Behavioral science, quant II…diversity ed?

Originally published February 5, 2009.

Every year, University housing sends new paraprofessionals through a variety of training sessions in order to prepare them for their residence hall positions. One of the training requirements for these students is an actual course, EOL199.

While new housing staff takes a specific version of this course, many sections are offered for undergrad students, recently revamped from EOL199 to EPSY203. Titled “Social Issues Group Dialogues,” the class “provides students with opportunities to converse on specific diversity and social justice topic areas offered as separate sections,” according to its description in the spring semester course catalog.

Essentially, the idea behind the course is to spend the latter part of the semester engaging in in-depth conversations with a small group of other students about specific social-identity-related topics such as sexual orientation, religion, race and ethnicity, among others.

Given the University’s current climate regarding issues of diversity, especially race and ethnicity, it’s encouraging to see that so many sections of this potentially eye-opening course are being offered for this semester (nine in all).

At the same time, I don’t think this is an effective implementation of this course. Its potential to do a lot of good for the University community is being stunted by its presentation.

First, it’s not even a full-semester course. That makes no sense given the complexity of the topics under discussion. One semester may only be enough to scratch the surface of subjects within gender, racial and religious studies, but six weeks is not even enough to make a mark.

Second, each course section admits students only by application. This may not be a big deal for students interested in taking EPSY203, but it eliminates campus-wide appeal. A student’s desire to take the course is likely precipitated by some interest or experience in diversity education, and while it’s fantastic for everybody to think deeply about social issues, this is not necessarily the type of person who really needs to take classes such as these. Rather, it’s the students who won’t go through the hassle of filling out an application, the students who have never given a thought to social identities and issues – the students who believe “diversity” is just some politically correct term that will disappear after graduation.

What we need is a broader version of EPSY203, one that lasts a full semester and examines social issues related to not just one specific aspect of social identity but to all of them. Courses meant to fulfill the non-Western/U.S. minority culture and behavioral science gen ed requirements don’t put students in a room together with the object of engaging them in dialogue about their life experiences being black, lesbian, Christian, poor, straight, differently abled, Muslim or white. For many students, the gen ed requirements put in place to make them “well-rounded young leaders in today’s world” are forgettable lectures in which their instructor doesn’t know their name or grade their assignments, much less push them outside their comfort zones.

Ideally, this introductory social issues course would be required for all undergrads during freshman year, first semester. It’s not intended to convert anyone to hardcore liberal thinking, as many might complain, but simply to act as an introduction: to make students aware of their surroundings.

Although campuses may promote diversity and tolerance differently than “the real world,” the knowledge that there are more types of people out there than just themselves equips students not only to better understand their society but also to better understand the increasingly global market. It encourages respect for others and creates cultural learning opportunities by enabling thought-provoking discourse instead of an evangelism of opinions.

Let’s face it: The campus perceives diversity initiatives like Inclusive Illinois as almost as badly managed and ineffective as Global Campus, but a required introductory diversity course has the power to really highlight social issues in a way many students may never have thought about them – through the eyes of a friend or classmate met in an intimate discussion setting every week.

Perhaps instead of just making us take a physical science or some quantitative reasoning classes, the University could include little things such as, say, teaching us to coexist with one another, too.

Chelsea is a senior in English and creative writing and is trying to learn to evenly apply 30 lbs. of pressure with her espresso tamper while rotating it 720 degrees.

Shepard’s death still haunts U.S.

Originally published October 9, 2008.

For those of you who didn’t know, October is LGBT History Month. October also boasts the Human Rights Campaign’s National Coming Out Day on the 11th and the Gay, Lesbian and Straight Education Network’s Ally Week next week. The 12th, however, is left open – and for good reason.

October 12th, 2008 marks the 10-year anniversary of the death of Matthew Shepard, a University of Wyoming student who was killed because of his sexual orientation. Shepard was brutally beaten and left to die tied to fence in the middle of nowhere on October 6-7, 1998. He spent roughly 18 hours like this, falling into a coma before he was discovered. He never regained consciousness.

I bring this up because 10 years later, Wyoming’s hate crime law still doesn’t include any identity-based terminology to protect its residents…and neither does Arkansas, Georgia, Indiana, or South Carolina. Fourteen other states have hate crime laws in place that don’t include crimes based on sexual orientation or gender identity. Only 11 states include both terms in their laws.

Of 7,720 reported single-bias hate crime incidents (keyword: “reported”) listed in the 2006 FBI hate crime statistics, 15.5% stemmed from a bias against sexual orientation. Of the 1,415 offenses that resulted from these incidents, approximately 98% were motivated by bias against people perceived as gays, lesbians, and bisexuals.

There’s the rub: we’re talking FBI stats, federal information. All this is brought to you by the 1990 Hate Crime Statistics Act that Congress passed, mandating that the Attorney General collect information about crimes that display proof of prejudice based on various social identities, including sexual orientation.

But when the Matthew Shepard Act came up in Congress last year proposing that the federal government do more than just compile data, President Bush threatened to veto it. The act, though it stood alone in the House, was attached to a Department of Defense Authorization bill in the Senate. The right railed against its potential impediment of free speech (answer: none), and the antiwar left opposed provisions in the defense bill to which it was connected. Support for what had been a bipartisan bill crumbled under a looming veto.

The act’s formal title, the Local Law Enforcement Hate Crimes Prevention Act, reflects the fact that this legislation was not only about the inclusion of sexual orientation and gender identity. The federal hate crimes statute that exists also excludes disability and gender. LLEHCPA proposed to add these, in addition to the other two. It also authorized the Department of Justice to help state and local governments with the investigation and prosecution of violent hate crimes, and to assume jurisdiction in dealing with such cases in special circumstances. Finally, it extended the application of the hate crime statute beyond federally protected activities (such as school and voting).

The silencing of this act reflects another statistic: 30 states still don’t have laws protecting people from discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity. That means in places like Missouri, it’s legal for someone to be fired from her job or evicted from her home for being a lesbian-and yes, it happens. That being said, I’m not comfortable leaving the pursuit of justice in response to hate crimes to state governments who can’t observe the right of human beings to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness free of the stifling oppression of prejudice.

No, that doesn’t mean LLEHCPA ensured the intervention of the federal government in the law proceedings of states.

It meant that if states were unwilling or unable to pursue a case, or if the government felt that insufficient measures were being taken to eradicate hate crimes, the Department of Justice could step in. Does that erase hate-motivated violence and discrimination? No, but it was, and still is, an absolutely necessary start.

The most recent suppression of this legislation happened last December, but let’s not kid ourselves. Incarnations of this act have been tossed around since 1999. Apparently people are too blinded by the controversy over same-sex marriages to even consider taking steps toward a common, consistent response against hate-motivated violence.

When Russell Henderson and Aaron McKinney were brought to court for the murder of Matthew Shepard, they couldn’t be prosecuted for a hate crime because of both U.S. and Wyoming legislation. It speaks volumes about American integrity that in 10 years, nothing has changed.

Chelsea is a senior in English and music and has subsisted almost solely on Indian food this week.