A UC systemwide steering committee created by two student leaders will allow students to address issues around race, campus communities and the place of underrepresented minorities in the UC system.
The UNITE committee on campus climate issues, created by UC Student Regent-designate Jonathan Stein and UC Student Association Undergraduate Chair Patrick Manh Le, seeks to improve campus environments for students of color and underrepresented minorities. Though the committee has been in the works since January, its creation has become more relevant in the wake of racially charged events in the past few weeks at UC Riverside and UCLA in which an Israeli flag was defaced and a student’s apartment door was covered with racial slurs, according to Stein.
“I think we have two major goals,” Le said. “We’d like to open a dialogue with students about campus climate issues. The second one is to really create a space for action. On the local campus level, a lot of great things are done but systemwide we face a lot of barriers.”
According to Stein, the committee will be composed of three to five students from each UC campus and will meet by conference call to exchange ideas and experiences from their individual campuses.
He added that the committee — which is accepting applications until March 30 on its website — could serve as a space for students to address issues such as those at the Riverside and Los Angeles campuses and discuss solutions.
“I really do hope that by being a workspace for students who are tackling really difficult challenges we can do our campus climate work better,” Stein said. “I just want students doing campus climate work to be more effective in the work they do and eventually create a more welcoming and diverse UC.”
Le and Stein are both members of a separate systemwide steering committee composed of faculty and UC administrators, which is currently working on distributing a systemwide survey to gauge campus climate. The UNITE committee could serve as a more immediate way to address incidents of racial and cultural tension on campuses, Le said.
A bill was introduced Wednesday at the UC Berkeley ASUC Senate meeting to support the committee.
“In the last 18 months, students of color and students from underrepresented communities have lived through multiple events that alienate them from their campus community, make them feel unwelcome, and make it harder for them to succeed as a UC student,” the bill states.
Jamie Applegate covers higher education.
Comment Policy
Comments should remain on topic, concerning the article or blog post to which they are connected. Brevity is encouraged. Posting under a pseudonym is discouraged, but permitted. The Daily Cal encourages readers to voice their opinions respectfully in regard to the readers, writers and contributors of The Daily Californian. Comments are not pre-moderated, but may be removed if deemed to be in violation of this policy. Click here to read the full comment policy.
“I think we have two major goals,” Le said. “We’d like to open a
dialogue with students about campus climate issues. The second one is to
really create a space for action.”
Utter B.S. No attention will be paid to how Jews and Asians feel because they are not underrepresented minorities. No one on the committee will dare to say that the Cal BSU has created a climate of intolerance and racism by inviting Farrakhan to speak. The Ethnic Studies departments will send representatives to make sure the committee only focuses on Black, Hispanic, and maybe LGBT victims. Farrakhan’s racism is a taboo subject among the PC student leaders.
Minority students don’t give half a shit about racist statements and events (which are virtually always remote and isolated) until they’re told they should care by people determined to create victims so they can defend them and advance their political objectives or careers. Want to help black students? Want them to be taken seriously? Tell them to stop whining and change their majors to something involving math and science.
Prop 209: it’s the LAW b****es !
Unfortunately, no committees around improving student quality and removing “backdoors” to admission that make UC a joke in circles that matter.
Once the PC get in charge, they don’t solve the problem. they keep finding more problems that require more PC punishments. Why California has put its the PC in charge of politics for the last generation is a mystery.
The Left is making whining into a career path.
“I think we have two major goals,” Le said. “We’d like to open a dialogue with students about campus climate issues. The second one is to really create a space for action. On the local campus level, a lot of great things are done but systemwide we face a lot of barriers.”
LOL
So how many of these oh-so-concerned students were just last week making excuses for Louis Farrakhan’s anti-semitic bile? Seems their concern for “free speech” is awfully dependent on who is doing the speaking.
And the BSU’s invitation to Farrakhan, his bigoted rhetoric toward Jews, whites and Asians, and his standing ovation by black students in attendance is exactly why African American’s demands and desires should be ignored by white and Asian students. Until black students learn that they too must deal with the consequences of their own repulsive bigotry, they will find that they can count on no assistance of those to whom their own prejudices are targeted. Left isolated by all save fellow biased Muslims, African Americans will find their pleas will get them no where as they have alienated most of their potential allies…
Louis Farrakhan spoke at UC Berkley recently and told the African-American students not to become friends with Jews because they were behind African slavery.
This bigoted accusation is completely untrue and hypocritical.
There is still African slavery going on today, but the perpetrators are mostly other Africans and Muslims. Farrakhan claims that African-Americans should convert to Islam because it will set them free, yet he hides the fact that Islamic countries are enslaving Africans, even African Muslims.
Scum like calypso Louie and his UCB followers should be mocked.
“In the last 18 months, students of color and students from
underrepresented communities have lived through multiple events that
alienate them from their campus community, make them feel unwelcome, and
make it harder for them to succeed as a UC student,”
In other words, someone with white skin color said something I disagree with and now I feel like my life is in danger. This is getting ridiculous