Alex Turmey/Staff

UC Berkeley students and faculty gathered Monday to celebrate Indigenous People’s Day, a daylong event focused on the culture, dance and history of native people.

A collaboration between the UC Berkeley department of theater, dance and performance studies and the American Indian Graduate Student Association, the celebration of Indigenous People’s Day featured speakers and performers at the Bancroft Dance Studio, on the corner of Bancroft Avenue and Dana Street.

Performing-arts students made up the bulk of the audience members for many of the presentations, which included a talk by graduate student Peter Nelson on the study of archaeology and anthropology’s effect on native cultures. Edwardo Madril, a member of the Pascua Yaqui Tribe and a professional dancer, performed the hoop dance and other traditional Native American dances.

“It’s not magical; it’s not mystical. It may be profound — I don’t know,” Madril said. “The image of an American Indian has been around for a couple hundred years, but we still seem to be a spectacle.”

Indigenous People’s Day is a movement to counter Columbus Day, the federal holiday falling on the second Monday of October each year that celebrates Christopher Columbus’ arrival in the Americas in 1492. According to Timothy Molino, a UC Berkeley graduate student in the department of ethnic studies and a member of the American Indian Graduate Student Association, Columbus Day fails to acknowledge the flourishing Native American culture that exists today.

“Rather than Columbus Day, this is a movement to recognize indigenous people,” Molino said. “It’s about recognizing these cultures rather than the defeat of these cultures.”

Indigenous People’s Day celebrated its second year on campus. The event was prompted when a UC Berkeley production resulted in outcry from the Native American community in the spring of 2012. The play, “Ishi: The Last of the Yahi,” elicited negative reactions from the American Indian Graduate Student Association and other groups for what some claimed to be an inaccurate and harmful depiction of Native American culture.

Lisa Wymore, a UC Berkeley associate professor of dance whose students took part in the event, said the department decided to start Indigenous People’s Day as a way to address the tension left over from the production.

The program received funding from the Office of Vice Chancellor of Equity and Inclusion Gibor Basri, the American Indian Graduate Program and the department of ethnic studies, according to Olivia Chilcote, chair of the American Indian Graduate Student Association.

“This day is about sharing culture, but it’s also about remembering history,” Chilcote said. “It would be really great if UC Berkeley were to make this a campuswide event.”

Libby Rainey is the lead higher education reporter. Contact her at lrainey@dailycal.org and follow her on Twitter @rainey_l.

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Matt Lee/Staff

This fall, the UC Berkeley Multicultural Student Development Programs will undergo a series of changes that will upgrade the services of the African American Student Development Programs, Asian Pacific American Student Development Programs and Chicano Latino Student Development Programs.

The changes that will be implemented are based on recommendations from the Chancellor’s Taskforce on Multicultural Student Development, which was established to create a more systematic approach to understanding the needs of the MSD groups. A 50 percent budget increase will allow for the establishment of a Chancellor’s Multicultural Advisory Board, an addition of three new staff members, funding for paid student interns and physical changes to the MSD offices located in the Cesar Chavez Student Center.

“We are really grateful that the chancellor agreed to increase the resources for these programs, and we are excited to start implementing these changes,” said Vice Chancellor of Equity and Inclusion Gibor Basri, who led the Chancellor’s Taskforce.

The MSD programs currently each have only one program coordinator, but following the changes, one more staff member will be added to each program. Although the job descriptions for these new staff members have not been decided, the goal is to make the resources of the MSD programs more accessible to students and expand the population that the programs affect.

“At minimum, we have to find space for all this new staff,” Basri said. “This is really going to be trying to figure out an upgrade within the (Cesar Chavez) center. We would very much like to see all of these programs in that space.”

Wendy Pacheco, the 2013-14 ASUC senator-elect endorsed by the RAZA Recruitment & Retention Center, which focuses on increasing the enrollment of Chicano and Latino students in higher education, said she is in support of the changes that are to be implemented but believes that there is a lot of work yet to be done.

“We believe that things are happening in good faith, but we’re just very conscious of ensuring that what was promised happens,” Pacheco said.

Additionally, the MSD programs are receiving funding to pay student interns to promote student leadership development in these communities and increase campus diversity. Basri is hopeful that such improvements will aid in improving the campus climate, as he said that many students who are part of the MSD programs are feeling the least included on campus.

