A committee in charge of evaluating Thurgood
Marshall College’s
Dimensions of Culture undergraduate writing sequence released a comprehensive
report last week confirming public critiques that the program had lost focus in
its commitment to higher standards of learning.

The Curriculum Review Committee’s report addressed concerns
over the recurring structural issues that the writing sequence has encountered
since its formation in 1990. The committee’s concerns included a lack of cooperation
among the program’s faculty, staff and teaching assistants, the controversial
nature of the courses, the pedagogical integrity of a program whose primary
emphasis consists of writing instruction and the absence of ladder-rank faculty
— faculty members holding tenured titles or nontenured titles in a series in
which tenure may be achieved. It also stressed the need for both TMC and D.O.C.
administrators to collaborate on a major effort to modify the program.

“If the university intends to continue its commitment to the
college system — and to the crucial intellectual, social and community
foundations for the college curricula were designed to provide incoming
first-year undergraduates and transfer students — then we feel it is necessary
that TMC and the larger university recommit the resources necessary to revamp
the D.O.C. sequence, adequately train and mentor TAs and staff the course with
ladder-rank faculty,” the report stated.

Committee members voiced satisfaction with the report, which
took more than nine months to complete.

“The committee was unanimous on all of its recommendations,”
history professor David Gutierrez said. “I think we did a pretty comprehensive
and thorough job in terms of reviewing the program’s history and what’s been
going on lately, and I think we came up with some good ideas about how to
reform the program.”

The CRC — comprised of seven professors from six UCSD
departments — was created at the request of Marshall Provost Allan Havis last
May after D.O.C. administrators decided to not rehire two of the program’s TAs,
sparking a protest from the Lumumba-Zapata Coalition, a diverse group of UCSD
students and faculty.

LZC members launched a public campaign against what they
called the effective “watering down” of the D.O.C. program.

With LZC’s backing, a wave of student demonstrations spread
across campus, raising questions about the intellectual health of the program
since its inception almost two decades ago.

While the report marks a significant breakthrough for
concerned students and faculty, some members of the UCSD community worried
about issues that the report did not address, such as the dismissal of the two
TAs and broader questions of academic freedom that the decision posed.

LZC representative Benjamin Balthaser, one of the TAs who
was not rehired last year, said that the group was disappointed in the scope of
some of the report’s findings.

“The LZC supports many of the findings of the committee
report, namely that D.O.C. has failed in recent years to fulfill its special role
on campus to present marginalized viewpoints,” Balthaser said. “Yet, the LZC
feels the report does not go far enough, both in terms of pedagogy and its
silence on the issue of academic freedom in the program. We also have to
question why two TAs were dismissed, and why numerous other staff and faculty
have been pushed out of the D.O.C. program for issuing a similar critique.”

Some involved in the program questioned how the report’s
comments would be implemented, as the committee operates solely in an advisory
capacity.

“It seems to me that the prospects for the future revolve
around two issues,” Gutierrez said. “The first is whether the university is
going to commit the resources necessary to implement the recommendations of
this report. That’s the critical thing, and it involves not just the material
resources, but it also requires the university to adhere to the roles and the
function of the writing program. Step two is whether we can generate faculty
interest in taking over the interest.”

D.O.C. Director Abraham Shragge, an administrator at the
center of last year’s controversy, said he could not confirm whether UCSD will
fully implement the report’s recommendations. However, he said TMC faculty will
meet with members of the campus community during the next few weeks to discuss
the program’s future options.

Depending on TMC administrators’ receptiveness, D.O.C.
committee members expect class instruction to begin with the complete revised
curriculum by Fall Quarter 2010.