Faculty, administrators and students filled the Alumnae Lounge last night for a community discussion aimed at addressing the classroom environment and curricular issues at Tufts.
The discussion was the first in a series of three "community conversations" Dean of Student Affairs Bruce Reitman organized for this month in an effort to promote a continuation of the dialogue that was sparked by several racially tinted episodes last semester. These include an incident in December involving an African−American male who was carrying a wrench that was mistaken for a gun and the student−backed proposal for the creation of an Africana Studies department.
The discussion last night centered on questions of how to make Tufts' academic curriculum more responsive to underrepresented viewpoints.
"We brought up three main insights — how Tufts can institutionalize programs to give them more depth and more strength, offer and persuade students to take courses that place them outside of their comfort zone — where real learning takes place — and how to construct a course in a way that makes it inclusive to everyone taking it," Reitman said in an interview after the discussion.
Students at the event expressed a desire for the university to better support interdisciplinary programs such as women's studies, Latin American studies, American studies and similar tracks that bring to light the perspectives of historically marginalized groups.
Several attendees noted that these programs are understaffed and unable to accommodate student demand.
Tufts Community Union Senator Joe Thibodeau, a freshman, said that strengthening such programs would ultimately mean that students would be more tolerant of diversity on campus.
"More exposure is the key message," Thibodeau said. "We need to create a curriculum that prepares people to respond to people with different backgrounds and that offers courses that may change students' outlooks and force them to ask, ‘How can I translate what I learn in class to my everyday life?' We need to change the norm."
Adding courses and increasing academic support for interdisciplinary programs are not sufficient to change the way students on campus view marginalized groups, Assistant Professor of Sociology Ryan Centner said.
"Although I support the idea of more curriculum offerings that address these types of issues and [the idea] that these should be more regularized and consistent, I don't think we can say that if we had more women's studies courses, for example, it would fix all sorts of problems relating to sexual discrimination on campus."
Senior Chartise Clark noted that although the number of students majoring in American studies may be low, the program is unable to support the high student demand for courses like "Race in America."
"If the institutional support was there, we could reach twice as many people and that would lead to twice as many conversations on race," she said. "The way the institution treats those courses reflects the way they are viewed in the academic hierarchy."
Dean of Arts and Sciences Joanne Berger−Sweeney acknowledged that the university should respond to student demands to increase support for interdisciplinary programs but said that institutional change is not a simple task.
"We need to stop and think about how to change as institutions that are relatively static structures. … There's no quick fix," Berger−Sweeney said.
Berger−Sweeney suggested that the university could facilitate support for interdisciplinary programs by hiring faculty under the stipulation that they would be asked to teach courses precisely in those programs.
Students at the discussion emphasized that academic diversity should be a priority for the administration, arguing that among the classes Tufts offers, few include perspectives of black, LBGT and female thinkers.
"The idea of a static institution is very dangerous," junior Sadie Lansdale said. "If we are as progressive an institution as we say we are, we shouldn't be focused on what our academic focuses were in the past but what we want them to be in the future."
Universities are some of the oldest institutions in the Western world and are thus ripe for change, Lansdale said, adding that many continue to tout a white−centered perspective.
"We need to move beyond that narrative and recognize that it was formed by white males who only taught Latin and talked to other white males."
