In response to Miss Karen Craven’s article, “Requirement is asking for too much,” it is necessary to say that she is mistaken on what prejudice is, and that her own personal anecdote serves as evidence as to why the proposed multiculturalism should be required. Firstly, a person cannot be prejudice, but rather prejudiced (the difference between a noun and an adjective should be know to a writer who has her own column.) Miss Craven’s nine point list might be better started by asking the question, “Am I a prejudiced person?” Unfortunately Miss Craven, you and I are both prejudiced; in fact, every one has prejudice. By definition, prejudice means: a judgment or opinion formed without knowing the facts. Thus, it is feasible that a prejudiced person might or might not be a racist; nonetheless, we all judge before know the facts about someone or something.

In her last paragraph Miss Craven writes, “Students deserve the right to choose to be bigots or not!” With this statement, I agree, but the multiculturalism class has nothing to do with bigotry. The purpose of this class is to show that before reacting to a crisis, problem, incident, etc., decision makers need to account for the possible reaction from non-majority groups, as the difference in culture leads to different points of view. The multiculturalism class would be beneficial to students of al majors, since we all must deal with persons of different race and background.

John Hausmann

Junior

French language

a nd literature