The central issue revolves around the two class diversity requirement. is in the process of changing their General Education curriculum. Bernabe has authored several articles on the issue since late January when it first began to heat up. Communication Studies major and reporter for the University Times at Cal State L.A., Angeline Bernabe has been closely covering the Ethnic Studies debate on campus over the last month. The conviction of the student activists led me to research the recent events, and there is more than meets the eye. Standing on the steps of the campus bookstore listening to the student activists a few days ago, I thought about how not much has changed in the last two decades. Some say the UCLA chancellor only made the concessions after national outlets like the New York Times reported the story. After a few clashes with campus police and a 14-day hunger strike, the demands of the UCLA student activists were met. in 2014, this series of events echoed throughout UCLA in 1993. Similar to the many debates now happening at Cal State L.A. This led a handful of UCLA students to protest on campus and stage a hunger strike. By 1993, many students were concerned that the program would disappear altogether if they did not take action. Though an Interdisciplinary Chicano Studies Department had been on campus since 1973, cutbacks in the late 1980s had downsized the course load to a much smaller set of classes. A very similar series of protests unfolded that year, when student activists demanded that the Chicana/o Studies Department at UCLA be officially established. The passion of the student activists took me back 21 years and reminded me of spring 1993, when I was a freshman at UCLA. Following her poem, a young man got up and enthusiastically led the group in chanting, "What do we want?" "Ethnic Studies!" "When do we want it now?" "Now!" Their passion was very moving and led me to stop what I was doing to listen to the speakers. This all changed earlier this week, when coming out of the campus bookstore I encountered a crowd of about 50-plus students and several professors, listening to a young woman read a poem on a megaphone. Though it has been in the news, up until a few days ago I had not encountered the protests and the public debates about the Ethnic Studies issue directly because my heavy workload and many writing deadlines have kept me in the library. Over the last two years I have been enrolled in the Masters' Program at Cal State L.A. and discusses why Ethnic Studies and events like Black History Month remain important. Letters examines the unfolding debate at Cal State L.A. Considering this historic precedent, and that 90 percent of the student body includes people of color, it is easy to see why this debate is relevant. is known for having the first Chicana/o Studies program in the United States. A heated debate over Ethnic Studies has gripped the campus at Cal State L.A.
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