Illustration by Caetano Santos.

A world of ever-growing media conglomerates has created a situation in which media ownership and influence has been concentrated into the hands of an elite group. “The Big Six,” — GE, Viacom, CBS, News Corp., Disney and TimeWarner — now own nearly 90 percent of the media Americans consume. In 1983, 50 companies shared this amount.

Though there was a considerable amount of journalistic disapproval of the Nov. 15, 2011 police raid on Occupy Wall Street, the ensuing abandonment of the issue by media was far too swift. This mass disregard for a violation of the constitutional right to peaceful assembly is a subtle, eerie reminder that the nation is rapidly losing avenues for expressing dissent. It’s not surprising that a September 2012 Gallup poll revealed 60 percent of Americans have little to no trust in the mass media, an all-time low. We didn’t succeed at occupying Wall Street, but the next step should be obvious: occupy the media.

The media landscape must be a forum for putting pressure on corrupt and underperforming representatives, not a shield or weapon for the 1 percent. When such a small group of people controls what the news covers, it can become impossible and/or dangerous to report on things that could negatively affect their image. A diversity of perspectives is needed, a redistribution of publishing power to a wider group of people from all walks of life could greatly increase media accountability.

The current state of the media industry is looking a lot like what made Wall Street so repulsive to the protesters in Zuccotti Park. Just as the capitalists on Wall Street became “the 1 percent” by accruing money at the expense of those who had less, the moguls at the top of the media world are accumulating corporate mergers with equal ferocity.

The Occupy Wall Street movement and its countless offspring protests illustrate how the American people are not afraid of expressing the sentiment that Wall Street is reifying capitalism’s highest stage, imperialism. This activistic energy should be shifted to the new 1 percent that is forming in the media business.

The Occupy Movement may no longer be active in the news, but the spirit of protest that occupiers renewed will never be destroyed. Occupying the media means more than an occupation of Times Square Studios or Rockefeller Center (though this could be a good start due to the increased visibility it would provide). This occupation will require a widespread change in consciousness and a rise in individual and group initiative.

The first thing activists can do is get involved in the media. Here at UCSC, students can choose from 16 different student media organizations with many varying focuses and approaches. Determined activists can also write letters to editors or pen their own investigative features and share them with other concerned students.

The free market’s potential hasn’t yet been completely monopolized, so another avenue is to be a media entrepreneur. A group of friends with unique perspectives and a lot to say can make their own commentary and/or news site together. Now publication can be as simple as clicking the ‘submit’ button on Twitter or a blog, or as risky as initiating a startup. In either case, we have the potential to take journalism back to its roots by recording the events of our lives and communities and how those in power affect them.

It’s clear there is no correct way of seeing things. True objectivity — the mainstay of most journalism — would require that all subjective perspectives be represented and shared. If we all make journalism a way of life and share our individual stories, we can prevent these perspectives from being lost or obstructed from the record of history. Occupying the media cannot be a revolution that takes place overnight, it will need to be a determined, painstaking evolution in thought and practice.

For our diverse country to be free, our information must be free and diverse as well.

Performers YaliniDream (left) and Kelly Zen-Yie Tsai (right) act out a scene in which their characters pray to Mary Magdalene, portrayed by Adeeba Rana (center) during the “Say You Heard My Echo” event. Photo-illustration by Daniel Green.

Picture Ground Zero. A chain link fence strewn with teddy-bears, cards, flowers and records contrasts the dark blockade of a construction site, with soft whites and bright reds attempting to bandage the damaged scenery. A buzz of impatient commuters and diligent workers fills the scene until an interruption by three enchanting voices. Together, they say:

“In the city that never sleeps, we’ve got no time for memorial poems.”

One of these voices belongs to Kelly Zen-Yie Tsai, a Chinese-Taiwanese American writer and artist from New York. Alongside her are performing partners Adeeba Rana and YaliniDream.

Tsai presented her three-act play “Say You Heard My Echo” at the Stevenson Event Center on April 13 through the Cultural Arts and Diversity Resource Center, Student Union Assembly and Rainbow Theater. The show was produced by Tsai’s associates from Moving Earth Productions, the Asian-American Arts Alliance and director Jesse Jou.

The show explores the impacts of 9/11 on three fictional Asian-American women living in New York City a decade later. Their struggles with survivorship and faith prompt them to call upon three female religious icons: Mary Magdalene, Guan Yin and Aisha. The women undergo separate transformations as the years following 9/11 prompt change in their political, social and personal lives. The ever-present female religious figures act as mirror representations of the characters and help facilitate their fulfillment, guidance and enlightenment.

Tsai, who grew up in the culture of poetry slams in Chicago, has been able to take her love for spoken word around the world to places including Trinidad and China.

“Spoken word poetry at its very best allows people’s authentic stories, relationships to language and rhythms to shine through [in] a unique, culturally specific way,” Tsai said.

Act One illustrates the damaging effect of monotony and silence — a Catholic burlesque dancer’s survival mutes her expressiveness until she becomes immersed in the anti-war movement. The second act chronicles the unsettling downward spiral of a Buddhist Iraq War veteran and hip-hop emcee who suffers from post traumatic stress disorder upon her return home. The final act addresses the issue of families burdened by detention and interrogation as a Muslim librarian struggles to stay connected to her grandfather. Themes such as the fight for cultural pride and struggle for survival occur throughout the play and serve as a primary focus to connect these three female characters to their respective religious icons.

“I was playing guitar … and heard the words ‘say you heard my echo,’ then I saw an image of a woman being pursued by Mary Magdalene in New York City,” Tsai said.

Tsai’s goal is to show the depth of the experiences that marginalized groups undergo, with special investment in the personal aspects of her identity as a woman who is Asian-American.

“‘Say You Heard My Echo’ shows the breadth and depth of my own humanity through the work that I do … The honesty resonates with people far beyond myself,” Tsai said.

After the third act, the women came together just as they did in the introduction. Their presence together was representative of the power in diversity among different cultures as they brought restoration and healing and beckoned for action in unison, “Silence is never silent. All we have is time for renewal. Say you heard my echo. Say you heard my call.”

After the show, Don Williams, the director of Cultural Arts and Diversity at UCSC addressed the audience about the significance of a valued community through performing arts.

“Our goal is to receive a variety of scripts that deal with many cultures and there’s a lot of cultures that are never written about,” Williams said.

Williams is engaged in the ongoing production process of performances that celebrate diverse cultures.

“We here at the UC, especially Rainbow Theater, are always looking to seek Asian-American one-act plays,” Williams said.

“Rainbow! Rainbow!” echoed supporters in the crowd.

The previously barren stage found its emptiness overwhelmed by the powerful presence of everyone involved as a unified body. The performers of “Say You Heard My Echo” were surrounded by the embrace of laughter and liveliness by the student communities of Don Williams and the students of Cultural Arts and Diversity Resource Center, Student Union Assembly affiliates, and performers from Rainbow Theater.

“No matter how we feel on a given day, we’re never as spiritually or emotionally alone as we may feel,” Tsai said.

To follow Kelly Tsai’s performances and material visit yellowgurl.com.

Few married couples commit to bringing their working aspirations home with them. But in the course of trying to change an academic discipline that reports an average 90 percent male student body nationwide, Charlie McDowell and Linda Werner have had their work cut out for them.

The two computer science professors have been married since 1985. They met several years prior at Werner’s going-away party.

“I asked him to dance,” Werner said. “We’ve been ‘dancing together’ ever since.”

Then, McDowell was unaware of Werner’s passion for advancing diversity within the field. It became a shared passion.

Now that he’s UC Santa Cruz’s Associate Dean of Engingeering, McDowell’s responsibilities range from approving computer science curriculum to conducting his own lectures and playing trombone with several different groups around the Central Coast.

But several times a year he convenes with specialists to conduct research, get involved and establish goals to increase women’s participation in the computer science community. McDowell serves with two other co-chairs of the National Center for Women Information Technology’s (NCWIT) Academic Alliance.

“[The Alliance’s] goal is to bring new women to a field that has historically reported a scarcity,” McDowell said.

To accomplish this end, NCWIT’s “Aspirations in Computing” award ceremony highlighted 25 high school female students from the Bay Area for scholastic achievement in computing this year. It was the fourth consecutive annual presentation of the award.

NCWIT’s K-12 Alliance also aims to increase young women’s involvement with technology. The program cultivates a heightened familiarity with programming before applicants reach the college level, a void that remains a stumbling block for many.

Werner is committed to advancing the same goals as her husband, a task she sees as closely related to public perception of the field.

“We need to change the attitudes of youth,” Werner said. “We need to help them see that computer science is as viable and rewarding a course of study as any traditional route.”

Werner works in conjunction with Education, Training and Research Associates (ETR), a local organization that collaborates with middle schools for that purpose. ETR uses a programming language called Alice, interactive software that superimposes objects such as furniture and snow to create visuals in lieu of lines of text.

Programming languages like Alice are designed to showcase the depth and range of computer science without the technical nuances generally required to access them. Werner recently spent time outside of the U.S. as well, promoting awareness of diversity with women of all ages.

“Groups with greater diversity solve complex problems better and faster than do homogenous groups,” Werner said. “Our work is to help youth become producers, not just consumers of technology.”

UCSC reports a marginally higher percentage of women within the computer science major than the national average. McDowell said based on the level of interest she’s seen recently among local youth, that number is headed to new heights.

“Our computer science major has typically had 12 percent women,” McDowell said. “This year we’re seeing upwards of 17 percent proposed in the freshmen class.”

For the man who wrote the university’s “Introduction to Programming” book, McDowell is in a position to gauge the influx more aptly than most.

“I don’t wish to draw the cause and effect,” McDowell said, “but we’re beginning to see results.”

Together, McDowell and Werner work to provide many hands-on opportunities for the advancement of women in computer science, from the classroom to seminars and conferences around the state. When asked the root of their motivation, the couple responded almost identically.

“I would love to look out at the students in my classrooms and see a more diverse population where everyone feels that they understand the material,” Werner said, “And they feel they belong in the class.”

UC PResident Mark Yudof announced he will be resigning from the UC Board of Regents in August 2013. Photo by Prescott Watson

During their Jan. 15–17 meeting at UC San Francisco, the UC Board of Regents discussed the implications of Prop 30 toward current budget affairs, as well as a variety of fiscal strategies.

Ex-officio regents Gov. Jerry Brown, assembly speaker John Pèrez, Lt. Gov. Gavin Newsom and state schools chief Tom Torlakson also attended the meeting.

On Jan. 18, UC President Mark Yudof announced he will resign from the board in August 2013, due to health-related complications, which, according to the Los Angeles Times, include recent gallbladder surgery, a broken shoulder and bronchitis. President Yudof plans to resume teaching law at UC Berkeley.

Budget

While many gave thanks to Gov. Jerry Brown, voters, and related parties for their help in the passing of Prop. 30, Gov. Brown and Speaker Perez implored the regents to remain vigilant in their budget strategy.

Gov. Brown released his proposed 2013–14 budget on Jan. 10, which would increase state funding for UC by $125 million. However, Gov. Brown emphasized a gap between his proposed budget and that of the regents’.

“Let’s get real,” Brown said. “I’m proposing 5 percent more [funding] in your budget. You’re proposing 11.6 [percent more funding].”

Brown expressed his hearty support for decreasing top administrative salaries and reducing faculty benefits, referencing a recent 23 percent reduction to his salary.

The regents counter-argued that decreasing the cost of leadership would accrue the long-term cost of decreased quality.

While acknowledging the regents’ point, Brown rebutted that California is a large enough state to draw the best and most competitive leaders from within its population.

“How do you make up the [revenue] gap?” Brown said. “Either students make it up in tuition increases — this year and forever — faculty does something different, or in some way we change the model, or the people of California decide they want to invest more than they have historically in higher education.”

Chair Sherry Lansing said she did not think tuition fees increases would be likely through next year.

Online Education

The regents revisited the topic of online education in lieu, they said, of tabling its advancement under the harsh conditions of frequent budget cuts.

Gov. Brown expressed his hearty support for the UC Online Education Initiative, toward which his proposed budget allocates $10 million.

The UC currently offers several online courses, although few students take them for credit and many of the courses are campus-specific.

The regents agreed to assess reports of online education pilot programs, which currently aim to augment high-demand and primarily lower-division courses students must take, at every other meeting in the future.

Diversity

Provost Aimee Dorr gave a report on UC faculty diversity as part of the UC accountability auditing process.

While UC showed more ethnic diversity and gender equality than several other leading universities, the data drew terse criticism from the Board.

“In a state where almost half the students graduating from high school are Latino,” Regent Eddie Island said, “a faculty that is less than 5 percent Latino is embarrassing … how much longer do we have to wait to make the UC faculty demographics look like the state?”

The data showed a continued increase in the diversity of new faculty, but the regents asked Provost Dorr for additional research into what can be done to shift UC faculty into greater diversity.

Graduate/Professional Degree Fee Increases

After having removed the topic from their last meeting agenda, the possibility of raising graduate program fees by up to 35 percent again drew a diverse debate from the regents. The increase could generate $28 million in revenue for UC.

Erik Green, External Vice President of the UCSC Graduate Student Association (GSA), voiced GSA’s strong disapproval of the proposed increase, adding that an additional strategy of only increasing fees in some graduate programs counters the fundamental tenets of UC education.

The topic was tabled without a date set to vote on the potential increase.

UC Assets

Nathan Brostrom, executive vice president of business operations for the UC encouraged the regents to participate in debt restructuring with the state.

Because the UC has a higher credit rating than the state of California, managing $2.5 billion of the state’s debt could accrue the UC $80 million in savings — as opposed to cuts.

Gov. Brown also advised the regents to calculate UC’s operating costs more thoroughly when generating revenue and debt strategies.

“You said [the budget crisis was compounded because] you had to pay your retirement costs,” Brown said. “That’s part of the cost of doing business … internal to the cost of education.”

“We’ve got to think big here,” Brown said. “We’re a research university. Lets do some research. Lets not get imprisoned by paradigms of the past that are now obsolete.”

Illustrations by Maren Slobody

Educational opportunity for all. At the point of its inception in 1960, this was the goal of the “Master Plan for Higher Education in California,” which set out to guarantee all eligible California residents a space in the state’s public higher education system. In accordance with the plan, the state affirmed its commitment to providing resources to ensure that public universities and colleges reflected the demographics of the California population.

Today, the public higher education system remains tied to the provisions of the Master Plan. However, in an era of consistent budget cuts, promoting the plan’s goal of “open access” continues to be a challenge.

The University of California, Santa Cruz has in the past initiated efforts toward realizing the Master Plan’s vision. During the 1970s, Oakes College, formerly known as College Seven, promoted the idea of accommodating underrepresented students from diverse family backgrounds.

Don Rothman, beloved educator and senior lecturer emeritus of writing at Oakes, helped pioneer a writing-tutoring program, which was designed to empower underrepresented students by supporting the development of their writing and communication skills.

“Our mission was to create a level playing field for underrepresented, working class students … for women who wanted to give science another shot and to use writing as a tool to create a multi-cultural, multi-ethnic environment,” Rothman said.

This writing program was one of several efforts UCSC pursued with the goal of fulfilling the objectives of the Master Plan.

The aim: “Hispanic-Serving Institution” status

In an effort to reach the Master Plan’s goals, UCSC also assembled a team of 13 faculty and staff in March 2012 to identify the application requirements necessary to become an Hispanic-Serving Institution (HSI). Awarded by the U.S. Department of Education, the HSI status recognizes that an institution’s total undergraduate enrollment is comprised of at least 25 percent Chicano/Latino students. Additionally, 50 percent of undergraduates must be recipients of financial assistance such as Pell Grants or other forms of federal aid. These requirements must be met for a minimum of two years in order for HSI designation to be awarded.

