The Steering Committee on Campus Diversity is undertaking initiatives to increase diversity awareness on campus by adding new courses to the curriculum and planning special events.The committee was formed in light of a perceived need for heightened sensitivity to how the community responds to diversity issues on campus, according to Provost and Senior Vice President for Academic Affairs Marty Krauss.

The committee is comprised of Administration members, staff, faculty, and students - it is divided into three distinct subcommittees to focus on individual issues.

"[The Steering Committee's] goal is that all students feel that Brandeis is their home, and to the extent that students don't feel at home here, we need to address that in the social climate... and academic climate here," Krauss said.

Dean of Arts and Sciences Adam Jaffe -who chairs the subcommittee most involved with curriculum-focused efforts-said he said that following extensive analysis of current curriculum offerings, additional courses spanning many departments will be added gradually to the curriculum.

He said 16 new courses centered on diversity would be offered for next year. These include one course in Near Eastern and Judaic Studies (NEJS) and Women's Studies. Other courses topics will deal with studies of race, ethnicity, gender and nationality.

The Administration originally considered implamenting an additional core requirement in the curriculum for students to teach and build awareness about diversity-related issues. But now Jaffe said he considers this option unlikely.

The feedback Jaffe said he received gave him the impression that most students want to retain flexibility in their schedules, and the committee was not eager to pursue this option.

But the second form of curricular changes to be addressed by the committee will regard diversity issues in other ways. Rather than adding additional classes, this second process entails working to improve the way in which ideas about diversity are taught and expressed throughout a student's academic career,

"That's a more difficult and fundamental task to deal with," Jaffe said. "It's about teaching values...more broadly. I don't know what kinds of ideas and changes will eventually emerge from that."

Yanina Seltzer '05, who sits on both curricular subcommittees and the subcommittee addressing faculty issues, saw the curriculum-focused effort as a new and much-needed approach to tackling diversity issues head-on from an academic perspective, especially following upheaval that occurred last fall.

"In different cases, we haven't seen this kind of response from the community so quickly, so assertively," Seltzer said. "It gives me hope. Based on everything that happened, I think everyone was very disheartened and disenchanted, and we were hoping for a response from the Administration. The response from the academic side was essential."

The second sub-committee called "Increasing our skills," according to Krauss, will develop the faculty's resources and capacity to deal effectively with diversity in the classroom.

Seltzer also said that a training program had been brought to Brandeis on Jan. 12 to demonstrate a possible program to be used for training faculty. Approximately 24 faculty members attended the pilot program for half a day.

Krauss said, "It was an interesting exercise, but ultimately the faculty decided that we have the internal resources and capacity to develop our own programs, which is what the Steering Committee has done."

The third subcommittee, chaired by Prof. Faith Smith (AAAS), is working on an event called "You are "It": Telling Our Stories at Brandeis," scheduled for Mar. 30 from 5 to 7 p.m. in the Shapiro Theater. The event will involve a theatrical presentation designed to elucidate multiple perspectives from people within the community, as well as a follow-up group discussion.

According to Smith, the subcommittee is focused on discovering the various stories and narratives of "how each person or constituency would respond to the question: "what is it like to me on this campus or what is it like to be not me?""

Smith believes that the work of this subcommittee is integral in grasping a firm sense of how different people think without forming the assumptions that tend to dominate individuals' thinking.

"The first step in airing these narratives is that we just want to know what people think," Smith said. When discussing words like diversity, "you can have diversity without addressing issues of justice, peace, or resolution. There are many words like that where just to say them doesn't mean we're solving the problem.

"In this case, art and theater is a way of not just being self-evident about things [and instead] using art and dialogue to complicate issues. We as a community talk past each other all the time, so we just want to hear what folks think about things."

After "You are it," the committee will work to further explore issues of diversity. Smith said that one hope for next fall is the production of videos containing the various "narratives" of Brandeis individuals. The committee will pursue other initiatives in an ongoing process.

"We've learned that this is an ongoing issue, that Brandeis is a vibrant and complicated place, and that the challenges of human differences need to be met everyday," Krauss said.