Two Virginia colleges face backlash after backtracking on plans to require diversity courses

Virginia Commonwealth University’s Board of Visitors voted in May to drop the requirement for students to take diversity-themed courses. Some students and faculty are outraged.

When the police killings of Black people, including George Floyd set off racial unrest across the country in 2020, Marie Vergamini decided she wanted to do her part to help address systemic racism. So, Vergamini, a doctoral student and adjunct instructor at Virginia Commonwealth University, joined a committee of faculty and students who were creating a racial literacy curriculum. Vergamini said they created lessons that covered the history of slavery in the United States, the Jim Crow era, racism against Asian Americans, and the nationwide movement to remove Confederate statues, including those in the state’s capital, Richmond, which was once the seat of the Confederacy. The curriculum, she said, was designed to benefit students of all races. “As a White woman, I have a lot of privileges and instead of being complicit in these systems I want to change these systems,” Vergamini said. “My privileges should be basic human rights for everybody.” The committee planned to make the racial literacy curriculum part of general education requirements for incoming students. Students would need to take one three-credit course out of a list of approved classes, faculty members told CNN.