“Currently, we’re just under that 50 percent mark … so we’re looking to get more students from low-income families and under-resourced high schools, those who would be likely candidates for financial aid,” said Richard Hughey, vice provost and dean of undergraduate education.

The HSI team seeks to explore ways in which UCSC can improve strategies for recruiting and retaining underrepresented students from low-income communities. Through these efforts, the team aims to increase the university’s “visibility as a pipeline to college — and beyond — for all students from underrepresented groups,” said executive vice chancellor (EVC) Alison Galloway.

Last year, UCSC enrolled 3,539 new freshmen of which 1,025 (28.9 percent) identified as Chicano/Latino. Despite these record-high numbers within the freshmen class, the overall proportion of Chicano/Latino undergraduates still did not meet the 25 percent average, as required for the HSI designation.

“There’s been dramatic increases in the Chicano/Latino share of the frosh … but the earlier cohorts affect the overall average,” said Jonathan Fox, Latin American and Latino Studies chair and co-chair of the HSI team.

HSI status was awarded to UC Riverside in 2008 and UC Merced in 2010. Institutions that have been awarded the designation are eligible to apply for competitive federal grants to expand and support educational opportunities for low-income students, particularly those who identify as Chicano/Latino.

When UC Riverside was designated as a HSI, the university applied for and received a $3.3 million federal grant to fund its Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) Pathway Project. The project aims to bridge the gap between UCR and its six partner community colleges by bringing more Chicano/Latino and low-income transfer students into the fields of STEM.

Executive vice chancellor Alison Galloway said if UCSC received the HSI designation, the resulting financial opportunities would be pursued with the aim of developing programs that would support all students.

“As much as we would love to use it for anything, given our budget situation, I understand there are pretty tight regulations on what we can do,” Galloway said. “We would have to look at programs that directly benefit primarily Chicano/Latino students in such a way that the services we provide will be accessible to a much larger group of students.”

However, Fox said there was a lot of work to be done before UCSC could become a Hispanic-Serving Institution.

“It’s going to be at least a couple of years before the [UCSC] meets the basic criteria for eligibility for HSI status,” Fox said. “We could do much more in terms of outreach and recruitment.”

When dwindling dollars cripple diversity

Since the Master Plan was enacted in 1960, the UC system has struggled to keep up with California’s demographic shifts. According to data from the U.S. Census Bureau, in 2011 the Chicano/Latino share of the California population stood at 38.1 percent. Last year, 51.4 percent of students enrolled in K-12 public schools identified as Chicano/Latino. However, the Chicano/Latino share of freshmen across all UC campuses stood at 22.3 percent.

More than 50 years since the enactment of the Master Plan, its goal of equal representation has been challenged partly by economic pressures. According to past California budgets, the state has reduced funding to the UC system by about 35 percent since 2007–08, from $3.7 billion to this year’s $2.4 billion for 2012-13.

Rothman said that with a limited budget, UCSC was straying away from the Master Plan in that it lacked the resources or capacity to accommodate all students who seek to study at the university.

“Now that money is so tight, people are thinking, maybe we should shrink the freshman class and stop inviting so many people in, we can’t educate everybody,” Rothman said.

The ongoing divestment of the state of California from public higher education has forced universities to make due with limited funding. Rothman said UCSC’s ever-tightening budget constraints, which have let to staff layoffs and program cuts, have made it more difficult for the university to remain committed to its Master Plan promise.

“You [have] got to make sure you’re giving students what they need to succeed,” Rothman said. “But for that, you need money to hire people, and everybody knows that.”

Cuts to the UCSC budget have impacted various student support services, including the cultural and ethnic resource centers, which aim to create and maintain a supportive environment for racial diversity on campus.

Carolyn Dunn, managing director of the resource centers, said budget cuts earlier in the year left multiple staff members without a job, increasing the workload for remaining personnel.

“That’s kind of like the norm now … middle-management folks taking on more administrative duties,” Dunn said. “A lot of us wear two or three hats these days.”

Marla Wyche-Hall is the director of the African-American Resource and Cultural Center, which provides support for students in the African/Black community at UCSC. She said the services offered by the resource centers help to ensure students’ academic success, and the university would therefore benefit from increased funding for the centers.

“When students become involved in our programs they feel comfortable and motivated, and they are more likely to stay and eventually graduate,” Wyche-Hall said. “The university should provide more funds for these efforts, because in the end it’s a win-win situation for the UCSC community.”

But the resource centers at UCSC are not the only ones bearing the brunt of budget pressures.

The Educational Partnership Center (EPC), which forms part of the UCSC Undergraduate Education division, hosts several academic support programs to help underrepresented high school students pursue their goals for higher education.

Rafael Granados, EPC interim executive director, said the state’s budget crisis increased competition for federal grants and as a result were seeking alternative sources of funding, prompting a reevaluation of its outreach and recruitment strategies.

“There’s fewer resources, so more people are competing. It’s been challenging, and we know we can’t continue to rely on the state’s support — everyone is looking for other ways to raise funds,” Granados said. “Five or seven years ago, our budget was double what it is today, but since then, we’ve had to become more creative and utilize partnerships with student groups, schools, businesses and community organizations.”

Paths towards Diversity (Outreach)

In an effort to strengthen support for diversity on campus, several programs at UCSC are aimed at recruiting students from low-income and urban areas. The cultural and ethnic resource centers work in collaboration with several organizations devoted to promoting college opportunity through outreach programs.

The African/Black Student Alliance is a UCSC student-led organization committed to enhancing  communication and unity among African-American students on campus and beyond. A/BSA co-chair Jocqui Smollett said it was a problem that underrepresented students at UCSC sometimes feel marginalized, and that it is important for the university to support recruitment efforts to address the lack of diversity on campus.

“We are small in numbers, and we are spread out across the 10 colleges around campus,” Smollett said. “So not only are you not seeing people who look like you in class, but you’re not seeing people who look like you in your community or residence. I stay in College Nine, and four black people in a building is a lot to me. That’s a problem in itself.”

The Cultural Arts and Diversity (CAD) Center at UCSC strives to foster a spirit of unity between students from different backgrounds. CAD director Don Williams said he leads a “little army” of about 45 students who aim to improve campus diversity by regularly embarking on outreach excursions across the state.

“We often go around high schools in Los Angeles and the Bay area,” Williams said. “On our last trip we engaged with over 1,600 students.”

Williams said a diverse campus environment was important, for it helps to “cultivate well-rounded students by allowing them to explore different cultures and ideologies”.

Through it’s partnership with the EPC, UCSC is involved in several outreach efforts in the Santa Cruz area which help to attract prospective students from diverse backgrounds. These include the Mathematics, Engineering, Science Achievement (MESA), a nationwide program that encourages educationally disadvantaged youth to excel in the fields of math and science. The EPC employs student interns and teachers who encourage MESA participants in local Santa Cruz high-schools to enter their science projects into annual competitions held on the UCSC campus.

“The students are mostly from poor or underrepresented communities,” Granados said. “The hope is that by participating in the science project competition, they will be motivated to later on apply to study at a university or community college.”

Olga Nájera-Ramírez, a UCSC alumna and faculty advisor of the Mexican folkloric dance group Los Mejicas, said when she applied to UCSC as a student of an underrepresented background, there were no real outreach program to support her throughout the university application process.

“I felt lost, overwhelmed and had no one to turn to for advice,” Nájera-Ramírez said. “I know how intimidating it is for first-generation students to navigate their way through the application process. It’s a daunting task and can be very hard without the proper support.”

In order to provide support for underrepresented students who are preparing for university, EPC works through the partnership program Gaining Early Awareness and Readiness for Undergraduate Programs (GEAR UP). In collaboration with EPC, GEAR UP joins university students, teachers and counselors from high schools in low-income and under-resourced communities to aid high school students with preparation for higher education.

“We have student interns going down to schools and tutoring kids,” Granados said. “We also help them to construct an academic plan so they know early on what the requirements are to get admitted into UC.”

Nájera-Ramírez said community performances by Los Mejicas often sparked interest among Santa Cruz residents, who tend to visit UCSC afterwards to enquire about the various cultural theatre groups on campus.

“People see the group perform, and immediately they become interested in learning more about Mexican heritage and culture,” Nájera-Ramírez said. “They contact us at the university to find out how they can get involved.”

Retention

In order to reach the HSI-required 25 percent mark of Chicano/Latino students, the university must focus on not only recruiting students, but retaining them through providing support throughout their college education.

Rothman said effective retention requires a welcoming environment, one that is conducive to students’ academic success. Without the necessary support structures, he said the university could be diagnosed with the “revolving door syndrome”.

“The Revolving Door Syndrome is when you invite all these minority students in, but you don’t work to retain them and help them graduate,” Rothman said. “Without proper retention strategies, these students drop out feeling defeated and stupid.”

Chicanos and Latinos Educandose (Ch.A.L.E.) is a needs-based retention program at UCSC within the Chicano Latino Resource Center (El Centro) that provides academic support through creating a space for students to network and collaborate with one another.

Monica Cordova, third-year literature major and Ch.A.L.E. retention coordinator, said the organization engages students through hosting both cultural and academic events. However, funding cuts continue to limit the impact of their efforts.

“If we had enough money we could put on big-scale events that would attract more of the community,” Cordova said.

The Way Forward

According to federal budget projections for the 2013 fiscal year, more than $200 million in competitive grants will be set aside for HSIs across the United States.

UCSC could benefit from HSI grants in several ways, one being through the Educational Opportunity Programs (EOP), which provide academic and personal support to improve the retention of first-generation college students. EOP director Pablo Reguerin, said he would like to use HSI funding to ensure a seamless transition for students who enter UCSC after coming from underprepared high schools and community colleges.

“We want to provide students with academic support by means of tutoring to improve their achievement in the classroom,” Reguerin said. “We also want to counsel students on how to manage their time and budgets, so they are better equipped to navigate the university system.”

As the demographics of UCSC’s undergraduate class approach the levels required for HSI designation, Hughey said the HSI team had not yet adopted any clear policy that would regulate the allocation of HSI grants.

“Currently, there is no specific plan for how federal HSI grant funds might be spent,” Hughey said. “That will depend on the department or unit of the university that writes the proposal for the grant application.”

However, Smollett said any funds that may result from the HSI designation should be allocated towards improving the experience of underrepresented students on the UCSC campus.

“It’s crucial that the administration dedicate this funding to improve diversity,” Smollett said. “Though these are desperate economic times … we shouldn’t be naive. We must hold our administration accountable and ensure that administrators hold each other accountable.”

With weakening financial support from the state, universities have been challenged with cutting back expenditures while still trying to fulfill the Master Plan by serving all members of an increasingly diverse society.

Rothman said as UCSC works toward the HSI designation, the question of whether the university can remain faithful to its Master Plan duty and serve underrepresented students, will depend on how it allocates its funding.

“Because of the economic crisis we’re in now, we’re facing some big problems,” Rothman said. “The question is, where are you going to put your resources when they’re really limited? Are you going to put it in diversity and work with students who you can help to become honor students? Let’s assume that without any help, without the transition in the first two years, they won’t become honor students — they may even drop out. You’ve got to believe that you’re actually putting the money and the resources in a place where it will make a difference.”

Infographic by Leigh Douglas

Members of the campus community discussed the racial climate that African-American, Black and Caribbean (ABC) students face at UC Santa Cruz during a forum held at the Cervantes and Velasquez room of the Bay Tree Conference Center.

The forum, held on Oct. 9 and hosted by members of the African-American Resource and Cultural Center, saw faculty administrators, students and other staff discuss the result of the Diverse Learning Environments (DLE) survey. They shared their thoughts on how African-American students, who make up 2.9 percent of undergraduates at UCSC, experience the racial climate on campus.

Held in spring 2011, the DLE survey aimed to examine the racial climate at UCSC by asking undergraduate students about their personal experiences and interactions as well as their opinions about university policies and actions.

The DLE Survey results found that almost half of ABC respondents were dissatisfied with the racial diversity on campus. The outcome of the survey resonated with many students who attended the panel discussion.

Jocqui Smollett, co-chair of the African/Black Student Alliance (A/BSA), said the racial climate on campus was “unstable.” He shared with the audience how he had in the past been ignored by some of his class professors, and recalled instances of discrimination among students on campus.

Infographic by Leigh Douglas

“People don’t really see [racism on campus]. Everyone thinks Santa Cruz is such a progressive university and there’s nothing to be done, when in reality there is a lot of room for improving diversity on this campus,” Smollett said.

According to the DLE Survey results, 55 percent of African-American/Black respondents reported “feeling insulted or threatened because of their race” at least sometimes, and 35 percent often or very often, while 45 percent of African American/Black respondents said they “never” or “rarely” had experiences of a hostile climate. 29 percent of African-American/Black respondents frequently heard students making insensitive or disparaging racial comments, while 22 percent reported witnessing discrimination often or very often.

The survey also found that 85 percent of ABC respondents felt that faculty believed in their potential to succeed academically. Institutional research analyst Anna Sher said this may have been because of the broad nature of the survey questions, so that even if a student had experienced a specific instance of racial discrimination, their overall response might still be positive.

“The survey questions are very general … like, ‘Do you feel faculty encourage you to ask questions?’ If the majority of faculty members treat you well, then you would say yes,” Sher said.

Infographic by Leigh Douglas

Some students and faculty at the panel also advocated for the expansion of the Rosa Parks African American Theme House (RPAATH), which is located at Stevenson College. The residency is a popular living environment for students who share a passion for political, cultural, social and economic issues that affect African-Americans.

“Instead of dedicating a whole building to the African and Black community, students were asking for a floor that would be centralized around a theme like African-American culture,” said commissioner of academic affairs Wanjiku (Shiku)Muhire.

However, Smith said, not all ABC students wish to stay in an exclusively African-American space. Meka Williams, RPAATH resident and second-year sociology major said she wanted to embrace diversity by living among students of all ethnicities.

“A lot of people don’t want to feel isolated, that’s not the goal here,” Williams said. “We just wanna see more [ABC students] on campus.”

Speaking at the panel discussion, executive vice chancellor Alison Galloway said the university is aiming for higher levels of recruitment and retention of African-American students and staff, though she said the task may prove challenging.

“We say a lot about diversity on this campus, and yet we are often less able to say how we support it,” Galloway said.

Sher said the results of the DLE Survey concluded that students at UCSC expect to see more campus-wide actions promoting diversity, including more public discussions of critical issues such as racism.

Infographic by Leigh Douglas

Sher said participation in the survey was completely voluntary. Students were requested via e-mail and poster advertisements to sign up for the questionnaire, but many students never responded. Sher said the poll still represents the diversity on campus.

“Our response rate was 33 percent … we included students of all ethnicities, so the results are representative of the entire student population,” Sher said.

Donnae Smith, coordinator of the Diversity and Inclusion Program, an initiative aimed at enhancing cultural competency around UCSC, said she was concerned about the low response rate. Student participation is crucial, Smith said, since survey results often inform decisions around diversity policies.

“I often tell my students that their voice is a tool that can be used to make a difference,” Smith said

Aaronette White. Photo Courtesy of Marla Wyche-Hall

At sunset, over 70 students and faculty gathered around the central rock of UC Santa Cruz’s Quarry Plaza. The stone was turned into an altar, next to which stood a picture, biography and flowers. Fifty-one candles encircled the front of the rock to honor the unexpected passing of Aaronette M. White on Aug.14.

White was an associate dean of the Division of Social Sciences and an associate professor of psychology at UCSC. While White was a professor and faculty member, she was also a researcher and beloved campus figure. Jocqui Smollett, co-chair of the African/Black Student Alliance, helped organize the memorial on Aug. 16 and said it was a testament to White’s character how quickly people came together to honor her passing.

