Two LSU faculty senators have withdrawn their resolution to require all undergraduates to take an introductory class to African and African American studies (AAAS).
During Monday evening’s Faculty Senate meeting, a motion was passed to move the resolution to a special committee for further evaluation. After this motion was passed, the two senate sponsors, Cassandra Chaney and Sonja Wiley, decided to withdraw the resolution from the senate, calling the motion for a committee “a stall tactic.”
“We, the committee that write the resolution, understood that this was a possibility,” Interim Director of LSU AAAS Lori Martin said of the motion, “and agreed that if this happened, that we would refuse to be part of a process aimed at delaying the resolution and/or de-centering anti-blackness.”
No further action will be taken in regards to this specific policy.
The purpose of course proposal was to “confront anti-blackness by ensuring undergraduate access to anti-racist curricular offerings,” the resolution reads.
“We believe that anti-blackness is a problem in our society,” Wiley said. “It is a problem in our university.”
Many professors spoke on behalf of their departments and listed concerns about the logistics of requiring the course, such as financial costs, the course not being diverse or representative enough of other minorities and the sections of the class having to be increased from three to over 130.
These concerns were to be specifically addressed in the special committee should the resolution have not been withdrawn.
This story will be updated as more information becomes available.
AAAS course requirement resolution withdrawn from LSU Faculty Senate
January 26, 2021