For most students, extra credit can mean writing a few extra book reports or attending an on-campus presentation. But for students in sociology professor Ryan Alaniz’s courses, earning extra points might mean hours of hard labor in the hot sun.
Depending on the course, Alaniz gives his students the option to experience homelessness or hunger, spend a week in a wheelchair or the opposite gender’s clothing, commit legal acts of deviance or work alongside migrant workers picking strawberries for a day.
Alaniz, who attended Cal Poly for his undergraduate education, has been teaching here since the beginning of the academic year. He also recently accepted a tenure track in an assistant professor position.
Marlene Ruttenberg, a sociology sophomore, is taking International Political Economy with Alaniz and was on her fifth day of fasting during her interview with Mustang Daily. She said a student suggested the fasting activity as extra credit during a discussion on worldwide hunger, and Alaniz worked with other students to create a plan.
While she said most of the students who are taking part in the activity chose to give up solid food for two or three days, she was committed to making it through the week drinking only juice and water.
“Today has been a mix of happiness and weakness,” Ruttenberg said. “It’s been five days so my body is used to it, but the mental aspect of wanting food is so hard.”
Alaniz uses the honor system to ensure his students are committed to the activity, but Ruttenberg doesn’t believe this is a problem.
“I think we’re all being honest, and I don’t know if that’s naïve, but integrity is a huge thing for me, and I feel like that’s the case with most Cal Poly students,” Ruttenberg said.
Alaniz has also taught at University of California, Santa Barbara and the University of Minnesota. He believes Cal Poly’s “Learn By Doing” approach offers a great opportunity for this kind of alternative learning experience.
“There has been a large push for active-learning and learn by doing here and at other universities,” Alaniz said. “In addition, the academic literature and my own experience have highlighted the strengths of bringing students outside of the classroom to engage the world on a deeper level. This is a perfect fit with sociology. I want students to use sociological knowledge gained in class to critically engage the world around them.”
Alaniz said the safety of students is always first priority. Female students are required to pair up for the homelessness activity, and extra credit is assigned on a sliding scale so no student feels pressured to complete a task that might harm them. Students are required to sign waivers and complete a worksheet with guidelines before taking on any task, but discomfort is part of the learning experience.
“Part of the experience is pushing beyond our comfort level to better understand what millions of people deal with on a daily basis,” Alaniz said. “Can someone really understand hunger without experiencing it?”
Sociology senior Diane Twitchell took a class with Alaniz last quarter.
Of her class, she said approximately eight people chose to take part in the strawberry picking activity.
“Everyone who went said it was really eye-opening to view different socioeconomic statuses in the community, and see how people actually earn wages,” Twitchell said.
Alaniz was born to a Mexican-American father and a white mother and grew up on Nipomo’s San Ysidro Farms. It’s the same farm he takes his students to work on.
“I wanted students to understand more about where commodities come from,” Alaniz said. “Strawberries come from somewhere — the sweat, labor and the backbreaking work of immigrants.”
California’s population of current residents born abroad increased from 1.8 million in 1970 to more than 10 million in 2009, according to the Public Policy Institute of California.
“San Luis is like a bubble; it’s very protected,” Alaniz said. “But if I can bring stories and pictures from Latin America, I can get people to empathize with others.”
All of Alaniz’s activities are designed to take students out of their comfort zones.
“He gave us the opportunity to wear a full length burqa just to expose us to different cultures,” Twitchell said. “This blond-haired, blue-eyed girl did it — you couldn’t even tell what she looked like. A football player wore girl’s clothing for a week to break gender norms. He said he heard a lot of people making fun of him behind his back.”
Though Alaniz has discontinued the burqa activity, saying he wanted to be sensitive to all cultures on campus, he said there have not been any calls for him to discontinue his alternative teaching opportunities from the community.
“A huge risk is that students will make the experience into a joke,” Alaniz said. “If this were to happen, it could put all of the activities into jeopardy. To avoid this, I meet with each student individually and we go over behavior guidelines before they begin the activity. They must sign the guidelines, which explicitly state that if they do not follow the rules, they risk losing the grade and perhaps failing the course.”
So far, students have been receptive, he said.
“I’ve had students tell me that it’s the best experience they’ve had in their college career, and that they’ve learned more putting on a dress for a week than in years of college courses,” Alaniz said.
Though there are some exceptions, Alaniz approximated that 90 to 95 percent of students who take part in the extra credit activities appreciate the opportunity to think about social norms differently.
“This might be the one time in the lives of these students that they question white privilege,” Alaniz said. “It’s not a bad thing, but it is an issue. I think I would like students to walk out of my classroom thinking more critically about the world and putting themselves in other’s shoes more often. If I can get them to do that, I think I’ll have been successful.”