The University Faculty Senate recently approved a proposal which will require incoming freshmen by 1991 to complete a diversity course requirement in order to obtain a baccalaureate degree. Roger L. Geiger, an associate professor in the College of Education, submitted a forum (Collegian, March 26) which brings up an interesting, albeit unfocused and ultimately unsubstantiated, point about the new requirement.

The forum, through a long-winded and often contradictory route, professes that those who teach diversity courses will wield the power that a new political course agenda affords them for some negative end, which involves the manipulation of students by a "tilted" curriculum.

Geiger uses the analogy that since European history courses were used to "inculcate those traditions that our (Western civilization) upheld (to conduct war)," then certainly "underrepresented groups (will be) prone to the same foibles as Euromales."

We can't make this analogy work for us: Western Civilization courses are to war, as Women's studies courses (or Black studies, or Hispanic studies, or Asian studies ... ) are to WHAT?

The analogy is flawed because the model of teaching Western civilization to predominantly Western students is not comparable to teaching students about another culture. If Geiger doesn't believe that he is a product of Western culture, then why does he consistently use Latin phrases (i.e. "writ large") and words with Greek roots (i.e. "eclectic")?

If diversity courses are "tilted" as Geiger suggests, then are we to assume that an "untilted" course is one which deals with Western Civilization in all its glory, and that the inclusion of diversity courses are an eruption of politics into an otherwise neutral curriculum?

Curriculum has always been political; it exists the way it is now for political reasons, and we cannot derive from the forum what Geiger believes to be the hidden agenda of diversity courses.

At this point in the forum, Geiger strays from his original argument to deal with the problems of a mandatory course requirement. Geiger believes that diversity courses have a "purpose" which requires a political slant on issues that might be covered in class.

Again, as with the poor analogy, he does not elaborate on the nature of the political goals of diversity courses, and so we can only state what we believe those courses to, in reality, accomplish: the inclusion of historically underrepresented peoples in a curriculum which routinely excludes them.

In other words, the "political" goal of consciousness raising is to bring students who were formally marginalized by traditional curriculum and canon into the academic experience -- hardly the subversive goal Geiger alludes to.

Geiger's second break from his original argument (totally lost by this point) enlightens us to the fact that those who have the power to make a new course requirement have a "naive view of student psychology."

We, undergraduate students, are pleased that this proposal was approved by the Faculty Senate and have worked closely with faculty and students toward this end. Are we unaware, then, of exactly what motivates us to work for the inclusion of all peoples in Penn State academics?

We can only wonder why, now that an enlightened professor has returned to the "business," he is not using his insight into the dangers of a narrow, biased curriculum to work for an open, globally inclusive academic atmosphere.

Perhaps he believes that required physical education credits and optional diversity courses do not indicate a set of warped priorities on the part of the Penn State administration.