Marcel Jones, chair of the UC Berkeley Black Student Union, said he is hesitant regarding the fulfillment of the task force’s goals but still believes that the tentative changes are a step in the right direction.

“Overall, this is a positive change for our communities, and we are excited to move forward with student involvement and to get these MSD offices to where they deserve.”

Contact Saachi Makkar at smakkar@dailycal.org.

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Mary Zheng/File

Increasing undergraduate nonresident enrollment at UC Berkeley may decrease campus racial and socioeconomic diversity, according to research released this month.

In a study analyzing public universities’ enrollment data, professors Bradley Curs and Ozan Jaquette found that as nonresident student enrollment increased, the number of Pell Grant recipients and underrepresented minority students decreased, particularly at research universities such as UC Berkeley.

“Flagship public universities have been a source of social mobility for low-income and underrepresented minority students who cannot afford out-of-state and private tuition,” the paper reads. “Non-resident enrollment growth — chiefly motivated by revenue concerns — may have the unintended consequence of diminish(ing) socioeconomic and racial diversity.”

The research follows years of debate on the role of nonresident students in the UC system. Nonresident tuition has been increasingly looked to as an alternative source of revenue for the university in light of declining state support. Seeking increased revenue due to budget constraints, UC Berkeley set a goal of increasing nonresident enrollment to 20 percent, which the campus expects to reach next school year.

Nonresident enrollment at UC Berkeley has risen 10 percent since the 2007-08 school year, from 8 percent to 18 percent. UC Berkeley spokesperson Janet Gilmore said that despite this, the campus has maintained diversity.

“Our data clearly shows that our Pell Grant numbers have remained steady, that our underrepresented minority numbers have been steady and actually increasing,” Gilmore said. “There has always been a commitment to making sure that we were increasing diversity.”

According to the UC Berkeley Office of Planning and Analysis, Berkeley’s African American population increased from 148 in the 2009-10 school year to 165 this year. The Chicano/Latino population increased from 589 to 612 in the same period.

Currently, out-of-state students in the UC system pay around $23,000 more in tuition fees than in-state students. Curs and Jaquette’s research identified high nonresident fees as a filter that discourages many low-income nonresident students from attending out-of-state schools.

“(Nonresident enrollment) crowds out low-income people more than racial minorities,” Jaquette said. “People are very aware of racial diversity, but class diversity often doesn’t get highlighted as much.”

Still, some students have raised concerns about the relatively static underrepresented minority numbers on the UC Berkeley campus. Kirk Coleman, executive director of the UC Berkeley bridges Multicultural Resource Center and a campus senior, said increased nonresident enrollment would inevitably exclude underrepresented minority students.

“It’s problematic that (the campus) thinks where the numbers are now are OK,” Coleman said. “If you look at (underrepresented minority) populations based on state demographics, they are significantly higher than how they are represented on campus. I think that shows where the university is going — not towards more diversity but towards making more money.”

Vice Chancellor for Equity and Inclusion Gibor Basri said the campus considered a potential decrease in diversity when it established the 20 percent nonresident enrollment goal but that diversity has remained steady despite substantial growth in nonresident enrollment.

“The socioeconomic piece is pretty obvious because it’s a lot more expensive to come as an out-of-state student, and the financial aid is much lower,” Basri said. “It hasn’t really had an impact on diversity so far. I’m a little surprised by that, but since people were aware of that issue, there was an extra effort made (to improve diversity).”

UC Student Regent Jonathan Stein has spoken out against increasing nonresident enrollment in the past, pointing to the possibility of nonresident “clustering,” a phenomenon in which out-of-state students flock to top-ranking schools such as UCLA and UC Berkeley more than to other UC campuses. Student Regent-designate Cinthia Flores echoed this sentiment, pointing to the university’s public mission of access and inclusion.

“The primary purpose of the UC is it is supposed to be a system that provides Californians with an affordable education, and a big part of owning up to that commitment is making sure the diversity of California is shown in the UC system,” Flores said. “When you have such an out-of-state-student-focus strategy, the demand for out-of-state students does not translate throughout the system … Then that creates a shortage in the system.”

Libby Rainey covers higher education. Contact her at lrainey@dailycal.org and follow her on Twitter @rainey_l.

