The base mission of Thurgood
Marshall College’s
Dimensions of Culture writing program is steeped in ideals of social justice
and betterment. It’s a touchy subject that brings fever to those who believe
those principles have been tarnished. Throw in allusions to revolutionaries and
TMC’s founding, and the controversy surrounding D.O.C. becomes something wider
in scope and importance. In fact, how UCSD treats D.O.C. in the near future
will shape its approach to the entire six-college system.

This realization comes easy because there is no simple
solution. The core cirriculum of D.O.C. cannot be improved without deeply
rooted surgery of university infrastructure. The newest report from D.O.C.
overseers calls for a cage-shaking that includes overhauling recruitment
methods and establishing faculty leadership.

Essentially, the social health of D.O.C. curriculum is
married to the teaching quality; will classroom teachers be committed to the
program’s purpose as an social enlightener? Will they have the verve to dig
deep into the prickly spheres of race and culture?

As it stands, such moxie is rare to find in ladder-rank
faculty. D.O.C. even banks on teaching assistants to lead some classes. The
loudest voices in the D.O.C. debate, from professors like David Gutierrez, are
exactly the type that need to have charge of classes if the program’s original
principles are to be preserved.

The report points to systematic weaknesses as the deterrent
for premier faculty from teaching D.O.C. Simply put, there is no incentive. Faculty
equipped to handle the expansive, perpetually complicated realms of diversity,
race and social improvement won’t bite on the unsavory bait of the D.O.C.
program.

There is no bonus given, no rank bestowed for teaching
D.O.C. classes, aside from the privilege of furthering the program’s mission.
But even worse, the best faculty are not being lured from D.O.C. — they’re
being forced from it. After all, why would a professor steer from
department-demanded grants and projects to handle an undergraduate class
without some meaty incentive? The system is naturally set up to funnel the
highest-quality faculty away from D.O.C., yet the core mission suggests that it
needs the best faculty.

In a sit-down interview with the Guardian, TMC Provost Allan
Havis strung the problem across all of the colleges’ writing programs. While
each of the colleges’ writing programs wield their own themes and mission
statements, they all clumsily tackle the methods of education. The Academic
Senate offers little support in providing even ladder-rank faculty to these
writing programs. Students and their lesson plans have suffered as a
consequence, producing students that absorb their curriculum from either
less-experienced faculty or greenhorn teaching assistants.

In addition, college departments battle college writing
programs for the same pool of professors. Oftentimes, departments win out
because faculty are more attracted to grants or published works.

If the campus wants to fulfill the original, lofty purposes
of D.O.C., the program simply needs to install the right teachers to run it.
But to achieve that, rearrangement will need to happen within the
administration and operation of TMC to make D.O.C. a magnet for faculty of that
caliber.

And even beyond that, the same technique could be applied to
all of the colleges’ writing programs. It’s a much-needed solution, as all six
programs suffer from complaints of watered-down, shallow curriculum tied to a lackluster
crew of ladder-rank, or lower, faculty.