While the recent and controversial ouster of Dimensions of Culture teaching assistants Benjamin Balthasar and Scott Boehm has sparked disapproval from students throughout Thurgood Marshall College, student concern with the “”watering down”” of the D.O.C. curriculum – an issue that has recently been addressed by the Lumumba-Zapata Coalition – is hardly prevalent.
At its most basic level, the D.O.C. program’s curriculum is meant to get students thinking about contemporary theories of diversity and identity in the United States. Whether it’s Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia’s majority opinion on a gay rights case or a piece asking white students to abandon their whiteness, the readings of the courses are intended to (and should) evoke some sort of strong emotion or opinion from students.
But, while the LZC has the passionate opinion that these texts do not reflect the original values upon which the program was originally based, judging from the regular laptop abuse in lecture (eBay.com purchases, viewing of Britney Spears’ vagina and lengthy I.M. conversations) and the growing number of students who use class time to power nap, it seems that the students who are actually being taught this material don’t care either way. That is, of course, unless Scalia has a Facebook account that features a recently uploaded album of him and his buddies getting trashed on a Friday night.
Excepting the bright-eyed, I-always-have-an-opinion individuals who fill entire sections with their own unrelated thoughts and dreams, the majority of students find whatever ways they can to avoid the educational messages of D.O.C. In the quarter focusing on justice, they look for short, succinct court case summaries online to avoid analyzing the lengthy prose of Supreme Court justices; in the Imagination course, they Wikipedia “”confusing”” pieces so they don’t have to do the actual critical thinking that’s required to understand them. In the Diversity section, they just don’t do or say anything, really.
So if the students of the D.O.C. program aren’t really engaging with the material presented to them in the first place, why should the department waste its time and energy revamping the entire curriculum? If anything, those in charge should use their resources to find more ways to actively incorporate students into the lesson. Instead of creating a Thurgood Marshall Curriculum Committee composed entirely of faculty members – as Thurgood Marshall College Provost Allan Havis did recently – administrators should actively seek to meet with and survey students to find what issues, or methods of teaching, would actually get students excited about the D.O.C. program. Without an effective educational system that gets students to connect with the curriculum, all efforts to improve that curriculum are futile.
Although the LZC thinks the D.O.C. program isn’t extreme enough (while the administration thinks its fine), ultimately it’s the students experiencing the D.O.C. series who decide whether to pick up their reader at the end of the day – or to look for an easier way out.
Until the program finds a way to present its subject matter in way that catches students’ interests, it seems the latter choice will be the inevitable one.