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The new task force is charged with composing a report on the needs of multicultural groups and programs on campus. It will present its recommendations to the chancellor on May 1.

“I am very excited to be involved in the task force; I think it’s a forward-looking effort with great potential for making future changes,” said Vice Chancellor of Equity and Inclusion Gibor Basri.

The group will present their answers to a number of questions posed by the chancellor relating to the needs of the multicultural student community.

These issues include identifying the current and future needs of multicultural groups on campus as well as exploring desired outcomes and structures of future programs and the amount of support they would require.

Students proposed the task force and Birgeneau agreed to its creation in the wake of last November’s protests at Eshleman Hall.

The Eshleman occupation “stemmed from students feeling as if their suggestions had not been taken seriously with regard to the proposed restructuring of the multicultural student development offices,” said ASUC President Connor Landgraf. “The creation of this task force was a specific condition of the agreement made with protesters.”

One of the group’s tasks will be to explore other possible structures for the multicultural student development offices, with the goal of presenting their ideas to the chancellor and potentially revising the existing structure, Landgraf said.

“I’m glad that the university is now really listening,” said Klein Lieu, a UC Berkeley senior and an ASUC senator on the task force. “Last semester was a cry for help. Students felt that their opinions weren’t being heard.”

Lieu added that he believes the task force is in the spirit of UC Berkeley’s long history of activism.

“I’m glad to see the students holding true to that legacy,” he said. “I really hope to accomplish something that students really want to see.”

The group is composed of undergraduate and graduate students appointed from the ASUC, Graduate Assembly and Bridges Multicultural Resource Center as well as two members of the faculty.

Their recommendations will help educate the new chancellor on multicultural issues on campus and are poised to advance the agenda on meeting the needs of multicultural students, according to Basri.

Basri suggested that the task force’s report would serve to map out future objectives and guidelines — something that will be particularly important going forward.

Contact Natasha Osborne at nosborne@dailycal.org.

Correction(s):
A previous version of this story incorrectly spelled Klein Lieu’s name.

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Kore Chan/Staff

UC Berkeley launched an online survey Tuesday in an effort to gauge the quality of the campus climate.

The survey is part of a larger University of California-wide effort to measure climate across its 10 campuses. A total of 430,000 UC community members will be invited to participate in the survey, making it the largest university-wide survey known to the administration.

“We want to hear about what’s working and what isn’t working” said Vice Chancellor for Equity and Inclusion Gibor Basri, who is co-chair of the system-wide survey effort. “Campus climate means ‘Do you find this campus a welcome and inclusive place that lets you accomplish your goals?’ We’ve never had a system-wide survey that was focused on that.”

According to Basri, the survey was prompted in part by repeated heated incidents between Jewish and Muslim organizations surrounding the UC Berkeley Divestment bill as well as the “Compton Cookout” at UC San Diego.

Salih Muhammad, the former President of the Black Student Union, called the UC-wide survey a “decent effort.”

“The administration must find effective ways to move from data collection to an improved campus climate,” he said.

The survey consists of questions geared at studying campus climate at both UC Berkeley and the UC at large. Data from the survey will be gathered primarily online, although participants can request a paper version. The survey will take about 25 minutes to complete and participants will remain anonymous.

In order to incentivize participation, the UC Office of the President is offering over $40,000 in various raffle-style prizes to those who complete the survey. The total budget for the survey is around $600,000, with a majority of the funds being spent on analyzing the data.

The campus is aiming for at least 50 percent participation from the UC Berkeley student body, Basri said.

The university hired Susan Rankin, an associate professor of education in the College Student Affairs Program at Pennsylvania State University, to analyze the results. Her consulting firm has administered similar surveys at over 100 other universities. Rankin, along with a team of faculty members, students, and staff developed questions for the survey.

Rankin will use data from other university surveys as a point of comparison for results from the UC Berkeley survey.

After the responses are analyzed in the upcoming fall, UC President Mark Yudof has mandated that each campus come up with at least three action steps in response to the findings. The administration plans on repeating the survey sometime in the next four to five years to measure the success of the changes implemented.

“In my experience, slowly but surely, awareness of campus climate will ensure that we will be a better institution if we take care of this stuff,” Basri said.

Shirin Ghaffary covers academics and administration. Contact her at sghaffary@dailycal.org.

