UCD Students Sit in Silent Protest Against Bigotry in UC System

The first hour was spent in the MU, the second hour at the Silo, and the event ended up at Mrak Hall.  Students every half an hour broke their silence to list their demands and every hour changed places, marching through campus also in silence.

The list of demands includes the desire to bring the African and African-America studies program to full department status along with aggressive recruitment of African-American faculty across all disciplines and programs.

They also called for a full climate report “conducted by the Student Affairs and Research and Information (SARI) and Budget Office from our administration” this would include incoming class breakdown by race, class, gender, sexual orientation, retention & attrition data broken down along the same lines, and most notably a “report that includes any acts of hate/intolerance that occur on the campus and the specific response by the campus administration to such acts.”

Further demands include a response by the chancellor to the recent incidents, there is apparently the belief that while the Chancellor has given these incidents lip-service and emails, there has been a lack of response.

“That the chancellor respond to all of the recent racist and hate incidents that took place on our campus and the steps she is taking currently to prevent them in the future. We want to know how the chancellor will reassure us and that we will always remain safe on our campus. A simple email response, while appreciated is not a strong enough response to such acts of hate. In the future, we strongly recommend the first initiative action to come from our chancellor by taking pro-active steps to work with our community. Overall, we want the chancellor to have accountability and to speak against hate and keep transparency between the students, staff, faculty, and administration.”

Along with these are apparent concerns that African-American students lack resources and support on campus.  Some of the demands ask the university evaluate attrition rates, provide funding for a retention specialist, a student affairs officer position within African and African American studies, required meetings with an adviser prior to each quarter, and fund an African American male counselor to work with black males and student athletes housed in CAPS and in other places besides the African American studies department/program.

The final of the fourteen demands is as follows:

“Lastly, we require the Chancellor and the University show mutual respect for the “Principles of Community” and prioritize issues that have a positive impact on students of color and leading by example. We demand that there be repercussions when the “Principles of Community” are blatantly being violated. More specifically we demand that the university uphold the part within the principles of community when its states “We confront and reject all manifestations of discrimination, including those based on race, ethnicity, gender, age, disability, sexual orientation, religious or political beliefs, status within or outside the university, or any of the other differences among people which have been excuses for misunderstanding, dissension or hatred. We recognize and cherish the richness contributed to our lives by our diversity. We take pride in our various achievements, and we celebrate our differences.””

Mr. Loessberg-Zahl initially extended her concern for the acts of hate on campus while Rahim Reed announced plans to call in an emergency hearing tomorrow with the Campus Council of Diversity to look at the students’ petitions and their proposals for increasing minority support. This is a closed meeting, but they hope to make a standing committee with students from different clubs to process all of the issues.

A number of students expressed concerns that there was a conspiracy to cover up the three incidents where swastikas were either carved or spray-painted on various parts of campus, in hopes that the incidents will blow over.  Mr. Loessberg-Zahl stated that they were not sure if they could even process and punish these acts of vandalism with the swastika as a hate crime.

Pat Turner said that one problem with the lack of African-American professors is that there is simply not a lot of minority PHD applicants in the pool.

This statement appeared to anger many and one female African-American students emphasized how uncomfortable she feels as an African-American in Davis, that there is a reputation among African-Americans that Davis is unwelcoming to minorities, particularly African-Americans.

The students communicated to the Administrators that they felt under-appreciated for their work.  There was an overall sense that while the students feel this is a “state of emergency” that the students sense a lack urgency on the part of the administration.  They are disappointed that administration was not proactive and failed to action previously.  Instead they waited until a hate crime was committed to do so.

Many of the students felt that their cries for help are not taken into concern, mostly because they have had three previous protests and the Chancellor has not been present once.

While a number of students left the meeting angry, some students schedule a talk with Rahim Reed along with some African American faculty members at UC Davis.

—David M. Greenwald reporting