Students' answer to 'microaggressions'? Mandatory diversity training
University of La Verne students confronted administration officials during a town hall with concerns about the treatment of minority groups on campus, specifically with regard to perceived “microaggressions.”
The University of La Verne in California hosted a town hall with a dozen administrators and at least 50 students, nearly a third of whom revealed that they’ve experienced microaggressions on campus, according to the school’s paper, Campus Times.
[RELATED: College rolls out colorful approach to ‘microaggressions’]
“Over a lifetime these individual microaggressions can make people feel isolated, unwelcome, or out of place,” ULV psychology professor Christine Ma-Kellams told the campus newspaper.
One student reportedly asked the panel when the school would require diversity training for faculty members, citing instances of microaggressions as the justification for such training. Beatriz Gonzalez, University of La Verne’s chief diversity officer, said that implementing mandatory diversity training for faculty likely would not be possible in the near future, but that it would have to be implemented over a period of time.
Campus Reform reached out to Gonzalez for comment, but did not receive a response in time for publication.
While students used the town hall to address the issue of microaggressions, La Verne’s director of Multicultural Affairs, Daniel Loera, questioned whether the topic might be better examined in a more personalized context.
Several students took issue with this suggestion, however, saying that it doesn’t address the “intimidation factor” that students have when dealing with faculty and that there could be problems with this method, alleging that faculty are often the perpetrators in microaggression cases.
[RELATED: Microaggressions can be ‘lethal,’ profs tells Berkeley students]
ULV student Arman Agahi, defended faculty, however, saying his fellow students were responding too “aggressively.”
The school did not return a request for comment in time for press.
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