May 05, 2014 07:17 PM EDT By Jaleesa Baulkman, UniversityHerald Reporter

The University of California at Los Angeles is again considering a proposal that would require most undergraduate students to take at least one diversity course, the Los Angeles Times reported.

Many University of California campuses have such a requirement. But UCLA's faculty in the College of Letters and Science has rejected this proposal three times previously.

The College of Letters and Science enrolls about 85 percent of UCLA's undergraduates. The Arts and Architecture school began a diversity requirement six years ago, while other divisions such as engineering have not.

The school's Chancellor Gene Block is trying again to make taking a class in racial, cultural, gender or religious diversity a requirement.

"We owe it to our students," Block said in a recent interview, according to the Los Angeles Times. "Many of our students have wanted this for several years. I think the faculty owes it to the students to pay attention, even though I understand there are intellectual arguments on both sides of the issue."

He added that there is "value to an explicit class that deals with the multiple cultures in the United States living together and the conflicts."

According to the Los Angeles Times, past proposals have sparked arguments about students being pressed to meet existing requirements and whether the school could afford extra classes.

Additional questions about whether diversity classes would improve ethnic relations and "whether they usually skew left politically were also raised at UCLA and other campuses nationwide that had similar debates."

According to the Los Angeles Times, UCLA is a diverse campus, "but the small number of African American undergraduates continues to be an issue."Among the nearly 25,300 U.S undergraduates there, about 39 percent are Asian American or Pacific Islander, 31 percent are white, 20 percent are Latino and 4 percent are black, according to last fall's statistics.

Supporters of the proposal said they believe diversity is so crucial to today's society that all students should have at least one course in the subject. 

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