“It was really powerful to have undergraduate students, graduate students and faculty all in the same place,” Smollett said. “The fact that Dr. White passed and could bring all of us together in unison, within a week of her passing … Everyone was there for just one cause and that really just speaks to how powerful the impact she had on people’s lives.”

The service included speeches of remembrance from students and faculty. Carolyn Dunn, director of the American Indian Resource Center, sang a combination of Native American songs to honor White.

“The function of these songs is to honor our beloved fallen by singing a Flag Song, to honor the land they fought for, and then to honor them specifically with an Honor Song,” Dunn said in an email. “I chose those two for Dr. White because she truly is a warrior.”

Smollett read messages of students and faculty who were unable to attend, which was followed by a song from Ebony Lewis, associate director of admissions.

In July, White was appointed associate dean of equity and social responsibility at the Division of Social Sciences, to help maintain and increase the diversity of the division. If successful, the plan might have spread to the rest of campus.

As a social psychologist, White did research on gender, feminism and women’s studies, among other subjects.

Smollett said White was a role model for the students and faculty around her.

“Being a black person of color, you are part of 2.7 percent of black students [at UCSC], so whenever you have a profound, prominent professor such as Dr. White — these are professors who we look up to, these are professors who we aspire to be. These are black individuals who were once in our position — they have made it to this level and are making such a great impact on people’s lives,” Smollett said. “Unfortunately, there are not many classes available to black Americans about black American life, the black American struggle, or black American history. Dr. White was able to take that black struggle, that black history, and implement it into her classes.”

DT Amajoyi, a former mentee of White, said she was in awe of White’s powerful dialogue on race in her African-American psychology class.

“Being able to see someone in action relaying the message of things as heavy as slavery, oppression and white privilege, to a class of mostly white students … to be able to do that on our campus, which doesn’t have ethnic studies or isn’t necessarily open to talking about topics like that, was amazing,” she said. “Everyone was open because she was very tactful in the way that she did it. You could tell it was well-intentioned.”

Smollett said even though he never had the opportunity to personally meet White, like others at the service, he was greatly impacted by her passing.

“It was incredible,” he said. “The love, the passion — you could just feel it within the whole circle. Everyone was so emotional. People who didn’t even know about her beforehand found out about her life and were crying … I didn’t even know her, but I felt as if my aunt had died.”

Marla Wyche-Hall, director of the African American Resource & Cultural Center, worked with White and said in an email that her passing was a great tragedy to the UCSC community.

“[She was] someone who cared deeply on issues of feminism, someone who wasn’t afraid to push the envelope and engage in “tough” topics of racial inequities and disenfranchised communities,” Wyche-Hall said. “[She was] a person who invested countless hours, time and mentorship in her students, both at the undergraduate and at the graduate level.”

The Student Union Assembly, A/BSA and UCSC’s Ethnic Resource Centers will hold a second memorial on Wednesday, Oct. 3 at the Quarry Plaza at 8 p.m.

Keynote speaker Michael Eric Dyson gives an inspiring speech during the Speaker Blowout Event. Photo by Chelsea McKeown

The lights dimmed, clamorous chattering came to a halt and the background music dwindled into silence. As students sat quietly and attentively, Michael Eric Dyson stepped onto the stage.

“Like Biggie said, ‘Pink gators, my Detroit players/’Timbs’ for my hooligans in Brooklyn,’” Dyson said.

The crowd’s silence broke into an uproar of cheering and laughter as they applauded the Detroit-born professor, author, radio show host and academic’s reference to The Notorious B.I.G’s 1996 hit song, “Hypnotize” before he swiftly shifted back to intellectual vernacular.

Dyson spoke at the Stevenson Event Center May 9 for the sixth annual speaker blowout. The jointly organized SUA and Engaging Education event was aimed toward addressing issues that affect access to higher education and the success of under-resourced and under-represented communities on campus.

“There are a lot of students struggling that need a sense of community and we thought that Dr. Michael Eric Dyson would be that person to help bridge that gap in building solidarity between different communities here on campus,” said Abel Pineda, co-program coordinator for Engaging Education.

Dyson’s ability to reach students and elucidate what he called, “the powers and perils of diversity,” lies not only in his master’s degree and doctorate from Princeton University, the 16 books he has authored, his countless appearances on several major media outlets, his former show on NPR or his current position as a sociology professor at Georgetown University, but also in his own personal background and presence.

Stretches of erudite speech were frequently sprinkled with commentary and jokes, and sometimes song — or rap — to support Dyson’s thoughts. From Trey Songz to Marvin Gaye, at various points the staid tone erupted into fingers snapping and hands clapping as the audience sang along with Dyson’s use of musical reference to engage the crowd.

In addition to Dyson’s magnetic speaking abilities, he did not shy away from addressing the issues surrounding race and ethnicity. His talk urged students to eradicate an assigned hierarchy of difference and to embrace diversity.

“The beauty of diversity is that those outsiders come to the table, shape the table, ask questions about who’s at the table, begin to participate, begin to be included, begin to be integrated, begin to be invited,” Dyson said. “It invites voices that didn’t used to be heard to be heard, faces that were never seen to be included.”

Dyson warned against discrimination between separated minority groups and its potential to divest diversity of its radical intent to challenge the majority. He said it was important instead to understand the universality of different communities while emphasizing the value in maintaining their unique differences.

“The differences among ourselves are suppressed, so our challenge is figuring out ways to embrace and allow to breathe those differences that make us who we are,” Dyson said.

Inciting dialogue on inclusion and diversity within the campus community was essential to the event organizers.

“An event like this and a speaker like this is especially important to SUA because people need to be challenged,” said DT Amajoyi, SUA commissioner of diversity. “It will challenge [students] to not just stick with the status quo, but to figure out what it is that’s going on.”

Amajoyi said the talk is especially relevant for the upcoming academic year with plans for new programs in critical race and ethnic studies on campus. Voices of underrepresented communities are also threatened with voter ID laws and other legislation like SB1070 and HB56.

Voter ID laws require a person to show formal identification to vote and are thought by some to be a problem of intimidation to voters of underrepresented communities. SB1070 is an Arizona law that obliges immigrants to have registration documents in possession at all times. HB56 is another Arizona law that “[requires] a person to present proof of citizenship and residency before voting,” according to the act.

Dyson’s words also reflect and encourage the collaboration that took place between SUA and Engaging Education to plan and execute the evening along with several other organizations that came together to help support the event.

“Different ethnic organizations and different student organizations on campus are very divided in a sense because they have their own projects and they want to do their own things,” said Adrianne Sebastian, co-program coordinator at Engaging Education. “But we felt it was necessary to promote cross-collaboration and joining together of different spaces.”

“Some of the ideas that were brought up and introduced by Dyson and the students are very instrumental in terms of how we are going to continue producing programs,” said Engaging Education co-program coordinator Pineda, “and hopefully be producing more collaborative programs within the different communities.”

A discussion held on April 27 during Alumni Weekend reminded staff, faculty, students and alumni why the legacy of Oakes continues to live on at UC Santa Cruz.

The public discussion was carried out by founding Oakes College provost
Herman Blake — who is the current humanities scholar in residence at the University of South Carolina — and his longtime friend and colleague, UCSC senior lecturer and emeritus in writing, Don Rothman.

Blake and Rothman discussed topics ranging from the founding days of Oakes in 1972, to the presence of students of color and other underserved communities in higher education.

Among the students present at the discussion was fourth-year politics major and Oakes student Fithawi Kudus, who was asking around for a Sharpie so Blake could sign his hat. Kudus and other students in the audience said Blake was a source of inspiration after listening to Rothman and Blake discuss the roots of Oakes College, and sharing memories from the early decades of UCSC.

“He’s our hero,” said fourth-year neuroscience major Lon Ogunduyile.

As a founding member of Oakes College in 1972, Blake sought to increase the presence of students of color in the higher education system and to create a
community on campus that would support marginalized and underserved students.

Blake said Alumni Weekend was a chance for him and his colleagues, who were present on the UCSC campus in its earlier decades, to see the recruitment and support of students of color — all goals set through the founding of Oakes.

“What you saw Friday night was what we hoped for,” Blake said. “Why was it important to me? It was important because it was a dream come true.”

Although Blake said that Oakes was often called “experimental” in its founding, he would not use that word to describe the college.

“Oakes was not experimental,” Blake said. “But, a lot of people used that term, and I objected to the term on the grounds that an experiment meant that, if the situation got difficult, it was expendable. And I never considered Oakes College expendable.”

Blake said many in attendance at the discussion during Alumni Weekend had gone on to careers in professions like law, engineering and medicine, and many worked with the same sectors of society Oakes aims to support — low-income and marginalized communities.

Blake also recognized alumni Victor Cabrerra, who attended the discussion with his family and is now a lawyer. Cabrerra primarily works with clients who identify as undocumented.

“[Victor Cabrerra has] served the communities we hoped for,” Blake said.

Blake has also been a strong proponent of increasing the presence of people of color in the fields of math, science and engineering.

“We live in a world in which science plays a major role politically, economically and intellectually,” he said.

Highlighting the way that Oakes continues its focus on providing support to students of color in the sciences, Blake said Oakes has rooted itself in counteracting and preventing a racist view from prevailing in modern society.

“Our communities needed environmentalists, they needed engineers, they needed doctors, they needed dentists, and they needed nurses,” Blake said. “The general belief was that minorities weren’t smart enough, or intelligent enough to do the sciences, and we were determined to not let that view prevail,” Blake said.

Graduate student Danyale Bell — who is the only black student in the UCSC master’s of education program — and Ogundunyile were recruited to UCSC through Destination for Higher Education, which continues to organize UCSC undergraduates to inform minority high school students about opportunities through university education.

Both Ogundunyile and Bell participated in Destination for Higher Education outreach efforts during their time as undergraduates, something they agree has allowed them to give back to the communities they represent.

Bell and Ogundunyile, both students of color who pursued math and science degrees, respectively, said that Oakes’ advisors had assisted them in finding resources like the Academic Excellence program, which seeks to increase the diversity of students graduating with math and science degrees.

“[ACE, Oakes faculty and administration] was my support system … they support you for the decisions you make,” Bell said.

The impact that Oakes has had on students like Danyale and Lon has its roots in the enduring legacy of Oakes. Gregory Brown, a UCSC alumni (class of ’81) and assistant professor of criminal justice at California State University, Fullerton, said his affiliation with Oakes in his undergraduate years had a “profound” effect on his education, and continues to have an impact on him today.

“The big emphasis [at Oakes] is that it’s encouraging people to go outside their comfort zone, to go outside of their racial/ethnic group and try to meet others because there is a richness and diversity there,” Brown said. “All too frequently, society is very ethnocentric … I felt that the Oakes experience was trying to change that. They were trying to create an environment that encouraged people to interact with others different than them.”

Oakes College continues to be a place where students, as well as Oakes staff and faculty from a variety of backgrounds interact and receive support from one another. Ogundunyile and Bell both said that Oakes has shaped their experiences at UCSC in many ways and is a place on campus that feels like “home” — a place of diversity and community.

“I fell in love with [Oakes] … I felt comfortable being in [Oakes] being a math major … Black, and a math major — I learned this over the last five years — [are] not something that ‘go together,’ according to society or whoever,” Bell said. “Being at Oakes, I felt good about my major, it felt good to be in that space and I was welcome … it was like my motivation to keep going.”

Data released by UCOP on April 17 reported that an unprecedented 160,939 students applied for the fall 2012 quarter UC-system wide, with 80,289 admitted. Out of those students admitted, 10,309 were from out of state.

UC Santa Cruz admissions adviser Robert Szemeredi said in a brief interview that UC admissions officers “don’t really care whether students are from California or not … we offer admission based on whether or not [students] meet and exceed UC requirements.”

UC Santa Cruz received 40,622 total applicants. Out of the 19,936 freshman undergraduates who were admitted, 1,082 were out-of state-students and 589 were international students. UCSC admitted 514 more non-California resident students than last year. Non-resident students currently pay $23,000 more than California residents in annual student tuition fees.

The website for the University of California budget shows that the 2011-2012 budget was the first time in UC history that student fees and tuition contributed more to “core operating funds” than did the California state general funds.

California state spending on education has decreased by $6 billion over the last year, according to a study conducted by the Center for the Study of Education Policy at Illinois State University.

Campus provost Alison Galloway said in an on-campus budget forum Feb. 27 that the UC faces a potential $200 million budget reduction. This loss in state funding would create holes in the budget that would need to be accounted for.

Galloway said under “optimistic” conditions, the cuts in the overall UC budget could “trigger” up to a $4.5 million funding reduction for 2012-13.

While admission of out-of-state students has increased, numbers show that California residents aren’t necessarily being pushed out of the system. Admissions have been cut back on the whole due to a lack of resources. At UCSC, 18,265 California high school seniors were admitted for the fall 2012 quarter, up from 17,917 last year. However, admission offers to UCSC for all applicants have decreased from 68.1 percent in 2011 to 60.5 percent in 2012, indicating increased competition among UC admissions.

Szemeredi said non-resident students make up less than 2 percent of the student body, a fact that is “dissuasive” to potential applicants who feel that UC Santa Cruz is dominated by Californians.

“We’re really desiring diversity,” Szemeredi said.

Photo by Prescott Watson

Correction: SOAR (Student Organization Advising & Resources) and UC Santa Cruz’s colleges do not provide funding for ASF, DHE and ORALE (programs, not student groups as originally printed). Measure 15 (printed originally as Measure 10) does, and the Chancellor matches that amount each year. Additionally, Engaging Education houses these programs, which are entirely student run and initiated from such ethnic student organizations as MEChA, FSA and ABSA. These organizations work closely with the student coordinators and, in collaboration with Engaging Education, put on these three outreach programs. Engaging Education also provides them with funding and the space to organize and put on these events. Also, City on a Hill Press has replaced the term “minority” with the more correct term “underrepresented.”

More than 170 newly admitted first-years, including many students of underrepresented backgrounds, attended this year’s lineup of guest speakers for the annual Student Initiated Outreach (SIO) weekend program.

From Southern and Northern California alike, newly admitted high-school seniors embarked on an all expenses paid weekend trip to Santa Cruz that began on April 12 and lasted through April 14.

SIO brought students of underrepresented backgrounds together in an effort to demonstrate that UCSC offers a community for students of all backgrounds.

Student Initiated Outreach is open to all prospective first-years, offering “programs that have been created by UC Santa Cruz students in order to introduce interested admitted students to the campus,” according to the UCSC undergraduate admissions website.

Funded through a combination of state funding and Measure 10, SIO comprised the programs Oportunidades Rumbo a La Educacion (ORALE), Destination Higher Education and A Step Forward, which all serve as outreach helping to create a community for underrepresented students at UCSC. SIO was founded on the principle that a strong community, in addition to academic encouragement, allows students of underrepresented communities to access paths toward higher education. The program seeks to provide students of underrepresented communities with guidance and support in addition to fostering strong, on-campus communities for historically underrepresented groups.

UCSC saw a half-percent increase in both admitted African American and Asian American students and a 3 percent increase in admitted Chicano/Latino students for the fall 2012 quarter. According to a University of California report, the UC system saw an increase in admissions of students of historically underrepresented groups with the proportion of admitted African American students up from 4.1 percent in 2011 to 4.4 percent in 2012.

The proportion of admitted Chicano/Latino students in the UC system also increased from 26 percent to 27.3 percent. In 2008, students of underrepresented groups made up less than 30 percent of degree holders in the United States.

“We try to deal with diversity issues,” said Alfredo Mireles, former SIO guest speaker and UC student regent. “We deal with these issues through changing the admissions policy or other things at the regent level, but it doesn’t even scratch the surface compared to how effective events like these are to make sure students of underrepresented communities come to a campus like UC Santa Cruz.”

