On Monday, March 1, a petition to diversify the Humanities requirement was posted on Geneseo Speaks by Sigma Tau Delta, the English Honors Society. From its submission to its expiration date on March 31, the petition received 190 signatures, passing the 75 signatures required for the Student Association to look further into the petition.
The petition was put forth by Sigma Tau Delta's E-board with the ultimate goal of restructuring the Western Humanities courses, HUMN 220 and HUMN 221. The idea to draft up this petition came up over the summer, after viral demonstrations of police brutality against BIPOC sparked massive protests in the Black Lives Matter movement.
"A lot of students [wondered], what can we do?" said English literature and psychology double major senior Isabella Higgins, the Public Relations Chair of Sigma Tau Delta. "Especially being remote … what can we do to change our campus?"
Sigma Tau Delta looked to restructuring academics at Geneseo to affect change. This change was directed towards the Humanities requirement as it is one of the only General Education requirements that students are unable to opt-out of through credits earned outside of college.
"It's one course that everyone has to take, so it's an opportunity to really be able to reach a lot of people," Higgins said.
In diversifying the Humanities requirement, the representatives of Sigma Tau Delta hope to expand the perspectives of Geneseo's student body. Through offering readings that do not conform to traditional white male narratives, or through applying these readings to broader cultural communities and takeaways in modern society, students would be exposed to multiple perspectives.
Broadening the perspectives offered in the Western Humanities courses serves to challenge the academic standard of this white male narrative as a foundation of American learning.
"Our ways of learning, our ways of thinking, are all heavily influenced by the white majority," Higgins said. "It's evident that this institution was not built for perspectives outside of specifically white male perspectives."
While the college currently offers a Black Humanities course, HUMN 222, to fulfill the Humanities requirement, Sigma Tau Delta wishes to offer diversification within the Western Humanities course specifically to expose all students to varying perspectives, rather than only students who opt to take courses focusing on these perspectives.
"[HUMN 222] is a great model to kind of base the change we want off of," Higgins said. "Having labels in front of the Humanities courses could easily deter the people who don't want to take those courses. If you are someone who has no interest in hearing about the Black experience … you don't have to, because you can just see the [other] courses."
Sigma Tau Delta is additionally hoping to address the support of the faculty and staff who would be teaching these courses if the Western Humanities requirement were to be diversified.
"You can't control the way that professors are going to teach their course and the perspectives that they're going to bring in," Higgins said. "It's tough … I would love for humanities to be diverse, but I would love for every single field at the college to be diversified—but there are certain professors who don't agree with that and who you probably don't want teaching that."
As the Student Association continues to look into the petition, it will likely be passed along to the Humanities Review Board, whose approval would be needed in order for the changes to go into effect. The Curriculum Design Working Group is additionally addressing this request in looking at Humanities requirements moving forward.
Beyond the goal of acknowledgment from SA, the petition was posted to inform the student body about the goals of Sigma Tau Delta.
"We just wanted a platform that all Geneseo students had access to," Higgins said.