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Alternative-Coursework Legislation Defeated
By Gwendolyn Bradley
The Arizona Senate in March defeated a bill that would have allowed university and community college students to opt out of assigned coursework if they found the material personally offensive. The bill’s sponsor said it was prompted by the complaints of a student who was offended by a novel assigned in a course on American history and literature. The novel, The Ice Storm, is a satire about 1970s suburban life and depicts adultery, including a “key party” at which married couples swap partners. In February, the state’s Senate Committee on Higher Education approved the measure, which would have allowed students to do alternative coursework. But the bill was criticized by faculty, administrators, and state senators on both sides of the aisle. Critics said that allowing different students in a class to use different books would infringe on academic freedom, would make class discussion untenable, and could exclude important texts that include potentially offensive material.
The AAUP opposed the bill, since it would have curtailed the ability of faculty members to exercise their professional judgment about what a student needs to know to qualify for a degree in a given subject or to receive a well-rounded education.
“The bill was a prescription for chaos and its passage would have raised questions about the value of a degree from Arizona institutions,” says Joan Bertin, executive director of the National Coalition Against Censorship and a consultant to the AAUP’s Committee A on Academic Freedom and Tenure. “It could have allowed English majors to graduate without exposure to classics like Romeo and Juliet, Lady Chatterley’s Lover, and The Color Purple; biology and health science majors to avoid studying reproductive biology, sexual behavior, and treatment of sexually transmitted diseases; and art history students to refuse to study classic nudes.”
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