Each of the three guest speakers featured in SIO’s opening night addressed the adversity many underrepresented students face in the public education system. For nearly two hours, the three speakers, Mandla Kayise, Victor Sanchez, and Eden Jacquinto, spoke of the hardships they each faced as underrepresented students while achieving a college education.

“We’re a small percentage who have made it to this institution and we have the privilege of choice to come here,” Sanchez said.

ORALE, which translates as “heading to the education opportunities,” represents the Latino/Latina and Chicano/Chicana community on campus. Coordinator for ORALE Fatima Galvez organized transportation for the 65 ORALE high-school students who attended SIO with the hope of attracting students to UCSC.

“It would be great if students decided to come to UCSC,” Galvez said. “But mostly, I want them to believe they can do it, I want students to know they can go to a college like [UCSC].”

A collaborative effort made by student groups, volunteers and guest speakers alike, organizers hosted the event with the hope that the program would not only attract students of underrepresented communities to attend UCSC, but encourage them to seek empowerment from the inside and pursue higher education with the unity and support of their peers.

“I want you to stand up and look around you,” Jacquinto said. “Please stand if you have been or if you know anyone who has been deported.” After many students rose to their feet, she then asked, “If you have been or know anyone who has been a victim of police brutality, please stand.”

As students stood, Jacquinto asked students to understand that they needed to help form a supportive community for themselves and one another.

“Look to your left,” Jacquinto said. “And then look to your right.”

In 2011 protesters shut down Wall Street, on March 1 protesters will shut down the university, and on March 5 they will shut down the capitol. It is no surprise to the UC Santa Cruz student body that we are in a class struggle for social and economic equality.

Van Jones spoke on campus on Feb. 21 about the economic crisis and his reformation of the American dream.

Jones is a Yale Law School graduate, former advisor to the Obama administration, bestselling author of “The Green Collar Economy,” award-winning pioneer in human rights and clean energy economy, and was dubbed one of the 100 most influential people in the world in 2009 by TIME magazine.

Charismatic and humorous, Jones described the center of America’s struggle as an economic and cultural task. The notion of the American Dream, he said, is a confused and misinterpreted one that should be transformed to better reflect today’s society.

“There is a thing they call the American Dream,” he said. “This is the notion that everyone in American is going to get as rich as they possibly can. This is not the American dream, but it is the American dance. This dream is a dying dream. This dream is dying, and it should be dying.”

Jones is currently working on an organization called Rebuild the Dream, which focuses on community reformation through traditional techniques, like teach-ins and rallies, as well as digital services like online petitions and viral digital projects. The plan is to reestablish the American dream as something that protects and expands jobs for the middle and lower classes.

UCSC students are part of the new generation in this plan, Jones said.

“The diversity you have in your generation is a miracle in history,” he said. “You have every class, every faith, every race, every gender, and you’re even making new genders. You have all of these things, and you get along pretty well. This diversity, through your generation’s social and political movements, can and will restore prosperity.”

First-year Leilani Salvador is a member of the Cultural Arts and Diversity Program board of directors. Salvador helped organize and sponsor the event.

“One of our goals [with bringing Jones to speak] was to get a more politically diverse community,” Salvador said. “The majority of the politically active communities on campus are ethnically white students. For us to have Jones, who is a politically prominent figure, represented by so many ethnically-based groups really encourages ethnic students to participate in the campus’ political opportunities.”

Dr. Marla Wyche-Hall, director of the African American Resource and Cultural Center, one of the event’s sponsors, said Jones spoke well about the challenges and promises facing our diverse, multicultural generation.

“I think one of the purposes of his speech was to cross boundaries,” she said. “We have to acknowledge the differences between our social and ethnic groups, but, despite this ‘rainbow generation,’ we can still come together and make change.”

Read City on a Hill Press’ exclusive Q&A with Van Jones

One doctor puts her research subject through his paces in “Captivated,” showing Friday at 7 p.m. in the Stevenson Events Center. Photo by Katie Ventura.

Rainbow Theater, the only multi-cultural theater group in the UC system, is entering the last two weekends of its 18th season with three more plays that expand the intellectual and emotional palette.

Rainbow Theater consists of approximately 110 students who put on five shows in the fall and comprise an outreach team that travels throughout the state, performing and workshopping with high school students.

At the center of Rainbow Theater is its founder Don Williams, UC Santa Cruz director of cultural arts and diversity.

“Rainbow has a spirit that really runs from heart to heart,” Williams said. “It’s an org, it’s a class, it’s a family. It works on teaching history, various cultures, and also being able to accept all walks of people.”

At UCSC, programs like Rainbow Theater serve as more than just an venue for the arts.

“There’s a lot of students that come here, especially students of color, who can really get lost in the fabric of UCSC,” Williams said. “Over the years, many participants say Rainbow Theater has become a pseudo-family community.”

In a time when support for the arts can be scarce, Rainbow Theater has stayed consistently strong. Last spring, students voted to pass Measure 49, allotting Rainbow Theater more funding from student fees. The group also receive attention from provosts, and even executive vice chancellor Alison Galloway.

“[Galloway] was very impressed with what the students had done,” Williams said. “She has truly demonstrated her interest of all students, and a movement of embracing culture in a real way, and that’s a good thing.”

Although this season of Rainbow Theater is well underway, there are still three more shows this weekend and next, all of which are being performed at the Stevenson Events Center. Doors open at 6:30 p.m., and the shows start at 7 p.m.

Tomorrow, audiences can see Program A, two plays titled “The First Seed” and “Captivated.”

“The First Seed” follows an Indian-American family’s experience with arranged marriage as they deal with issues of assimilation, gender roles and abuse. “First Seed” was written by UCSC alumni Aman Gohal. Gohal attended opening night with the majority of the original cast, highlighting Rainbow Theater’s deep sense of lifelong community.

“Captivated” by Darryl C. Davis shows what can happen when three female doctors take men captive for observation. “It’s a dicey play because it deals with women getting into the heads of men,” said student co-director Chela Simmons. “You see these men being challenged and questioned.”

Program B, showing Saturday, consists of the play “Blu” and Rainbow Theater’s “Poet’s Corner.”

“Blu,” by Virginia Grise, focuses on a group of Chicano/a youths in the barrio as they navigate a world fraught with the complexities of gang violence, criminalization of youth, military recruitment in minority neighborhoods and coming of age.

“Poet’s Corner” is a venue for student poets, musicians and storytellers to express their personal stories and experiences through original pieces.

“It takes you places you’ve been to, but not like they take you there,” Williams said. He points to one piece as an example.

“It’s these three women on stage dealing with body images,” Williams said. “It’s these thick women, and all they want to be is loved, too. So they tell their story, and the way they tell their story is captivating … It’s a shout-out to any woman who is oversized: You are beautiful.”

Closing out the Rainbow Theater season on Nov. 19 and 20 is “Black Men on the Edge” by William F. Mayfield. This deeply stirring study of eight black men is a raw and truthful journey into the psyche of a largely culturally stereotyped demographic.

“I want people to think twice before they try to use stereotypes to judge a black man, because in the media we’re perceived as really masculine, and degrading women as these sexual objects,” actor Jeovaughn Bautista said. “We want people to know we are just human. We’re not trying to make you feel bad about how you live your life — we just want you to be aware.”

Rainbow Theater is about so much more for Bautista than being an actor in a play. Like many in the organization, he feels it was an impactful experience.

“These plays changed my life,” Bautista said. “Literally, how I looked at my life would change every year with these plays. I would always look forward to them. I had to make it my goal to come here no matter what … we do change lives.”

Illustration by Louise Leong.

When I was six or seven years old, I would spend my Saturday afternoons at the local Korean Baptist Church. A pink textbook opened in front of me, oversized hangul lightly sketched on sheets of paper. I kept my eyes turned downward behind a veil of straight brown hair as I avoided speaking. My face would become red and hot with embarrassment, as the guttural sounds got caught in my throat and I fumbled over words — the syllables swirled around in my mouth, only to be spit out awkwardly, a jumble of sounds always a little off.

Korean school was a short-lived experience — I hated going because even though I wasn’t sure what it was, I knew I was different. I looked different. I was shy and out of place. I hated my limited Korean and I hated feeling like an outsider. I spent more afternoons hiding in the secret places of a little garden than talking to my peers.

I am — like 4.2 million Americans — multiracial. My mother is Native American and white; my father, Korean and white. If my parents had followed the life paths their families had in mind, I would not be here. A product of teen parents, I stumbled through life and grew up with them. And when they came into the picture, my two younger brothers joined our little family.

Among American children, the multiracial population has increased almost 50 percent to 4.2 million people since 2000, according to The New York Times. The 2000 census report was the first time that Americans had the option to select more than one race — and reports flooded in, indicating the number of mixed race people in the United States.

Reports from the 2000 census data determined that 2.4 percent of the U.S. population identifies with two or more races and California is second in the country for largest percentage of multiethnic populations, beat out only by Hawaii. According to the 2010 census, 2.9 percent of the population identified as two or more races, and the numbers are likely to continue to increase. As a result, federal groups like the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission have added a “two or more races” category to their documents in response to the growing numbers of multiracial individuals.

But growing up in a mixed race family has meant knowing there is something different about our mismatched family and negotiating what this has meant. I had to determine what exactly being multiracial encompassed and what it meant to exist simultaneously in two very different cultures.

With the rising number of people who identify as multiracial, conflicts concerning self-identity, social and legal issues, as well as community relations are appearing within private and public lives.

The Numbers on a Growing Population

Recently, The New York Times has run a series of articles and multimedia projects on multiracial people and the growing number of self-identified multiethnic people in the United States. The Times even incorporated a family tree application where users could upload a family history, detailing how different ethnic and cultural lines met and mingled. Sifting through family histories, the migration of people, communities and cultures becomes clear — borders, continents and oceans have been crossed, culminating in the history of everyday families.

The rise in multiracial couples is a sign of the continuous growth of mixed ethnic families. Since 2008, 1 in 7 couples are comprised of individuals of different races, according to The New York Times.

As the number of people of mixed ethnicities rises, people are left wondering how they can collate numbers and information when there are multiple variables at play.

UC Santa Cruz faculty member and vice provost of academic affairs Herbie Lee sees both sides of the coin — as a biracial person, Lee sees the irrational side of asking someone to “check one box,” but as a mathematician, he understands the huge numerical challenge that now sits in front of those collecting this kind of data.

“It’s so much easier to deal with the data if you force people to just pick one,” Lee said. “If you add up people from all the boxes, it equals more than 100 percent … How do you analyze this data? It’s not just an efficiency question, it’s a question of, ‘What do you do with it?’ And we don’t really know.”

However, Lee said that to ask someone to pick only one ethnic identity is essentially asking someone to pick “between their mother and their father.” Reevaluating the way we collect this kind of information and see race, even from a statistical viewpoint, is something that “society is going to have to figure out how to deal with,” Lee said.

But what does this mean for young adults as they sift through the changing racial dynamics? If we can’t be calculated, and if our current data is unable to truly capture what American society looks like right now, does it mean race becomes irrelevant? Or does it mean race becomes a point of identity crisis?

Changing the Conversation on Race

Students met this past Monday night at MESH, a student organization for students who identify with two or more races. Photo by Prescott Watson.

Arranged casually around an oval table under bright fluorescent lights, between laughter and the occasional crackle of aluminum snack bags, students engage in a conversation on race, being multiethnic and the multicultural experience. It’s a weighty topic, but these students have experienced what it means to be undefined in a nation that obsesses over labels. They’re all members — or curious first-time attendees — of MESH, UCSC’s Mixed Ethnicities Student Headquarters.

MESH is entering its 11th year at UCSC, and while shifts in leadership have forced the group to reorganize, they maintain solid footing.

“When I first came to college, I never thought too much about my race or my ethnic background,” said Samantha Alemania, MESH co-chair and a fourth-year Mexican-Filipina student. But when Alemania wanted to get involved in a student organization, she had trouble finding a place she really fit in.

“A lot of the ethnic groups are monoracial … and I couldn’t pick one,” she said. “I mean, how are you supposed to pick between your families?”

Shannon Caimol, a Mexican-Filipina student, explains that she has had similar experiences.

“You always feel like you have to pick,” Caimol said. “Some of my family members will ask me, ‘Do you feel like you’re more Mexican or more Filipino?’ [But] I don’t — I’m half. It’s weird being asked to pick. I don’t choose. I don’t want to feel like I’m only one, because I’m not.”

Being asked to label and redefine yourself seems to be a shared experience among multiethnic individuals.

“People would force identities onto me and assume things,” said Robert Bisquera Jr., third-year Stevenson student and co-chair of MESH. “I would say, ‘I’m Mexican,’ and people would say, ‘You don’t look Mexican. Do you speak Spanish?’ No, but I’m Mexican. Culturally, that’s how I was brought up and that’s how I identify.”

Bisquera, who calls himself “Mexipino” in reference to his Mexican-Filipino makeup, says there are times where he has felt like he has had to prove himself and reassert his place among certain groups.

“[It’s] always knowing in the back of your mind that you’re not fully one thing or the other,” Bisquera said.

UCSC student Stephanie Chin, who is Chinese-Nicaraguan-Mexican, has experienced the kind of isolation that can come with being multiracial.

“Even now that I’m in college, I thought we would all be educated and open to new experiences, but it still seems as if people cling to their race as a comfort zone, one that is not really available to me,” Chin said in an email to City on a Hill Press.

In her experiences, Chin explains it oftentimes feels like a “dis-ownership” of race when people tell her she is not “Asian” or “Latin” because she doesn’t fulfill certain expectations. As much as we claim to be post-race, Chin said, many people still end up segregated by race.

Now when people ask Chin about her racial and cultural makeup, she turns it around on them and instead pushes them to re-evaluate their question.

“I started just asking people, ‘Why is it important?’” she said. “‘What is it going to help you understand?’”

Searching for an Identity

Illustration by Louise Leong.

For many individuals, cultural exploration is intimately tied to understanding what it means to be multiracial. Atheena Haniff-Martinez, a Pakistani-Mexican American student at UCSC, said it wasn’t until coming to college she really began to appreciate her background — her childhood home was culturally “pretty neutral.”

“I kind of ignored my ethnicity,” Haniff-Martinez said. “Growing up we did not really celebrate or embrace cultures from Mexico and Pakistan.”

But being part of El Centro — UCSC’s Chicano Latino Resource Center — has given Haniff-Martinez a community and a connection to her culture. Now, she says she would like to become more involved with the Indian Student Organization on campus to learn more about her “other half.” Being multiracial for her has become about cultural experience.

“As I get older, I want to learn more about the two cultures that I am,” Haniff-Martinez said. “I feel it is hard to embrace both cultures. I feel sometimes that I have to choose what race I am when I am in a Latino setting or an East Indian setting.”

Nonetheless, culture itself can be interpreted in different ways as young adults, like Ryan Mark-Griffin, move easily between being Chinese and being American.

Mark-Griffin, who is a native of Michigan and former UCSC student, had an experience unique compared to a multiracial Californian: He was one of the only Asian-American students in his school.

While Mark-Griffin said he doesn’t want to portray Michigan or the Midwest as a racist area, he did emphasize that it wasn’t nearly as diverse as California. But as a result of the differences in culture between California and Michigan, Mark-Griffin has seen the way people’s perceptions can change with communities.

“In Michigan, most people identify me as Asian, but here in California, I’m a white guy,” Mark-Griffin said.

However, Mark-Griffin, though aware of the ugly side of race relations, said he has found it easy to move in between cultures and create a place for himself that balances both halves of himself. He explains that straddling two cultures, for him, has been enriching and something he has enjoyed.

As Griffin shares anecdotes about his family and his personal experiences, he speaks comfortably, smiling at the parallels in our experiences and the experiences of other multiracial individuals.

