Letters to the Editor | Ethnic Studies program not required for diverse curriculum

I must give credit to those who are in favor of establishing an Ethnic Studies program at Vassar. We have been inundated with letters to the editor, posters, and now a resolution by the Vassar Student Association. You can’t fault them for lack of trying. Still, I have not seen any evidence of how such a program would benefit Vassar. Ethnic Studies is not a part of the curriculum for any of our peer institutions. Amherst College considered and ultimately rejected Ethnic Studies. These programs are usually found at state schools and large universities that can support a preponderance of special interdisciplinary majors and departments. Meanwhile, Vassar already has Africana, Asian and Hispanic Studies. Wouldn’t Ethnic Studies simply replicate these existing programs?

Few students concentrate in these programs as it is. Adding another to the mix would only result in more administrative cost to the cash-strapped budget. Are we willing to accept a tuition increase in excess of six percent next semester? We are already paying over $44,000 annually. This comes following a campus-wide discussion about the affordability of higher education.

Also, proponents of Ethnic Studies don’t seem to realize that most disciplines at Vassar incorporate similar material in the classroom. As a History major, I have not yet taken a class in that department which has not discussed marginalized ethnic groups at length. The same applies to courses I have taken in Geography, Political Science, and Education.

My final point is that much of the Ethnic Studies literature and rhetoric focuses on the shortage of minority professors. It assumes that minorities are automatically more qualified to teach Ethnic Studies than whites. If there is a shortage of tenured minority faculty across all departments, then an institutional problem exists, and it should be separated from the Ethnic Studies campaign.

But even this argument doesn’t hold up under close scrutiny. One must consider the ratio of minority faculty members based on how many hold terminal degrees, not on the general population. Blacks account for 12.3 percent of the U.S. population, yet were awarded only 5.1 percent of doctoral degrees in America in recent years. For Hispanics, the numbers are 12.5 percent and 3.2 percent respectively (National Center for Education Statistics, 2005). First and foremost, faculty members should be hired and promoted based on their research and teaching ability, not the color of their skin.

—Troy Bailey ’07