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Kore Chan/Staff

Five students chained themselves to Eshleman Hall Tuesday night to protest the consolidation of some Multicultural Student Development offices at UC Berkeley and what they felt was a lack of communication between students and campus administrators.

Vice Chancellor for Equity and Inclusion Gibor Basri and Dean of Students Jonathan Poullard, along with ASUC and Graduate Assembly representatives, negotiated with the students — who occupied Eshleman’s sixth floor for four hours — to end the occupation around 9:40 p.m. Campus administrators agreed to grant the occupiers amnesty and to create a transitional review team to assess the multicultural center’s administrative structure and goals.

At the time he was informed of the occupation, Basri said he was in the middle of discussions with Graduate Assembly representatives to create a task force to address issues similar to those raised by the protesters.

ASUC President Connor Landgraf said students met multiple times with Basri this semester to suggest alternatives to the consolidation of the Multicultural Student Development offices but could not make headway until Eshleman’s occupation.

“The crux of (the discussion) was the vice chancellor’s unwillingness to consider students’ ideas,” Landgraf said of his conversation with protesters Tuesday night.

According to Basri, the offices’ changes were intended to streamline administrative tasks and to allow for more resources to be used for outreach and the retention of minority students. He said the fact that the changes did not receive any attention until a year after their implementation suggests that students were not negatively affected by the consolidation.

“I’m sad that we are finding ourselves spending time on an issue that I don’t see as advancing equity and inclusion but rather is taking time away from our real issues,” Basri said. “But my office has open access — anyone with an appointment can have one.”

ASUC senators have also expressed frustration with structural issues within the multicultural offices, although the senate was not tied to the protest. The senate passed a bill in September urging Basri to reconsider budget cuts and structural changes to development offices, and many senators recognized similarities between their demands and those of the Eshleman protesters.

“I’m glad that the wider public is starting to hopefully converse about this,” said CalSERVE Senator Klein Lieu at the protest.

The transitional review team, created as a result of Tuesday’s occupation, is expected to convene in the spring semester. The team will create a list of proposals on multicultural student development and report directly to the chancellor later in the semester, according to Landgraf.

Contact Libby Rainey and Alex Berryhill at newsdesk@dailycal.org.

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Michael Tao/Staff

UPDATE: As of around 9:40 p.m. Tuesday, the protesters in Eshleman Hall had come down after being promised amnesty from the campus administration for the day’s activities.

An estimated six students began occupying Eshleman Hall Tuesday afternoon as part of an awareness campaign regarding the campus’s multicultural retention center and minority enrollment.

Over 100 students, including Occupy Cal protesters and BAMN affiliates, stood outside the building chanting in support of the campaign.

“Some students have attached themselves to the door by actually drilling to the door,” said UCPD Lt. Eric Tejada.

Protesters in the crowd said there were at least two students inside who had chained themselves to the building by the neck.

On Tuesday evening, campus spokesperson Claire Holmes said the administration does not currently have any plans to remove the protesters. She added that the the campus administration has stayed in contact with ASUC President Connor Landgraf and ASUC External Affairs Vice President Shahryar Abbasi and that the two will be a part of the decision process.

The campus police department has secured the building but has no plans for future actions without direction from the campus administration, Tejada said.

“We’re evaluating the situation,” he said.

At around 5:35 p.m., protesters outside the building read Vice Chancellor for Equity and Inclusion Gibor Basri a list of demands including that none of the peaceful protesters receive repercussions for the day’s activities, that the multicultural center be restored to its former structure and that funding be allocated for recruitment and retention centers to assist in increasing minority representation.

The protesters inside were purportedly from Raza Recruitment and Retention Center, a campus group that aims to increase Hispanic enrollment in higher education, and REACH!, which aims to serve Asians and Pacific Islanders on campus.

By around 8 p.m. Tuesday night negotiations to end the occupation of Eshleman Hall had neared a conclusion. Protesters exited the building at around 9:40 p.m.

Administrators agreed to amnesty for the individuals inside the building and to create a transitional review team in which students could discuss the multicultural center’s future with Basri, said Salih Muhammad, a student liaison in the negotiations.

Muhammad said the negotiations had been frustrating because “this could have been finished three years ago.”