“At our Thanksgiving dinner? Mashed potatoes, sticky rice. Dumplings, fried rice. Turkey, wonton soup, jook,” Mark-Griffin said. “My family is America in a nutshell.”

The Look of Being Mixed

There are mornings when I stand over my bathroom sink sleepy-eyed, peering into the mirror, dissecting the face looking back at me. It’s not for the sake of vanity but because sometimes I’m not really sure what I look like — with a mess of brown hair that I’ve lightened with dyes and fair skin freckled from too much sunshine, I’m often mistaken for white. And I am, but I also identify as Korean-American and Native American.

Culturally, I’m far from white or “mono-ethnic” — whatever that means. Physically, I’m multiracial. But my face? My face seems to be just racially ambiguous enough — people often can’t pinpoint my race by looking at me.

People do a double-take when I tell them what I am, because my features don’t fit into a preconceived idea of what I should look like.

While there is freedom in being able to say, “Yes, I’m beyond labels,” there is something oddly isolating about being the mixed race girl in a room full of people who can solidly say, “I am ____.” It’s a paradox: I am at once liberated and constricted by my inability to be categorized.

Like Bisquera, I’ve been left needing to “prove” my race to people — and I’ve had people look me in the eye and tell me I’m bluffing when I tell them what I am, solely because they can’t “see” my ethnicities etched on my face.

When talking with a member of MESH, his solution to addressing race was to disregard it — that it didn’t exist if we didn’t let it — but that’s too utopian. Race exists. Categories exist. And in this case when you don’t fit into one box, when you’re not easy to define or label or stereotype, you can’t help but become hyper-aware of race.

Students gather in the Quarry Plaza on the evening of Sept. 21 for a vigil in honor of executed inmate Troy Davis. Davis was convicted of murdering an off-duty police officer in 1989, and sentenced to death two years later. Photo by Morgan Grana.

Despite the evening cold and fog, students gathered in Quarry Plaza last Wednesday to remember Troy Davis, pending his execution. Tealights were arranged to spell out “justice” on the pavement, the low light bouncing off a mix of curious and somber faces.

Davis, a Georgia death row inmate, was executed that evening amid public outcry. The NAACP, Amnesty International USA and prominent public figures rallied around Davis.

Davis was convicted of murdering an off-duty police officer in Savannah, Ga. in 1989, and in August of 1991, he was sentenced to death. Doubts surrounding Davis’ guilt were raised, and in June of 2010, several eyewitnesses recanted their testimonies. His appeal to the Supreme Court was rejected in early 2011.

Led by SUA commissioner of diversity and UC Santa Cruz third-year DT Amajoyi and fourth-year Crown student Iman Barre, about 35 students discussed the implications of Davis’ execution, institutionalized racism and the role education can play in addressing injustice.

“[It’s important] that you’re all cognizant about what’s going on in the world,” Amajoyi told the crowd. “It’s very important to be tuned in … because these things affect you.”

Amajoyi stressed throughout the evening that Davis’ case is “not an isolated incident” and noted the now infamous Oscar Grant case as an example of continued injustice and race politics.

“This can’t be something we just keep in our community. It’s a huge opportunity not just to educate student-of-color communities, but allies as well,” she said. “It’s an issue of raising consciousness. It’s happening all the way in Georgia, but it’s important we know.”

Sharing their personal experiences in the workplace, their hometowns and within the context of the UC, students expressed concern over climate and diversity issues that currently plague UCSC.

“I’ve learned more in college discussing topics such as these with my fellow students than in the classroom,” Barre said. “Especially last year, there were a lot of incidents of racial tension on campus — around Cinco de Mayo, around Black History Month — there is a lot of racial tension on this campus I think is covered up by the administration.”

Conversations spiraled out from firsthand accounts of racism, to the push for critical race and ethnic studies at UCSC, to national legislation that may remove polling places from college campuses. The resounding message was the need for young adults to make their voices heard.

“It didn’t seem like anyone was talking about [the Davis case],” said fourth-year Dominic Calhoun, who attended the vigil. “Injustice is unacceptable and intolerable.”

One student quoted Cornell West: “Are we so well-adjusted to injustice?”

The vigil was the beginning of a much larger dialogue that has been rumbling on the campus for some time. Barre said she hopes students who attended the vigil say to themselves afterward, “This is my campus — what can I do to impact it?”

“Realize that issues are not tied directly only to one race or one community, but that it’s a human problem,” Barre said. “It’s a human issue and we should all rally against issues such as these.”

Shortly after the vigil ended, Davis was executed in Georgia at about 11 p.m.

“It is our duty to fight for our people. It is our duty to win. We must love and protect each other. We have nothing to lose but our chains.”

Three times over, the hundreds of admitted UC Santa Cruz students, led onstage by alumna Eden Jequinto, echoed these words of Assata Shakur — a Black Panther fugitive and African-American rights activist — in unified chant.

The high school seniors, a mix of Latinos, African-Americans and Asian-Americans/Pacific Islanders, each had similar stories to tell: mothers who worked multiple jobs at late hours, bad neighborhoods on the wrong side of town, growing up among thugs and gangsters. Many, if not all in attendance, would be the first in their family to even consider going to college.

Jequinto is no exception. Growing up in La Puente, Calif., Jequinto said she experienced a lot of hardship as a gay Filipino woman. She watched her drunken father turn on her mother, members of her family succumb to alcohol-induced dementia and die, and at the age of eight, she began drinking. Throughout high school, Jequinto said she hated herself for being homophobic but also gay. She said the people like herself and those in the audience that evening were not victims, but survivors.

High school Seniors from troubled areas and low-resource homes are brought to UCSC to convince them to advance their education. Photo by Nick Paris.

“Remember your reason to be here,” Jequinto said. “Is it your mom who works two [or] three jobs, coming home exhausted at night to your five brothers and sisters? Is it that one teacher who finally gave a shit about you and treated you like a human being? Is it your sister, your pops? Whatever it may be, remember it, and remember the thousands of your black and brown brothers and sisters who could not be here tonight with you.”

What followed next was a proud and defiant roar — a symbolic reflection of the adversity with diversity on UC campuses — thundering and rolling its way out of the College Nine and Ten multipurpose room into the cool night air.

Across the entire UC system, various programs, initiatives and organizations are in place to encourage and support first-generation college-bound students with low-resource and low-income backgrounds to strive for higher education. Programs like the Blue and Gold Opportunity Plan, which assists low-income students with college expenses, and Educational Opportunity Programs (EOP), which connect students with a variety of academic and personal support programs, have had measurable success in this regard.

“I myself was the first in my family to go to college,” UCSC Chancellor George Blumenthal said to the crowd. “I also know the incredible pride in seeing my kids off to college. To the students that come here, we are dedicated to your success.”

But a student’s retention is dependent on more than just dollars and tutors. Establishing a sense of community — culturally, ethnically and socially — is just as critical. In this way, broad, systemwide programs can fail to provide the localized, tailored support that students need. The promotion of an ethnically diversified campus student body in a university system that has historically been predominantly white necessitates resource centers for outreach and retention.

“Students of color go to where they see the support,” said Carolyn Dunn, UCSC Ethnic Resource Center director. “A lot of these kids coming out of their communities are put into cultural isolation. But our funding could disappear next year and we’d be facing significant losses. Our budget is really tiny as it is. We won’t know how bad the damage is until we hear from the vice chancellor.”

The prospects of finding funds to support more localized programs have become strained since the $500 million budget cuts were handed down by the state to the UC system. To that end, the role that these localized ethnic resource programs play, invaluable to many, has become increasingly restrained.

Illustration by Matt Boblet.

One such resource center at UCSC is the Engaging Education Student-Initiated Outreach and Retention Center, which connects underprivileged high school students with college counseling, builds communities and establishes cross-cultural networks among UCSC students. In addition, it provides a means for educating students about empowerment, social justice and student activism.

“We look to help provide students the opportunity to come get a university education,” said Engaging Education co-chair Yesenia Ramos. “Our programs help students build connections to help with the transition from high school. Students who come in knowing people are more prone to staying. Our outreach programs target students from all over California — Pasadena, Berkeley, the Bay Area — who may come from families with low incomes, or be the first and only member of their family to go to college.”

Engaging Education, headquartered above the Bicycle Co-op in Quarry Plaza, is a support system designed and led by students, for students. As a way of addressing the low rates of recruitment, retention and graduation from historically underrepresented and under-resourced communities, Engaging Education serves an integral function in promoting a more culturally and ethnically diverse campus community.

Founded in 2003, Engaging Education, in conjunction with the Ethnic Resource Centers and the Ethnic Student Organization Council, sought to create a “safe space” for students of color and the continuation of student outreach. Until then, there had not been an establishment of a student-led organization to address the numerous racially motivated incidents on campus.

UCSC’s clashes between students and the administration over diversification stretches as far back as 1969, when students of color seized control over the first graduation ceremony, saying they were frustrated over being discriminated against and marginalized. Even after Engaging Education was formed, hate crimes, including the drawings of nooses and swastikas in bathrooms across campus, continue to happen.

However, thanks largely to outreach programs like the ones supported by Engaging Education, UCSC is beginning to see a significant increase in African-American, Asian-American/Pacific Islander and Latino undergraduate enrollment.

Of the roughly 3,500 freshmen admitted into UCSC for fall 2011, 3.2 percent were African-American, 30.3 percent Asian-American/Pacific Islander, and 25.5 percent Latino, higher rates than in previous years. In particular, the campus has seen a significant jump in its Latino enrollment — in 2000 by comparison, only 13.8 percent of students admitted were Latino.

Engaging Education’s retention programs have also yielded higher averages than that of the university itself — one such program, the Community Unified Student Network, a peer program designed to help connect and support Asian Americans/Pacific Islanders communally and academically, boasts a 92 percent first-year retention rate, compared to the campus’ 86 percent.

“The program is one of my favorite things about the campus. The enthusiasm shown, the drive of its staff — it’s truly a student program and its really great,” Chancellor Blumenthal said. “Together with the efforts of the university, we’ve made great progress on diversity.”

Engaging Education co-chair Ramos, a fourth-year politics and feminist studies double major, was influenced by Engaging Education’s outreach programs in 2007, which ultimately swayed her into coming to the university.

“I would never have thought about coming here were it not for UCSC’s [outreach] programs,” Ramos said. “None of my cousins went on to higher education, and — being a woman — it has been very hard and very interesting here. These programs are about understanding different cultural needs — not every person and every community is the same. [The programs] are very valuable and needed.”

Ethnic disparities in higher education are not just a problem for the UC system, however. Of the 1,563,069 bachelor’s degrees awarded in 2008 in the United States, 9.8 percent of them went to African-Americans, 7.9 percent to Latinos, and 7 percent to Asian-Americans/Pacific-Islanders, compared to the 71.8 percent awarded to white students, according to the National Center for Education Statistics — a statistic that has only marginally changed over the past 10 years.

Illustration by Matt Boblet.

The state of California in particular has had an ongoing struggle with maintaining a diverse campus community in its post-secondary education institutions. California’s population of over 33.8 million is 44.4 percent white, 34.9 percent Latino, 12.3 percent Asian-American/Pacific Islander, and 6.4 percent African-American, according to the State Department of Finance’s survey. Starkly contrasting that figure was UCSC’s enrolled undergraduate ethnic breakdown in the fall 2009 quarter, during which 48 percent of students were white, 17.3 percent were Latino, 16 percent Asian-American/Pacific Islander, and 2.8 percent African-American.

In 1978, in reaction to the California Supreme Court’s ban on affirmative action, then-UC president David Saxon mandated the campuses to reflect or “approximate” the racial and ethnic composition of the state’s graduating high school seniors. Since then, the UC system as a whole has failed to match that standard. The UC’s enrolled undergraduate ethnic breakdown in the fall 2009 quarter was 3.4 percent African-American, 26 percent Asian-American/Pacific Islander, and 15.3 percent Latino.

People of color continue to be underrepresented in higher education, while being overrepresented in the state’s poverty (22 percent of all American Indians in California earn incomes below the federal poverty line), incarceration (29 percent of all prisoners in California prisons are African-American), and high school dropout rates (44 percent of Latinos over the age of 25 have less than a high school diploma).

UCSC second-year Nwadiuto Amajoyi, born in Nigeria and one of five siblings, serves on Engaging Education’s Student-Initiated Outreach (SIO) board of directors. Amajoyi said the UC needs to adopt a new educational paradigm, one with a more interactive space, highlighting the present ethnic disparities at UCSC.

“UCSC is one of the whitest UCs in the system — one of the least diverse, certainly,” Amajoyi said. “When I give tours to incoming students — African-American/black, Latino, whomever — I make a point to alert them of the campus climate. I don’t want them to say things like, ‘I feel like you guys lied to me.’”

Amajoyi said the university has long misconstrued its interpretation of diversity.

“The administration interprets ‘diversity’ as diversity of perspective,” Amajoyi said. “But I would have them consider diversity of ethnicity and race as well. If it did this, diversity of perspective will naturally follow.”

Student regent-designate Alfredo Mireles said that part of the problem is the public’s perception of the UC system. The son of a hardworking mother and formerly undocumented migrant father from Mexico, Mireles said he understands the idea that a university education might appear unfeasible, if only because of its cost.

“The biggest myth about the UC system I’d like to push back is the notion that the universities are only for wealthy, elitist, white males,” Mireles said. “Most other schools are nowhere close to how well we accommodate the underprivileged — we stand head and shoulders above most other public schools.”

Mireles also said he was pleased with the UC’s capacity for providing more aid to more students in need than Ivy League institutions do. In 2004, then–Harvard president Lawrence Summers indicated that three-fourths of the students at Ivy Leagues come from the top income quartile, and only 9 percent from the bottom two quartiles combined. While Ivy Leagues may be able to completely fund their economically disadvantaged students’ education, they accept dramatically fewer students who qualify for such aid, in comparison to the UC.

The percentage of students at Harvard and Princeton who receive Federal Pell Grants is 8.4 percent and 8.5 percent, respectively, and comparably, 38.1 percent of UCLA’s students receive Pell Grant aid, according to the Education Trust. UC Berkeley and UC Davis both provide more student aid in Pell Grants than the entire Ivy League system combined.

Leading the UC’s mission to assist students with low-income backgrounds is the university’s Blue and Gold Opportunity Plan. Approved in 2009, the plan established assistance for undergraduates with financial need and household incomes below the state median of $60,000 — now $80,000 — per year. At minimum, the plan makes up the difference from federal aid to help eligible students completely cover their UC fees. With the threshold set at the state’s median income, this potentially enables half of California’s population to have their systemwide fees covered. This qualifies more than half of California’s Pacific Islander,

African-American, American Indian, and Latino population, according to median household incomes listed in the 2000 Census.

But such successes may prove to be a double-edged sword for outreach and retention efforts like those of Engaging Education. With the $500 million in budget cuts that were handed down to the UC by the state and with more on the horizon, the ability to continue funding these programs grows increasingly difficult. Paulina Raygoza, the organizing director of Engaging Education, said that while its outreach programs may have a secure source of funding, its capacity to conduct outreach to the state youth has become increasingly limited.

“Our state funding is used as a political bargaining chip,” Raygoza said. “At one point we had $81,000 from the state — now we receive less than half of that. It’s a sort of ‘we’ll give you the money if you do this’ kind of thing.”

Presently, a $5 student-approved campus fee helps fund the six UCSC Ethnic Resource Centers as well as the SIO programs — $3 to the resource centers, $1 to CARE Council, and $1 to SIO. The SIO programs, a subset of Engaging Education, attract promised funding from the Chancellor’s office each year, an amount which used to be $2 for every dollar students pay (last year the Chancellor’s funds dropped to $1.75 for every dollar paid).

