Queer Studies to promote diversity alongside the preexisting department of African-American Studies. However, these programs also run the risk of contributing to, rather than easing, race and minority-related resentment. By associating an entire field of study with a specific minority, the University would simply be endorsing the notion that the minority group in question possesses irreconcilable differences with the majority, to such a degree that it must be studied separately. And what are we to make of majority groups who are denied a major focusing solely on them? Does the lack of a major in European-American or Heterosexual Studies imply that only minority lifestyles deserve to be studied? Whenever the differences between social minorities and majorities are highlighted, as would occur if FORCE were to be adopted as policy, disunity among groups is inevitable.
In this time of budget crisis and limited resources, the University is already stretched to the limit in terms of the services it can provide. The recommendations outlined in FORCE, which include a demand for the creation of an Office of Diversity and Equity and increased hiring of minority faculty, would cost money to put into effect that the state of Virginia simply does not have. In order for FORCE programs to be carried out, funds would have to be diverted away from some of the University's other departments, many of which are already ailing. It would be unjust to further bankrupt existing academic departments in order to make way for the implementation of the FORCE plan when the plan itself is unsound.
The Board would be in error if it was to adopt the FORCE plan as a means of committing the University to the goal of diversity. Though FORCE supporters have noble goals, they are misguided in their attempts to engender internal tolerance for diversity through external means. The only entity that can alter an individual's stance on race is the individual himself. Never will a bureaucracy or institution of human creation be successful in "force"-ing change within people's hearts.
(Chris Kiser is a third-year College student and is the Secretary of the College Republicans).
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