Malcolm Collier and Daniel Phil Gonzales
Those arguing against creating a BA degree program did so on pragmatic and philosophical grounds. They questioned whether it was realistic to have a BA program. How many students would want to have a major with no clear application after graduation? Could the department even afford to support a major, they wondered – pointing out that a number of traditional departments were struggling to survive because a major required regular offering of a broad range of courses that enrolled only majors, often with low enrollments that caused problems with the administration. They questioned whether we were ready or capable of offering a BA major program. More important, they questioned how the BA would benefit students and community. What would a student gain from having a BA in Asian American Studies? Are we certifying them as “genuine Asian Americans” – stamped double A like the Texas AA brand rice sack? Can it get them a job? What does it lead to? Are they better able to serve the community? How? The community needed teachers; it needed social workers. Would the community gain more from having Asian American Studies majors or from some other approach? They pointed out that there were alternatives – having concentrations within other majors, having a minor, or building institutes and training programs – as the department was already doing with the “Nine Unit Block” program in conjunction with departments in Behavioral and Social Sciences. They argued that the communities would benefit more by having people return with degrees in social work, teaching credentials, planning, even business, and other traditional degree areas – but who also had strong coursework and consciousnessraising in Asian American Studies. Priority should go to establishing ways of serving many students rather than the few students who might want a BA in Asian American Studies. They pointed to the placement of Asian American Studies courses in General Studies as part of that process, saying that the more students we can get to take our courses and the more AAS courses they take, the more students we will reach and potentially influence. This account does not do justice to the complexity of the positions on either side, nor to the ambivalence that many felt. But as the discussion continued there was a broadly shared and explicit priority expressed toward serving community and students, and relatively little concern with academic respectability, except as how that impacted the ability of the department to serve community and student needs and goals. Although the formal proposal from the committee had included discussion of the importance of providing a venue for scholarly research in Asian American Studies, this subject was not a major topic during the meeting. By evening it was clear that, while the Japanese American Planning Group generally supported having a BA program, the Chinese and Pilipino American Planning Groups were not convinced.
69
Lacking consensus, the matter was therefore put aside. Subsequently, the creation of an Asian American Studies minor was approved and put in place. The intense debate left hurt feelings but also had been a venue for sustained discussion of our goals and possible alternative approaches to achieving them. One result was a reexamination of General Studies as an area of Asian American Studies activity. We came to see our activity in General Studies, and the General Education requirements that replaced it in the 1980s, as a core part of our program although it was and is not seen that way by the larger institution. Stated simply, the idea was that both students and communities would benefit most from having students attain traditional degrees but also take a comprehensive set of courses in GS (later GE) in Asian American Studies that would serve to make them socially conscious and better informed about their communities. Whether they were bus drivers, teachers, social workers, small business owners, city employees, or whatever, they would also be primed to be active members of their communities. A secondary product of the BA decision was more focused efforts on projects and activities that served communities and students. In retrospect, the decision was a sound one at that time. The absence of a BA program allowed the department to be more experimental and flexible for many years, creating and dropping courses readily without having to commit to a set body of curriculum and, as will be detailed, able to respond creatively to serious threats to the program in the early 1980s. Equally important, the department’s ability to establish a core of tenuretrack and other faculty who did not have doctoral degrees was facilitated by the absence of a degree program. Had there been a BA degree the college administration would probably have been more aggressive in demanding more traditional degree qualifications in hiring. These elements in turn helped maintain a community-based focus on the program and a markedly independent attitude toward the larger academic world. However, the decision should have been revisited in the 1980s, by which time the department could have offered a degree program without many of the negative consequences feared in 1971. By 1986 the department had developed a cohesive, stable curriculum, fully integrated into General Education requirements, that was producing a large enrollment capable of supporting a BA program. Starting a BA at that later time would not only have provided a degree for which student interest was building but would also have encouraged Asian American Studies at SF State to take a more aggressive role in defining what the larger field of Asian American Studies might be. As it was, the goal of having a BA major in Asian American Studies was not finalized until 1998.