As one of the campus’s strongest and most effective means of reaching out to the state, Engaging Education’s SIO programs are critical to the continued diversification of the student body. Yet with the economy in the state that it’s in and steeper cuts being handed down by the UC administration, getting high school students to and from their communities to familiarize themselves with the campus becomes increasingly expensive.

“Prices went up this year due to the budget cuts and the economy,” SIO director Amajoyi said. “We need to transport students from all across the state by bus and plane. This year, our plane tickets cost $500 more than last [year].”

Cuts made to the state’s K–12 education have also forced additional responsibilities onto SIO.

“Because of the budget cuts, a lot of the K–12 schools are not doing enough college prep work simply because they are unable to,” Engaging Education director Raygoza said. “What can we do to help fill that role? We have to think about the educational barriers that affect high school youths.”

The university’s cutting of funding to its community studies and American studies majors also is seen by some as indirectly undermining the efforts made by outreach and retention programs. Amajoyi said that cuts like this discourage African-American, Latino and Asian-American enrollment.

“These classes [that get cut] reflect the histories of our communities that would otherwise be told from a Eurocentric perspective,” Amajoyi said. “Think about it: coming out of high school, you might know a little of black history — Martin Luther King Jr., Malcolm X, slavery and a bunch of dead white presidents — but what do you know of Chicano history? Of Asian-Americans’?”

Ethnic Resource Center director Dunn said many of the students she works with major in the studies that get cut.

“We used to see quite a few community studies majors before it was cut,” Dunn said. “Now a significant majority are American studies majors or Latin American and Latino studies majors. We’re concerned with who is next. Feminist studies? LALS?”

To compensate, Engaging Education also allocates funds to teach their own five-unit courses at UC

SC. The student-led courses seek to engage UCSC students in a comfortable setting with histories and stories they may be unfamiliar with.

“The classes themselves are student-run and serve as more of a dialogue space than your standard lecture,” Raygoza said. “Everyone is their own teacher, bringing in their own stories. The class focuses more on our ethnic identities and the struggles and our ability to create change.”

Canvases painted by high school students involved in the Student Initiate Outreach program. The canvases are meant to inspire members of the students’ communities back home. Photos by Nick Paris.

In conjunction with other student staff at Engaging Education, Raygoza said that the five-unit winter and spring quarter class could not replace the absence of two entire departments.

Student regent-designate Mireles said he would do everything he could to support programs like Engaging Education, and is already lobbying for Chancellor Blumenthal to continue his promise to match SIO’s fundraising.

“I think it’s a tragedy that [the American studies and community studies] majors were cut,” Mireles said. “But the decisions made under the budgetary constraints are not about targeting any one group — the entire UC will have to reevaluate every program. It’s really all about the ability to procure external funding. But I see the importance in having Engaging Education

— for these high school kids to see students with similar backgrounds flourishing in college, it makes a world of difference.”

Closing her speech onstage, UCSC alumna Jequinto had the hundreds of admitted UCSC students abuzz with excitement over their futures at the university. Turning away from the crowd, she looked straight down and to the left, where Chancellor Blumenthal sat, and addressed him directly.

“We are ready to fight to maintain funding for programs like this, Chancellor Blumenthal,” Jequinto said. “You’ve got to trust us, you’ve got to let us do our thing, because we know what we’re doing here — I give you my word. Where I stand, there are thousands more like me ready to fight for them.”

The core planning team in the campaign for Measure 49 meets to map out the next steps in garnering publicity and support for the measure. Photo by Toby Silverman.

UC Santa Cruz’s Cultural Arts and Diversity (CAD) Center is seeking SUA sponsorship for a referendum that would charge incoming students a $5.25 fee on their tuition every quarter to support CAD and the campus programs it houses.

The measure is a response to recent budget cuts impacting campus programs. This fee would provide a lifeline to save CAD and its programs, which promote a fusion of art and culture.

Last Friday, the Student Union Assembly agreed to consider sponsorship of the referendum. Three days later, the CAD campaign committee began generating support for Measure 49: Cultural Arts and Diversity Fee, set to continue all the way through the elections period.

The referendum proposes applying this fee to pay for the central program’s functional costs, expected to increase as CAD implements its other goal of organizing many smaller organizations, like Rainbow Theater and the African American Theater Arts Troupe (AATAT), under one roof. As CAD absorbs these programs, funding will be needed to ensure that CAD is able to maintain itself while keeping the groups from being completely cut from the budget.

“We know the first things to get cut are always the arts and programs that serve students of color,” said Sarah Fishleder, CAD alumnus and one of the main leaders of the program. “We want to expand to include other cultural organizations on campus that have performance aspects and ensure that these vital programs are not slashed due to budget cuts. These may include the Filipino Cultural Celebration, the Indian Student Organization’s Cultural Show, and the annual dance show put on by Los Mexicas.”

Based in Stevenson College, CAD currently houses Rainbow Theater and AATAT. Established in 1991 under director Don Williams, AATAT works to create a stronger sense of identity and understanding of African American culture at UCSC.

Three years later, Rainbow Theater was formed with the same goal in mind, breaking down walls that separate cultures and uniting them under a common mission of creative expression. Since their founding, Rainbow Theater and AATAT have performed for continuously packed crowds.

“When I come in and work, I really put in my heart and soul to help these kids share their gifts,” Williams said. “I can only teach them some basic direction and leadership skills, but they’re the ones directing and making these plays happen.”

The measure includes three main aspects that the funding would be directed towards, programming, equipment and staffing. The production of various cultural performances would take place in the Stevenson Event Center, as well as provide smaller organizations with rehearsal time and increase exposure of the many diverse groups in the CAD program.

Fundamental factors of a performance like lights, lifts, space, training, tech assistants and staffing costs would also be partially paid for with funds from the referendum.

So far, opposition to the bill seems relatively low. Camella Cooper, campaign committee member and a member of both Rainbow Theater and AATAT, discussed the responses to the bill.

“I [personally] haven’t experienced any opposition,” Cooper said. “I did hear that there was some from people that just don’t support culture and diversity programs on campus, but I haven’t heard of any big or grouped opposition.”

In the event that the bill passes, Cooper hopes that these cultural and diversity programs will thrive on campus.

“Rainbow and AATAT showed me that through differences you can be a community, not through similarities,” Cooper said. “The sense of community [is] there. That’s really important when it comes to budget cuts.”

UC San Diego fourth-year Jasmine Phillips is one of many black students who have expressed indignation, and she is one of thousands of students — of all racial backgrounds — outraged by the string of hate crimes that occurred at several UC campuses last year.

“We as black students are continuously attacked and made disposable on UC campuses,” Phillips said.

Standing at a podium in a UCLA ballroom, the sociology gave a campaign speech at the African Black Coalition (ABC) conference held at UCLA earlier this year. While running for ABC president, Phillips addressed race relations at her school and how to prevent hate crimes.

After the UC hate crimes in 2010, UC campus community members and people across California voiced their dismay. Students at UC San Diego, UCLA and UC Davis held demonstrations to protest the UCSD “Compton Cookout” and anti-Semitic, racist and homophobic graffiti. The administrations of all of the affected schools denounced racism, sexism and prejudice, and opened investigations.

“As always, the remedy for bad speech is good speech,” UC president Mark Yudof said in a statement about the events at UCSD. “For that reason, we call on all members of the UC community — students, faculty, and staff — to affirm and defend the values of the University of California. We are speaking out and ask that you do the same whenever, wherever, and however you confront the behavior that violates the principles and values of this university.”

Hate crimes continued at UC campuses this year. Students have organized several moves to action. Leaders of the ABC have plans to improve the UC campus racial climate. However, there is still a long way to go before satisfactory conditions are reached, according to a 2010 university-wide report on race relations.

“Because we are physically and emotionally drained, protests can’t be our only form of action,” Phillips said about the UCSD student reactions to the hate crimes.

Some ABC members plan to lobby administration at their UCs to create measures that would improve the campus racial climates.

Illustration by Bela Messex.

The Controversy

Last February, the most publicized UC hate crime occurred at UC San Diego when a group of students decided to hold a party called the “Compton Cookout” satirizing Black History Month. Students were asked to dress in baggy clothes, eat fried chicken, drink Kool-Aid and act “ghetto.” Less than a week later, racial slurs, including the n-word, were used on a student-run program called Koala TV. A week after that, a noose was found hanging from the top of one of the school’s libraries.

The same month, students found profanity and derogatory slurs spray-painted all over the entrance to UC Davis’ Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender (LGBT) Center. In March, spray-painted swastikas were found on multiple surfaces of the UC Davis campus, including the social sciences and humanities building.

A column questioning the purpose and relevance of Black History Month ran in the UC Irvine school newspaper last February.

That same month at UC Santa Cruz, a group of students were investigated for drawing nooses along with the name Diego Lynch on various locations of the campus, including bathroom stalls. The students in question said that they meant no harm by the drawings and were simply putting a play on words with Lynch’s last name.

“[The Diego Lynch drawing] started several years ago,” said Mitchell Landry*, one of the students who drew the nooses. “It started out as a play on his name, because he’s a buddy. It was just a joke. It was never intended to have any racial connotations.”

The student whose name was featured in the drawings does not take the incidences as lightly.

“Even though [the Diego Lynch drawings] were stupid and inconsequential, it does not mean they weren’t offensive,” fourth-year Diego Lynch said. “I wasn’t stopping them … but I should have.”

The students behind the “Compton Cookout,” as well as the student who hung the noose in a library, were all suspended. After using the offensive expletives on air, UCSD student program Koala TV was taken off the air. However, the author of the UC Irvine newspaper column and the students who drew the “Diego Lynch” nooses were not punished.

The Stats

Three years ago the UC’s Advisory Council on Campus Climate, Culture and Inclusion compiled a report including surveys analyzing the diversity on UC campuses.

The September 2010 edition of the UC Diversity Annual Accountability Sub-Report contains the results of this endeavor.

One graph in the report shows the results of a survey that asked students at UC campuses to agree or disagree with the statement “Students of my race are respected on this campus.”

The data showed that African-American males and females agreed with this statement the least, with a little over 60 percent of students. Chicano/Latino students agreed slightly less than 80 percent of the time. Asian-American and white students agreed the most, with about 90 percent and 95 percent, respectively.

The next graph shows the results of a survey that focuses on African-American student responses to the statement by UC campuses. African-American students at UC Santa Barbara and UC Santa Cruz agreed with the statement the least, with slightly less than 50 percent.

In response to the statement “My race is respected on this campus,” UCSC student body chair Tiffany Loftin said, “Hell no. Why? Because we are black, and racism is still alive. There have been certain events that prove that black people aren’t respected on this campus. There was a racist event at Stevenson [very recently].”

On Jan. 26, someone wrote “F— n——” on a Stevenson college men’s bathroom stall. In response, someone crossed out the n-word and replaced it with “white power” so the graffiti read “F— white power.”

African-American students at UC Riverside had the highest agreement rate, with slightly less than 80 percent of the population agreeing with the statement.

UC Riverside has the highest African-American enrollment of all the UCs as of 2009, according to a chart titled Undergraduate Enrollment by Race/Ethnicity by Campuses. African-American enrollment at UC Riverside is about 10 percent. Every other campus had percentages hovering just above 0 percent. UCSC had an enrollment rate of about 2 percent. UCSD had the lowest African-American enrollment percentage, with about 1 percent.

Felicia McGinty, UCSC vice chancellor of student affairs, is well-aware that African-Americans are a minority on campus, but she said that this minority does not face disrespect.

“Students have not reported to me that they feel disrespected,” McGinty said. “They have reported that they feel isolated. There aren’t many African-American students on campus. They have challenges inherent in being 2.6 percent of the population. It’s harder for them to build a community.”

The Backlash

As a residential assistant (RA) at the Rosa Parks African American Theme House (R.PAATH) of Stevenson College, Shawneshia Hoover, says she has experienced many challenges in her position. The R.PAATH was created last year in reaction to the slew of UC hate crimes.

The R.PAATH housing focuses on multiculturalism and is open to anyone who is interested in African-American culture and history. It is the second African-American themed house to be created at any UC, following UC Berkeley’s Ida L. Jackson house.

“When it comes to some students who don’t know anything about it, they see it as segregation,” Hoover said. “I find myself having to explain the importance of R.PAATH, because so many people don’t understand why black people have their own themed house. The house is not exclusively for blacks being that it only houses seven black residents, including me.”

Executive director of retention Pablo Reguerin said that R.PAATH was created in order to promote tolerance on campus. In light of the racial hate crimes at several campuses, UCSC SUA chair Loftin held a discussion with students asking, “What things could be done to make UCSC a healthier climate for African-Americans?” Themed housing was just one of the ideas the discussion produced.

“Outreach programs, student retention, and the R.PAATH were some of the goals on the list of things produced by this conversation,” Pablo Reguerin said.

Reguerin is also the director of the  Educational Opportunities Program (EOP) office at UCSC.

“The R.PAATH was created 100 percent in response to student demands,” he said. “It is inhabited by people who want to be there.”

Reguerin was one of the administrators heavily involved with the realization of R.PAATH.

“The vision of R.PAATH has been lived out,” Reguerin said. “We were really lucky to get very talented RAs who are not afraid to tackle issues of race and discuss them.”

However, not everyone is as optimistic about the accomplishment. Fourth-year Falyn Davis, a black student at UCSC, has doubts about the motives of the creation of R.PAATH.

“The purpose for the campus’s support of [the R.PAATH] had nothing to do with black students, but instead with making [the administrators] look good in a time when students of color are under attack,” Davis said.

McGinty acknowledges that steps need to be taken to improve the campus climate.

“I want everyone to feel welcome and supported on this campus and to know that their presence matters,” McGinty said. “[Their presence] enriches the campus community. We need to work together to build a campus climate that allows everyone to feel welcome, supported and respected.”

Hoover has made two videos on YouTube addressing the ignorance she and her friends have encountered since she became an RA at R.PAATH. In them they talk about educating two white students who ignorantly labeled them with common stereotypes of black people while attempting to make friends with them.

“These issues are so prevalent at our school, UCSC,” Hoover said. “All [one of the students] sees is ‘The Boondocks’ when he watches TV. All he sees is hip-hop when he watches TV. He sees black people associated with those cultures, and so therefore he believes that clearly must be an outlet to get along with all African-American people.”

“We are not ‘them,’ and we are not ‘they,’” one of Hoover’s friends said in the video. “We are individuals.”

The ABC Conference 2011

The eighth annual UC ABC conference of the UCs was held at UCLA and spanned the weekend of Feb. 11 through 13 this year.

Student delegates like Jasmine Phillips met with volunteers to look at possible solutions to issues that arise for minorities on college campuses.

“I’ve e-mailed UC president Mark Yudof, as well as other administrators about the lack of respect African-American students receive on the UCSD campus,” Phillips said.

“Loving each other is a form of resistance because society tells us not to love ourselves,” she said in her campaign speech.

Phillips won the presidency.

During the conference, a UC Davis representative read out the goals of the ABC. One of those goals is to institutionalize diversity programs such as African-American studies UC-wide. These programs would provide students with an important lesson in history that is focused on in a way that the average U.S. history class is not.

The ABC conference also offered UC students a variety of workshops to attend. One of these workshops was called “The Burden of the Black Student: Teaching Moments.” It was held by UCLA third-year Tierra Moore.

In the workshop, Moore taught the students about “microaggressions,” small injustices that add up over time, and how to deal with them.

“During my friend’s first year at UCLA, someone on an elevator said, ‘Oh my God, can I touch you? I’ve never touched a black person before,’” Moore said as an example of a microaggression. “Even though it’s not super awful — she didn’t hang a noose or anything — it was a small thing, but it still made an impact. The idea is that those little things add up, and they create someone’s experience [at a university].”