Earlier in the evening protesters presented the following demands to administrators:

• We Demand that the Multicultural Student Development Offices be restored to their former structure by Vice Chancellor Gibor Basri.
• We demand that the budget allocation of the multicultural student development offices be increased to meet the needs of their work.
• We demand that none of the protesters in this occupation receive any punishment or repercussions for this activity.
• We demand an increase in funding for the Recruitment and Retention Center to assist in their mission of increasing the enrollment of underrepresented minorities on campus.

Contact Chloe, Megan and Alex at newsdesk@dailycal.org.

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Sucharitha Yelimeli/Staff

Dear UC President Mark Yudof,
We understand that you are coming to a final decision on the chancellor search at UC Berkeley.As a group of UC Berkeley faculty who remain unconditionally committed to achieving racial diversity on the campus, we want to reaffirm our expectation that each of the final candidates must have a proven track record of promoting faculty, staff and student diversity, especially in promoting faculty of color to senior management positions. We expect that the successful candidate will not only provide an estimable record of effective commitment to progress in equity and inclusion but will also, in final interview, articulate a faculty diversity plan for the Berkeley campus that is clear and measurable.

As you know, under the leadership of Chancellor Robert Birgeneau and Vice Chancellor Gibor Basri we have made significant gains in the campus diversity goals. As the position announcement notes, “The Evelyn and Walter Haas, Jr. Fund recognized UC Berkeley as a national model for equity, inclusion and diversity in 2010 with a pioneering $16 million, 10-year grant that engages Berkeley students, faculty, and staff across all disciplines in research, teaching, and public service.”

We must be assured that this funding commitment will be sustained and deepened in order to ensure that we make Berkeley a more accessible campus for underrepresented students. We must also be assured that minority staff members will be encouraged and nurtured to assume leadership positions on the campus. And, with respect to faculty hiring and retention, we have a long way to go in ensuring greater success in placing minority faculty across all departments and colleges, not to mention their appointment as departmental chairs, divisional deans and senior administrators. We therefore would expect that the final candidates have a clearly demonstrated commitment to and record of leadership in the hiring, promotion and administrative placement of underrepresented faculty.

To this end, we also want to make clear that the final pool must itself demonstrate the university’s commitment to diversity by ensuring that underrepresented minority presidential candidates will be in the final interview group and — we should be able to expect — on your short list. We remind you of the selection criteria, as noted in the campus website, on the search process. “Both the (search) committee and the president should be mindful of the university’s commitment to hiring women and underrepresented minorities.”

We only wish to substitute “must” for “should” in the final selection moment for the next UC Berkeley chancellor.

Signed by:
Gibor Basri, Astronomy; Lisa Garcia Bedolla, Education; Genaro Padilla, English; Malo Huston, City & Regional Planning; Charles Henry, African American Studies; Clair Brown, Economics; Alice Agogino, Mechanical Engineering; Shari Huhndorf, Native American Studies; Tyrone B. Hayes, Integrative Biology; Keith Feldman, Ethnic Studies; Rucker Johnson, Public Policy; Michael Omi, Asian American Studies; Steve Raphael, Public Policy; Marcial Gonzalez, English; Juana Maria Rodriguez, Women’s Studies; Victoria Robinson, Ethnic Studies; Donna Jones, English; Adrian Aguilera, Social Welfare; Janelle Scott, Education; Garrison Sposito, ESPM; Elaine Kim, Asian American Studies; Kurt Organista, Social Welfare; David Weisblat, Biology; Bertrall Ross, Law; Ugo Nwokeji, African American Studies; Jeff Romm, ESPM; Ian Haney-Lopez, Law; Richmond Sarpong, Chemistry; Rodrigo Almeida, CNR; Margaret Wilkerson, African Amer. Stud. Em.; Abena Osseo-Asare, History; Richard Busbaum, Law Em.; Patricia Baquedano-López, Education; Frank Worrell, Education; Laura Enriquez, Sociology; Mary Ann Mason, Social Welfare; Ivonne del Valle, Spanish & Portuguese; Jason Corburn, Public Health; William A. Lester, Chemistry; Ula Taylor, African American Studies; Rachel Morello-Frosch, ESPM; Ruth Love, Education; Lee Riley, Public Health; Margaret Conkey, Anthropology; Caroline Kane, MCB Em.; Greg Aponte, Nutritional Science; Tyler Stovall, History; Taeku Lee, Political Science; Rodney Hero, Political Science; Zeus Leonardo, Education; Catherine Ceniza Choy, Ethnic Studies; Na’ilah Nasir, Education; John Powell, Law; Tina Trujillo, Education; Beatriz Manz, Ethnic Studies; Kim TallBear, Native American Studies.

