Professor speaks out after VCU postpones racism course requirement - WWBT

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RICHMOND, Va. (WWBT) - Staff and professors at VCU are speaking out after a decision from the university last week was made to postpone what would have been a required class on racism for incoming students this fall semester.

Back in 2020, during social unrest in the city of Richmond, students at VCU launched a racial literacy initiative.

A year later, the course was approved, and talks continued to make a class on race required for incoming VCU students.

In 2022, the school’s board of visitors approved the requirement with plans to implement it in 2023.

“This is a racial literacy course that helps to frame systemic institutional racism,” Everett Carpenter, a professor at VCU, said. “Where it comes from and how to combat it. So that the next generation of students we graduate understand that situation.”

Carpenter is one of many signatures on a letter sent to the VCU administration calling out the university for not meeting that goal and calling the reasoning discriminatory.

“For the past three years, they’ve known this course was going to be required, yet they put no resource toward staffing it and getting it up to capacity,” Carpenter said. “Now, because they starved that course of resources, they’re saying there is no faculty to teach it, so we’re just going to cancel it indefinitely.”

The university says only two courses offered right now fit that requirement.

Introduction to Race and Racism in the United States and Reading Race has 700 students enrolled for the fall semester.

VCU said it needs more courses to fulfill the requirement for its approximately 5,000 first-year/transfer students.

“I absolutely think it does a disservice for students coming into the fall,” Carpenter said. “While the courses are still available, not being a requirement means that very few students are going to be taking it, and a majority of students would be benefiting from that course.”

VCU said in the next few weeks, it will work with the University Undergraduate Curriculum Committee (UUCC) to develop a plan for meeting this goal.

Carpenter said because many staff members supported the requirement, they’re disappointed they were not considered in how to find an alternative to pushing it back.

“I would like to see the faculty and stakeholders be more involved in these decision-making processes so that changes do not come about that confuse the students or do the students a disservice,” Carpenter said.

VCU said it has spoken with students already enrolled in the two courses about the change and that the course can satisfy the ConnectEd Diversities in Human Experience requirement if needed.

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