At the workshop, Moore told a personal anecdote about one of her experiences with microaggression at UCLA. In her political sociology course, Moore said, her teacher showed a clip from the movie “Bulworth,” which depicted black people with negative stereotypes.

Moore was one of the four black students in the class who took offense to the clip.

“I was offended by the fact that the teacher didn’t give any premise to the clip,” Moore said. “It was as if he were presenting it as if it is the truth.”

Another microaggression she experienced also occurred in the classroom. In one of her sections, a classmate made a comment about issues affecting Africa.

Moore said a student claimed that the reason why Africa has problems is because the people there do not listen to their police force. She then said that African-Americans tried to rebel against police enforcement in Los Angeles in the ’90s, but the Los Angeles Police Department and the SWAT team shut them down.

The student’s argument was that black people are inherently unruly and need the police to control them, Moore said.

“I waited for her to be corrected by the TA, who was an older Ph.D student, but she just said, ‘Yes, you have a really good point,’ and moved on to the next person,” Moore said. “I was so stunned, I didn’t know what to do.”

After Moore was done speaking, the students in the workshop got into groups of four and discussed microaggressions that they had experienced. One student told their group about how UC Irvine served chicken and waffles “in honor of” Martin Luther King Jr. Day. Another student told the group about how her roommate joked about how she must like fried chicken. Both are stereotypically African-American dishes.

At the end of the workshop, students suggested immediate confrontation to combat microaggression. The idea is for students to speak up and tell the offending person their objections to the microaggression on the spot.

The statement from Yudof regarding the UC hate crimes at UCSD last year encouraged students and others to “remedy bad speech with good speech.” He suggested they counter the ignorance, racism and hatred by speaking out when needed.

As Moore and the students in her workshop concluded, the best way to deal with the unsavory situations that arise from hate is to confront them head-on and let their voices be heard.

“That is the burden of the black student,” Moore said at the end of the workshop. “A lot of the time black students have to be more equipped to handle things like microaggressions and having to teach [people].”

In response to the e-mail with the n-word and other racist events, the UCSD administration is taking steps to improve the racial climate on campus. Campus officials are developing a class to teach tolerance and working on ways to increase retention of black students.

Cultural Intelligence is a two-credit Stevenson course that was offered for the first time this quarter at UCSC. Led by Diversity and Inclusion program coordinator Donnae Smith, the class trains students to give diversity and inclusion workshops. Based on their performance in the class, some students will be chosen to be part of the Diversity Facilitator team, which will begin leading diversity workshops next quarter.

UCSC’s campus diversity officers are holding discussions with students about the classroom and campus racial climate, according to an e-mail recently sent to students. They are planning to meet with student organizations and are “working to promote an inclusive environment on campus.”

Patricia Zavella, professor and chair of Latin American and Latino studies, said that the designation of UCSC as a Hispanic-serving institution could be a helpful source of revenue for the university. Photo by Kyan Mahzouf.

The number of Latino applicants to UCSC rose 23 percent for the 2011–2012 school year, according to the website of the University of California Office of the President.

As of 2009, UCSC’s Latino and Chicano students made up 18 percent of the undergraduate population, while the percentage of applicants was 21 percent.

If UCSC’s Latino population reaches 25 percent, the school will be recognized as a Hispanic-serving institution (HSI).This designation provides schools with grants and support services.

“It’s a source of revenue that would be very, very helpful,” said Patricia Zavella, professor of Latin American and Latino studies (LALS) and department chair.

Of 26,136 first-year UCSC applicants from California, 27.4 percent were Latino. This is 2 percentage points fewer than the number of Asian-American applicants, according to the website of the University of California Office of the President.

Michelle Whittingham, associate vice chancellor of enrollment management and director of admissions, is certain UCSC will receive the designation.

“That’s going to be real exciting, not if, but when we get there,” Whittingham said. “It’ll really be potentially the next year or two.”

Third-year LALS major Chris Cuadrado is looking for more than just an increase in the enrollment of students of color. Cuadrado, an active member in “El Centro,” the Chicano Latino Resource Center, said he would rather the university do more to encourage the involvement of students of color on campus.

“For the university to reflect the population, the university’s resources need to be available to the general population,” he said.

Currently, all the ethnic resource centers — the Chicano Latino, African American, Asian American/Pacific Islander, and American Indian resource centers — are located on half a floor.

This is where the HSI recognition comes in.

“If we’re able to become a Hispanic-serving institution, that will be a really good thing,” Zavella said. “Whatever resources we get to work with Latino students will free up resources for other students. It’s one of those win-win situations.”

If a university with HSI recognition wants to implement or improve a program, the U.S. Department of Education provides money and instructions on how to do so.

“Let’s say we decide we really need to work on writing, and we want to write a proposal for a writing program,” Zavella said. “They would have very clear guidelines of what that would look like, how much money they’re willing to allocate and how it will be used. There would be very clear reporting mechanisms that [ensure] UCSC used the funds correctly.”

Zavella is on the team drafting up a proposal for UCSC’s application to become an HSI.

“We’ve had one meeting so far,” she said. “We’re trying to brainstorm what are the issues we need to think about. What are the problems that Latino students face? What are the resources on campus? And where are the weaknesses? Where do we need to identify where we could apply for programs that would help students?”

Currently, UC Merced and UC Riverside are HSIs.

Whittingham credits many factors for the increased Latino applicants. Not only did more students identify their ethnicity on the application, but UCSC reached out to more students.

UCSC is trying to recruit more non-California residents for fiscal purposes, Whittingham said. Increasing the number of non-residents would raise UCSC’s income. Due to California’s budget crisis and education cuts, the state can only pay for 11,000 UCSC students.

“Our primary mission is serving the state of California,” Whittingham said. “But being a top-tier, world-renowned university, we definitely want to offer learning opportunities for students not only from California but well beyond.”

Non-California residents are not displacing California residents, because the school has the physical capacity for more students, she said.

The admissions office used new methods to further inform prospective students both in and out of state.

These included “College Week Live,” a virtual college fair to let interested students talk to UCSC faculty online.

Many UCSC students also went back to their high schools to promote the university.

“We’ve reached a lot more people that we weren’t able to reach before,” Whittingham said.

Illustration by Joe Lai.

In wake of the recent racially insensitive incidents at UC San Diego and a racially offensive image drawn on the wall of a bathroom stall at the Earth and Marine Sciences building at UC Santa Cruz, campus leaders are trying to promote inclusion through new housing communities with special themes.

Ideas to ameliorate tension caused by racist incidents were pitched after various student organizations approached UCSC administrators and encouraged them to find a way of drawing attention to the diverse student population.

“We should use these issues as instruments of inclusion, and these recent events present an opportunity to improve our community,” said Pablo Reguerin, executive director of Retention Services and director of Educational Opportunity Programs (EOP), in response to the concerns of the students at UCSC.

The student call to action was met with a swift reaction by campus administrators, many of whom met with students and agreed with the need to acknowledge diversity.

Administrators revealed a plan that had been in preparation for a long time to create non-college specific housing focusing on multiculturalism.

Colleges & University Housing Services (CUHS) began to distribute information and interest inquiries for culturally-themed housing facilities, with the intention of establishing these facilities in the near future.

The new themes would include an Indigenous Peoples Hall at Merrill College, a transfer-specific community at Porter, and an African-American-themed facility, known as PAATH, at Stevenson College. PAATH stands for Project African-American Theme Housing.

EOP director Reguerin said if enough people are interested in an African-American-themed facility, an entire dormitory at Stevenson may be converted into a theme-specific residence.

UCSC administrators and housing coordinators believe that these new facilities will have a positive impact on the students.

Citing examples from Cornell University and UC Berkeley, Reguerin highlighted the positive results of African-American-themed housing at those schools and his hopes that there would be similar results at UCSC.

“Theme housing is meant to be inclusive. This is not the end-all solution to many diversity issues, but it’s a step forward,” he said.

The African-American-themed housing was an idea proposed to administrators in the past. However, due to the lack of a facility in which to develop culturally themed housing, the idea never came to fruition.

When a facility became available, Reguerin issued an informative e-mail to students questioning their interest in living in an African-American culture-themed facility. The response was considerably positive and those who expressed an interest were encouraged to forward the information to other students with similar interests.

Although the majority of feedback to Reguerin has been positive, he has acknowledged that some students have expressed concerns about establishing ethnic or racially-themed housing.

Aviva Wolman, a first-year from Stevenson College, expressed mixed feelings about the new housing community.

“I think it’s nice to have culture-themed housing because it makes it easier to bond, but I’m skeptical of this new plan because it may lead to segregation of black students,” Wolman said. “But if anyone can live in the African-American-themed facility then I think it would be cool to see how people bond when they have a culture to share.”

Reguerin stressed the importance of building a stronger and more diverse community by bringing people with similar interests together in order to educate themselves and their peers in a positive way.

“African-American-themed housing is not a racially exclusive housing facility. It will be a place in which all people who are interested in African-American culture or history can be exposed to others with similar interests and further their knowledge,” Reguerin said.

Donnae Smith, Diversity & Inclusion program coordinator of the colleges and university housing services, applauded the idea.

“There has been a considerable number of off-campus students who have expressed an interest in returning to campus-sponsored housing facilities in order to live in this new community,” she said.

Some think this idea represents the pinnacle of change and advancement for the university, as it stands as one of many ideas that may alter the face of the UCSC community.

In addition to culturally-themed housing, there may also be non-college specific housing that allows people from different colleges to live together without changing their affiliation.

Smith said, “We are trying to encourage interaction between students and faculty members from various backgrounds.”

The Ethnic Resource Center, located next to the Bay Tree Bookstore, allows students to intern and participate with various ethnic organizations on campus. Photo by Rosario Serna.

UCSC students work in the quiet, free space at the Lionel Cantú GLBTI Resource Center, located in Merrill College. Photo by Rosario Serna.

Reorganization plans for UC Santa Cruz’s six resource centers are on hold. This follows faculty and student criticism last quarter of a plan proposed by Alma Sifuentes, dean of students and associate vice chancellor of student affairs.

Sifuentes proposed reducing the number of program coordinators, lowering classification for the directors, and creating two administrative positions — a lead administrator and assistant — for the resource centers, which include the African-American, American Indian, Asian-American/Pacific Islander (AAPI), Chicano/Latino, GLBTI, and Women’s Centers.

While the lead administrative position was key to the purpose of reorganizing the centers, Sifuentes said in November that she is open to hearing alternative proposals.

“My interest is to serve the students,” Sifuentes said. “… We have budgetary constraint problems. I am open to whatever people want to do here.”

The initial reorganization timeline set a goal of Dec. 1, 2009 for all plans to be finalized so that Vice Chancellor Felicia McGinty could present the proposal to Executive Vice Chancellor David Kliger. Kliger will make the final decision. However, after a proposal was not agreed upon, the process slowed down.

Deb Abbott, director of the Lionel Cantú GLBTI Resource Center, argues that the initial timeline for feedback was too hasty for a decision that will have a major impact on the centers.

“The resource centers are funded by student referendum funds,” Abbott said. “It is important for the process to be slowed down so that a wide range of students can have input into the reorganization scenarios being considered.”

Sifuentes formed the proposal to create administrative efficiencies in anticipation of a budget shortfall. By redirecting administrative tasks, Sifuentes said staff would be more accessible to students, which is a priority the Division of Student Affairs has set in all reorganization plans.

“What I suggested to the resource center directors was a higher-level lead,” Sifuentes said. “Why not move all of the administrative stuff into this one position? That way [the directors] don’t have to worry about [administrative tasks].”

Budget reductions outlined during reorganization consultation with students showed a potential drop of $149,719 from the resource centers’ collective budget, projecting the remaining funds at $590,017.

According to the budget, reductions come with the anticipation of increased costs for campus services, employer retirement contributions, possible cuts of 10 percent resulting from the employee furlough program, and an additional 10-percent cut in July.

“We are building accountability right now,” Sifuentes said. “So everyone should be looking at their programs and services and looking for efficiencies, and wherever possible reorganize to be able to maintain office hours and direct services to students.”

Sifuentes pointed out that the same benefits are paid for full and part-time employees. Therefore, she suggested UCSC reduce the number of program coordinators from six part-time to four full-time positions. Administrative efficiencies would be created by pooling staff resources and efforts by sharing program coordinators.

Leda Hernandez, the Student Union Assembly (SUA)’s commissioner of diversity, disagrees with the creation of a new lead position for resource centers.

“A budget crisis is not the best time to suggest a new administrator,” she said.

Hernandez joined a workgroup with Nancy Kim, the AAPI Resource Center and Women’s Center director, and Pablo Reguerin, Retention Services’ executive director.

The workgroup is reviewing student consultation from various student groups including: SUA, college governments, African/Black Student Alliance, Asian-Pacific Islander Student Alliance, Filipino Student Association, Student Alliance of North American Indians, Movimiento Estudiantil Chicana/o De Aztlan, Engaging Education and the Network.

“The SUA hasn’t taken an official stance, but some officers have,” Hernandez said. “Students are opposed to a reorganization that creates an administrative position while cutting the existing staff.”

The cumulative $100,000 salaries for the proposed lead administrative position and that of the position’s full-time assistant would come out of the centers’ existing budgets.

They would be supported by salary savings, created by reclassifying the center directors to a lower pay-grade and reducing the number of program coordinators to four full-time coordinators for the six centers.

Currently, each center has its own program coordinator. However, most are working part-time, and the Chicano/Latino Resource Center has a vacancy in the position.

“Administrative efficiencies don’t build communities,” Hernandez said. “We are the only UC that does not have an ethnic studies department — the community that would develop there is coming from the resource centers and student organizations instead.”

The Committee on Affirmative Action and Diversity (CAAD) under the Academic Senate took notice of the proposed reorganization in a letter submitted to Sifuentes and Reguerin.

Bettina Aptheker, chair of CADD and feminist studies professor, wrote on Dec. 4, “We think it is a waste of valuable resources to appoint an(other) executive director to oversee all of the resource centers. … This is precisely the reintroduction of a management position that many have suggested is redundant and unnecessary, and adds yet another layer of bureaucratic management at a considerable cost.”

The letter goes on to suggest that upgrading all of the program coordinators to full-time employment, and allowing the directors to retain classifications and pay grades, would improve staff retention.

While the proposal would not have meant pay cuts for the current center directors, a reclassification would mean that newly hired directors would have a lower salary, which could make recruitment difficult.

“The reorganization is still on the table, it’s just not being discussed right now,” Hernandez said. “Our feedback will be taken under advisement, but in the end, it’s up to Alma [Sifuentes], Felicia [McGinty] and Kliger. … I don’t think enough research and planning has gone into this proposal. Student Affairs is always making these drastic changes, and we don’t really know how they are going to impact students in the long run.”

While the proposal has been put on hold, discussion on how to move forward is expected to pick back up in the next few weeks, as the workgroup continues to meet with Sifuentes and as Hernandez brings the debate back to the SUA.

Ronika Kalpage performs in order to publicize the multicultural Festival at the Quary Plaza. The multicultural festival will be on Sat, May 16th from 12-6pm in Oakes. Photo by Olivia Irvin.

Celebrating its 30th anniversary this Saturday, the 2009 Multicultural Festival (MCF) boasts a wide variety of cultural performances and ethnic cuisine.

Titled “Unity Under Changing Skies,” this year’s festival will focus on the growth within cultural communities. Additionally, the event will feature both traditional and contemporary performances, from Indian dancing to hip-hop, samba and much more.

Among the 18 participating groups are the Chinese Student Association, serving Boba tea, the Filipino Student Association, with hip-hop group Haluan, and the Indian Student Organization.

Adrian Dorris, a UC Santa Cruz alumnus and SOAR advisor who helped plan this year’s festival, hopes the program will create a multifaceted view of cultural groups on campus and beyond.

