Maybe it would seem like our generation would be culturally aware; after all, we laugh at Gabriel Iglesias and Tracy Morgan, we grew up with multiracial cartoon characters and we elected a black president, for goodness sake. Yet when it comes down to it, some of us remain remarkably sheltered and still remarkably racist, as evidenced by the recent events at Saint Louis University.

That is why it is so necessary, and so timely, that the Department of Arts and Sciences has created new requirements to increase students’ cultural awareness. Up until now, we had a loose “diversity” requirement, which could be fulfilled by taking a single anthropology or sociology class. With the freshman class of 2011, however, the department will mandate two classes from specific genres: Cultural Diversity in the U.S. and Global Citizenship.

This is partly in response to demands from student groups like Students for Social Justice, who want to create more cross-cultural understanding among the student body by diversifying the coursework. Although this new requirement won’t transform the University overnight, it is still a small change toward better educating the population, one that needs to happen because people rarely change their opinions on their own; it would seem that the only way to instigate real social change would be to require them to sit in classrooms and listen.

But the University can only show us that global awareness is a priority. From there, it is up to us. We can blow it off, we can sleep and we can go home and continue to laugh at non-white comedians and consider ourselves worldly. Or, we can try our best to understand the new material offered to us and to use it to further our understanding and tolerance.