Bailee Abell
ASSOCIATED STUDENTS BEAT REPORTER
Photo by Veronica Arvizo, Staff Photographer
The Associated Students Senate passed a Resolution Supporting the Establishment of a Gender and Sexuality General Education Requirement during their Feb. 25 meeting at the University of California, Santa Barbara.
The resolution, authored by on-campus senator Emani Oakley and off-campus senator Carlos Lopez, states that a gender and sexuality GE requirement “is necessary to learn to understand and appreciate the issues and constraints individuals and groups face based on their various gender and sexual identities in order to foster a more inclusive, informed, and affirming campus culture.”
“Universities are meant to grow, and that is kind of the whole point of this [resolution],” said off-campus senator Kevin Koo. “Especially as a progressive school, I think that this stands as a very good example of the generation that we are in.”
College of Engineering collegiate senator Jonathan Rothschild raised concern regarding how the new GE requirement would be implemented to undergraduate students in the College of Engineering.
Lopez addressed this concern, stating that this resolution is only to support the effort that is being done to establish the GE requirement, and that he and other senators working on this project plan to research how the requirement will be applied to undergraduate students in both the College of Engineering and the College of Creative Studies, both of which have separate GE requirements than the College of Letters and Science.
The resolution passed with a 16-3-3 vote. The project group to implement a Gender and Sexuality GE requirement will continue to perform research regarding how the requirement will be established.
Look, I appreciate the desire to make everyone feel welcomed and to try and educate others on the issues affecting different groups on campus. But to devote an entire class to each group for a whole quarter is not practical. Perhaps other courses can integrate these discussions into its course work. For example, you are already required to take a U.S. history course. It would not be out of line to include a chapter or two on gender issues in that course. We could also add a seminar during freshman orientation to help new students be more aware of these issues. There are GE courses that are added every few years and they make the time it takes to graduate longer, which means another quarter of dues and fees for students.
If it is essential to have these, then maybe it is time to re-evaluate the other GEs. For example, if a student absolutely knows they are going to major in English, must they take all these science courses? Same for a student majoring in chemistry. They know they won’t go to the humanities. Why do they need all these English courses?
Just food for thought.
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