MISSION VIEJO : College May Offer Ethnic Studies Dept.

Saddleback College, where hate crimes targeting African American students have occurred in recent years, will soon start forming what may become the first ethnic studies department at a community college in the county.

The college’s recently appointed president, Ned Doffoney, said Wednesday that by summer the school will place a faculty member in charge of developing the new department.

That professor would also teach a modified version of an existing ethnic studies class this fall while beginning the long process of developing a new curriculum of multiethnic classes. It will probably take a year or more to set up the department and hire more professors to teach the new courses, Doffoney said.

Reacting to a string of racially motivated incidents, the Saddleback Community College District trustees voted in January to hire a consulting team to advise Saddleback College on the development of a multiethnic studies department.

The $10,000 study, which was released at a forum at the school on Tuesday, recommends that the campus immediately begin developing the multiethnic studies department. The cost for that is not yet known, administrators said.

Calls for multiethnic studies on campus intensified last fall following two racially motivated incidents at the Mission Viejo campus. In one, an African American woman reported finding a threatening note on her car’s windshield in November. A month later, two African American candidates for homecoming king and queen said flyers containing racial slurs had been left in their mailboxes.

One of the candidates, Ricc Waddell, the president of the Black United Students, withdrew from the homecoming contest and said he had received a letter with similar threats earlier in the year. Waddell, who could not be reached for comment Wednesday, became the spokesman for students who demanded that the college address the hate issue by forming a multiethnic studies department.

School officials said that, even in the absence of the hate crimes, it’s important for students to understand issues affecting an ethnically diverse society.

Saddleback and other community colleges in the county list various cross-cultural courses--including Chicano and Asian literature and introductory history courses on various cultures--that fall under sociology, art and history departments.

Doffoney said the school’s curriculum committee, academic senate, various student organizations and other campus groups will have a say in the types of classes to be offered by the department.