Contact the opinion desk at opinion@dailycal.org.

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In light of a ban prohibiting race-conscious admissions policies, UC administrators have been struggling to enroll an ethnically diverse student body for the past 15 years, raising concerns that in the long run, such a policy will also affect the diversity of the university’s faculty body.

Since 1998, when Proposition 209 – a voter-approved measure that prohibits California’s public institutions from considering race, sex and ethnicity in public contraction, employment and education – was first implemented, the representation of underrepresented minority students in UC Berkeley’s undergraduate student body has drastically declined. During this same period, the percent of underrepresented minority faculty members at the campus increased by about 2 percent.

In August, UC administrators raised concerns about the university’s success in building a diverse university community in the face of Prop. 209 in an amicus brief submitted to the U.S. Supreme Court for Fisher v. UT Austin. The case, which challenges the UT Austin’s race-conscious admissions policies, was debated in front of the court Oct. 10.“At present the compelling government interest in student body diversity cannot be fully realized at selective institutions without taking race into account,” the brief states.

Currently, underrepresented minority faculty members comprise about eight percent of the campus’s total faculty body, according to the campus’s Faculty Personnel Records.

Without the ability to search for specific ethnicities that may be lacking in the faculty body, it is more difficult to resolve gaps in the faculty’s demographic composition, said Angelica Stacy, the campus associate vice provost for the faculty.

“We can’t say, ‘We have no African American males, so we are going to hire someone who is,’” Stacy said. “Instead we look for those who have a track record of working in diverse communities. This could bring in someone from any ethnic background, but, more importantly, it brings in those who really care about equality and diversity.”

In 2007, a universitywide Study Group on University Diversity found that the number of underrepresented faculty on each campus “(is) low and (has) not improved since the late 1980s.”

The same year, the campus appointed Gibor Basri as the campus’s first vice chancellor for equity and inclusion. That same year, the campus Haas Institute for a Fair and Inclusive Society, which researches policy related to “marginalized” groups, was launched.

Most recently, campus administrators initiated the UC Berkeley Strategic Plan for Equity, Inclusion, and Diversity in 2009 to change hiring, advancement and reward policies for faculty in order to create a “critical mass” of members in the campus community representative of California’s diversity.

However, even with such structural changes, growth remains slow. And campus administrators and university officials worry that this may deter underrepresented minority students from attending graduate school.

“It’s really the combination of a lot of barriers, educational attainment, opportunity, and, in that sense, these issues about undergraduate and graduate admissions are linked,” said William Kidder, assistant executive vice chancellor at UC Riverside.

UC officials say the lack of underrepresented minority faculty is a multilevel problem and stems from the lower rates of underrepresented minority students.

In 2011, only 8.6 percent of potential tenure-track faculty applicants, or those who received a doctoral degree between 1990 and 2004, were underrepresented minorities, according to data on faculty appointments from the UC Office of the President. That year, 10 percent of newly hired faculty members at UC Berkeley were from that applicant pool.

Professors from diverse backgrounds often reassure underrepresented students that they can succeed in graduate school, said Oscar Dubon, a Latino professor of materials science and engineering and the first associate dean of equity and inclusion for the College of Engineering at UC Berkeley. It was in large part due to the encouragement from a professor during his undergraduate work at UCLA that he pursued graduate work, he said.

“Students often identify with faculty whose background is similar to their own, because they are more likely to be addressing the questions and issues that are important to them,” said David Leonard, a former dean of international and area studies at UC Berkeley who left the campus after seeing what he said was the campus’s lack of initiative toward hiring underrepresented faculty members.

For some underrepresented minority students, taking classes from professors with a similar ethnic background is a source of inspiration.

“Our teachers represent who made it,” said Eniola Abioye, a black sophomore at UC Berkeley. “It was easier to imagine their journey and where they came from.”

contact Alex Berryhill at aberryhill@dailycal.org.

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Derek Remsburg/Staff

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