Draft Sample AB1460 Advocacy Letter 11/08/2020
Dear (ASCSU, Board of Trustees, Chancellor White, Governor Newsom, …)
As a ___[insert title or role, e.g. Professor, chair of…], I write to strongly encourage you to support the California State University (CSU) Council on Ethnic Studies’ (CES) proposal to implement the Weber Bill AB1460 Ethnic Studies requirement as a Freestanding Graduation requirement satisfied by upper or lower division Ethnic Studies courses with no changes to General Education–the most efficient, effective and authentic mode of implementation. This model is so simple that it is difficult for some to understand, because we have become to accustomed to unnecessarily complex, expensive, labor intensive and confusing models. Simply put, campuses just add the requirement into the bulletin, advise students on how to take it, and provide enough course sections for the students to succeed.
I strongly oppose the Chancellor’s Office’s proposal to alter General Education, the most complex curricular component, creating predicable and likely unanticipated challenges for most campuses to conform, diminishes other diversity offerings just as we ar3e attempting to expand them by diluting GE area D, and restricts the requirement to lower division courses when most campuses would be better served by the flexibility to satisfy the requirement with both lower and upper division courses, particularly since most have more upper division than lower division offerings already in place.
I have attached a copy of the CSUCES position statement for more detail. In this moment, where we need greater access to diversity, equity and social justice education, and, in particular, an authentic Ethnic Studies requirement implemented in the most effective manner, I encourage you to make history with us and support the CSUCES freestanding model and reject the CO’s less effective and more expensive GE model.
Sincerely
[insert name, title and contact]