“Having both traditional and contemporary representations from different cultures distinguishes them from romanticized stereotypes,” Dorris said. “It shows that people have very complex cultural experiences.”

Third-year biology major Ronika Kalpage said that nothing was black and white about growing up Indian-American. A member of UCSC’s Indian Student Organization, Kalpage will be dancing with fellow club members at the festival. She said that participating in the club’s events, including the Multicultural Festival, opened her eyes to her own background.

“Growing up, I wasn’t really exposed to Indian culture outside my immediate family group,” Kalpage said. “I wasn’t classically trained in Indian dance, so I’m glad that we have things like the Indian Student Organization and the Multicultural Festival. They allowed me to learn and experience things I probably wouldn’t have otherwise.”

Kalpage’s performance will be on the traditional side, with the group dancing Bhangra, an Indian folk dance with ancient roots dating back to 2000 BCE.

“Cultures are constantly changing,” said Arpan Bajaj, a member of both the Indian Student Organization and MCF’s planning committee. “Most of the cultures outside the U.S. are much older. They started out very basic and old-fashioned, but they’re still around and are really coming into the world. Representing older and newer interpretations shows the growth that takes place within these communities.”

Diesel Tyne and Raul Flores perform in order to publicize the multicultural Festival at the Quary Plaza. Photo by Olivia Irvin.

SambaDa, a local Afro-Brazilian music group, will be headlining the MCF this year. Identifying themselves as a “samba-funk dance music” group with reggae, hip-hop and capoeira beats, members agreed that combining these different styles has made their work appeal to a wider audience.

“We use our exposure to old Brazilian traditions, but it’s more fun to put our own unique impression into it,” band member Marcel Menard said. “We’ve found that bringing in new musical ideas is more successful with Bay Area crowds. Even though we’re singing in Portuguese and people don’t always know what we’re saying, it still hits them hard. There’s some reggae in there or a funky back-beat that people can grab on to and relate to.”

A veteran Porter student, Menard’s interest in Brazilian music was sparked while studying fine arts at UCSC. Joining campus music circles and cultural dance classes offered at the East Field House created a foundation for Menard’s current musical career.

His experiences here still resonate with him, and he hopes to continue connecting with the university through music.

“It’s really important for us to perform up on campus,” Menard said. “We get a really warm reception from the older students that come to see us at clubs, but it’s essential that we connect with the under-21 crowd too. It’s nice when we can step into their university bubbles and share something with them. We’re overjoyed whenever we can play for UCSC students.”

Dorris hopes that SambaDa’s performance will help to create visibility for the group and invite a wider audience to campus. While MCF participants are excited for the headlining band, Dorris said that the event’s priorities lie in strengthening student organizations.

“So many of these campus communities are underrepresented, and the opportunities to express themselves can be very limited,” Dorris said. “We’re hoping to provide a lot of education and encouragement by bringing all these different organizations together to create this one great day.”

———-

The 30th annual Multicultural Festival will take place at the Oakes Lower Lawn this Saturday from noon to 6 p.m. Admission is free.

Mayda del Valle, the headlining performer at Rainbow Theater’s Birth of Word production, performs one of her poems at the Oakes Learning Center on May 3. Photo by Catie Havstad.

Students gathered and they listened. 

Birth of Word, a spoken-word event that took place on May 3 at the Oakes Learning Center, brought students from all over campus to share and celebrate various interpretations of the versatile art form. The event showcased a wide variety of expressive performers, including Mayda del Valle, a nationally renowned poet who headlined the event.

Produced by Rainbow Theater, those behind Birth of Word hoped the event would bring together spoken-word artists from multiple walks of life. This proved to be a wearing task for the event’s organizer, third-year community studies major Camille Brown, who described the process as the “most stressful thing I’ve done” — though she she also described it as a “blessing” and a worthwhile task.

“We’ve been socialized to be silenced for things and not talk about what’s most important to us,” Brown said. “Now we have students from this school, students from high school, students from Berkeley, Mayda de Valle, who are all coming here and talking about things that matter to them the most and having other people listen and later … discuss and learn more from each other. It’s a great way to build connections and community.” 

Energy ran high among the crowd as performers presented different interpretations of the spoken word. Groups like the Funny Boners enriched the show with their comedy, while others like the Youthspeaks Teen Poetry Slam Team and the UC Santa Cruz Slam Team filled the room with spirit and passion.

Jackie Martinez, a fourth-year theater arts major, served not only as master of ceremonies for the event but performed as well. She and two other girls acted out a segment of “Taggin’ on Blue,” a spoken-word play about Central American culture in the United States. Martinez highlighted what she thought was Birth of Word’s most significant message.

“The key message that we want our audience to leave with is the freedom to express, to embrace these different types of movements … that a lot of Santa Cruz doesn’t see,” Martinez said. “We have a lot of organizations here that do put on events … [but] there are hardly a few that just have music and food [that just enjoy] the vibe.”

Co-hosting with Martinez was Lisa Evans, a third-year history major from College Ten. Evans, along with many others who attended, emphasized the importance of expressing oneself.

“Expression doesn’t just have to be spoken,” Evans said. “Words are valuable … that’s what the big thing about this is — expressing yourself regardless of [how] that is. If it’s through music, if it’s through dance, if it’s through speaking — just making sure that you get your voice out there and express yourself.”

Evans said that events like the Birth of Word hold power.

“I really appreciate spoken word,” she said. “I think it’s a really powerful medium for talking to people and connecting stories that often don’t get told … there are a lot of vehicles on campus for [spoken word] but I think it’s really cool to showcase them all and bring in [groups from different areas]. It allows a lot more connections that might not necessarily happen.” 

Music also found its way into Birth of Word. James Green, a sixth-year community studies major, performed for the first time at Birth of Word with his band, The Tonalities. Green has been involved with many Rainbow Theater productions, assisting in sound design and organization.

“We look to promote student organizations that have something to say about spoken word, present themselves, or open themselves up to this community,” Green said. “[Birth of Word] is a collaborative space for different ways of interpreting spoken word, whether it is through … music or through dance, [which is] a different way of looking at spoken word.”

Green reflected back upon Birth of Word as he spoke about Rainbow Theater and what he thinks its ultimate purpose is.

“If it all comes back to the Birth of Word,” he said, “how we interpret [spoken word] is the theme, and how we celebrate it is what we do.”

What images come to mind when one thinks “Muslim woman”? Is it perhaps the image of a woman whose eyes are the only thing to be seen through the slits of a black niqab?

Last Thursday night the Muslim Student Alliance held an event titled “Women in Islam” at the Colleges 9/10 Multipurpose Room. The event was a platform for discussion and education that sought to challenge the one-dimensional, homogenous image of Muslim women perpetuated by the media’s representation of them in fundamentalist governments.

Those who spoke at the event, including students and keynote speaker Maha ElGenaidi, suggested that such fundamentalist governments have misinterpreted Islamic teachings for political control but that the actual Islamic faith, when interpreted correctly, can be liberating for women.

ElGenaidi, president and CEO of the Islamic Networks Group in San Jose, complicated the stereotype of Islam as an oppressive religion toward women with her elucidation on the controversial use of the hijab, the head scarf that some Muslim women choose to wear as a sign of modesty and piety.

According to ElGenaidi, Western feminism disregards Muslim feminists who adhere to religion and wear the hijab. She explained that she feels liberated rather than oppressed by wearing her hijab. She chooses to wear it because it forces people to judge her for her character and piety instead of by her appearance, she said.

“What they don’t realize is that the hijab that I wear is by choice [and] it is not something I do because I’m forced to,” ElGenaidi said. “In fact, I do it in spite of what male members of my family want from me. For me I see it as far more liberating than having to worry about my physical appearance and having to dress in a way that is pleasing to society.”

Bettina Aptheker, a professor of feminist studies and history at UC Santa Cruz, believes that while Islam can in fact oppress women, it is not alone. She said that both Western societies and Muslim societies are oppressive to women, and pointed out the Western obsession with thinness as an example of how both Christian and Muslim societies are repressive in their own ways.

“I think [wearing the hijab] is entirely a question of what women want to do,” Aptheker said. “It has become symbolic of oppression, but it’s not more symbolic of oppression than many other Western traditions that we do, including the terrible obsession with thinness in the West. Women in general in all these different societies are very oppressed and struggle against it.”

Oppressed or not, Deena Hafsinin, a third-year molecular cell and development major and member of the Muslim Student Alliance, emphasized that pity is the last thing Muslim women need. What they need, she said, is for people to understand and respect their choices.

“People see Muslim women and they don’t understand that they’re not oppressed,” Hafsinin said. “That is not what we need. We don’t need pity. We need you to understand that we have a choice in our [lives] and that these are our choices. You must accept them.”

UC Santa Cruz’s Filipino Student Association (FSA) aims to promote diversity and unite the Filipino population on campus. The association orchestrates and oversees a myriad of events, programs, performing arts groups and more. FSA is one of the biggest student organizations on campus that supports the school’s multitude of cultures. City on a Hill Press (CHP) sat down with FSA member Airene Grace Rosete Tomboc to discuss the organization’s history, upcoming events and its presence in the student population.

CHP: When was the Filipino Student Association established?

Tomboc: A few Filipino people established it in the ’80s because they noticed that there were not that many Filipinos on the UCSC campus. Because we are such a minority, we retain students by coming together. FSA is considered an umbrella organization that has different programs based off [of it].

CHP: What does FSA umbrella?

Tomboc: The organization is known as Filipino Student Association, but it’s split up among different interests. So, we have our performing aspects like our traditional folk dancing, our a cappella choir, our ballroom and hip-hop dancing. We also have acting, literary journals, retention programs such as KAMP (Kuya Ate Mentorship Program), and ASF (A Step Forward) where we take accepted students to UC Santa Cruz, show them around and hope that they find a community when they come to our school.

CHP: What space does your organization provide for students that can’t be found anywhere else on campus?

Tomboc: The main thing in Filipino culture is family, so by coming together we create a community — a safe space for people to learn more about their own culture. [For second-generation Filipinos], we lose our history and a lot of [us] don’t even know our own language. We also have non-Filipino students in our organization who relate to us. We create a space to learn [which allows us to have] a voice in solidarity with other people too.

CHP: Does FSA have any special traditions?

Tomboc: In the beginning of the year, we have KAMP, the retention program. We have a banquet where everyone is put into families of different themes and they come together for that one night. More than 200 people show up and it’s a fun event. Also, we have our Filipino Cultural Celebration this year with more than 150 participants and we showcase the performing aspects into one large show.

CHP: What is your most memorable moment with FSA?

Tomboc: I would have to say the Filipino Cultural Celebration, just because you get to meet everyone that is in the performing aspects [of FSA] and you actually learn something from everyone. This year’s theme is based off the People Power movement in the Philippines, so [we learn] more about the historical aspects of Filipino culture.

CHP: What upcoming events can we expect from FSA?

Tomboc: We are having a FSA fair coming up [with] a bunch of different workshops and networking opportunities. We also have the Pagkakisa Dance Troupe and they’re having a unity showcase calling out to different organizations and talents.

_Pagkakisa Dance Troupe will perform March 22. _

What do you get when you put a cheetah, a wolf and a housecat together in one room? The answer is not a disastrous brawl — it’s a typical meeting of the UC Santa Cruz Furries and Allies. And these aren’t your average furry animals.

A Furry, or Fur, is defined as someone who personally identifies with a specific animal. The Furry subculture is growing stronger nationally, with conventions and fan art rising to a new popularity. The UCSC Furries and Allies are a group of people with a common interest in exploring anthropomorphism and animal-like qualities.

Second-year student Michael Tierney founded the club to unite people with the similar interest and to give an accurate representation of who the Furries really are. He hopes that the group will be able to extinguish common misconceptions of Furries that are perpetuated in the media.

“A Fur is someone who, in some manner, personally identifies with an animal or animal spirit,” Tierney said. “It allows us to be identified as Furry but still show people that we aren’t that different. We aren’t a group of people trying to break away from reality.”

Tierney, who personally identifies with a cheetah, explains that his lifelong fascination and respect for animals led him to explore what is now known as the Furry community. After speaking to other students with similar interests, he realized the potential of joining together those with a shared love of animals.

“This club started [because of] false stereotypes and my friends unknowingly insulting the Furry community on campus,” Tierney said. “I really wanted to find more people and build the community a little bit stronger — because right now the Furry community exists, we’re just not unified.”

Meetings are held in the Cantú Center and focus on representations of the lifestyle in the media.

First-year student and club member Sebastian W. dismisses the misconceptions of Furries.

“You ask 10 people who Furries are and you get 13 different answers,” W. said. “I guess that’s a part of media publicity: make something sound much more interesting than it is, draw out and exaggerate where you can. We just want to break misconceptions, we aren’t all about sex. We just have a love for animals and anthropomorphism.”

Representational problems that the Furry community encounters include recent publicity in shows like “CSI,” “Entourage,” and “Sex2K,” that have solely focused on the most extreme Furs, commonly known as Fur Suiters. Fur Suiters are people who dress in full costume according to the animal they associate with. In actuality, the majority of Furs do not dress in full costume.

A Furry who goes by the name of Trapa is a co-chair of the Furry convention CaliFur. He acknowledged this perception of the Furry community as a common trait of society.

“Traditionally, subcultures of our society haven’t been well-represented,” Trapa said. “If you look at Star Trek conventions, when it’s represented you’ll always see someone in a costume and they will always be the geek. The fact that we’ve been misrepresented isn’t shocking.”

Despite stereotypes, Trapa sees the publicity as a step in the right direction for the community as a whole.

“There is always a positive to press or media coverage,” Trapa said. “While I don’t condone the negative coverage, I do like to see the silver lining. There have been several Furries who discover their Furriness mainly due to investigating information from shows [on television]. No matter how negative the representation is, at least something comes from it.”

Members like W. wish to clarify that there are many facets to the Furry community with various outlets for people to find their niches. In addition to Suiters, variations of Furries include those who choose to wear simple costumes, which generally include ears and a tail, in their everyday life. Costumes like these are more commonly seen in public and are becoming increasingly popular within mainstream fashion.

Another popular outlet in the fur community is anthropomorphic art. Artists’ renditions of “fursonas,” or animal representations of themselves, are popular souvenirs at conventions such as CaliFur or Further Confusion. W. recently attended Further Confusion in San Jose and was surprised to witness the emphasis on art within the community.

“This is a fantasy world where everyone can explore what they really want to,” W. said. “For some people, that is art. For others, it’s costuming.”

UCSC Furries and Allies plan to emulate the charity of local fur conventions by raising money and donating it to animal rights charities such as PETA, ASPCA and AfriCat.

Tierney hopes to be able to give back to foundations that help the many animals that he and others relate to and respect.

For Tierney, Furries are bridging the gap between humans and animals that society has encouraged, thereby making human characteristics and animal characteristics one and the same.

“I was raised with a high respect for all life,” he said. “When it comes to the connection between humans and animals, science is always trying to prove our superiority, and I wonder if it’s really true. I began this club because I had a feeling that I wasn’t the only one out there. We exist, we’re here, I know it.”

For more information, contact ucsc.furry@gmail.com.

“The sankofa is an African bird whose head is pointed in one direction and the feet are pointed in the other,” Don Williams said. “The meaning behind it is that in order to move forward in life, one must have an understanding of the past.”

As the director of the UC Santa Cruz African American Theater Arts Troupe (AATAT), Williams says the sankofa bird is representative of the troupe’s newest play, “The Trial of a Short-Sighted Black Woman vs. Mammy Louise and Safreeta Mae.” The play, written by Karani M. Leslie, looks at African-American history through an analytical lens.

Williams hopes that AATAT’s production of the play, which began last weekend, will make viewers question the origins of stereotypical depictions of black people, particularly of black women.

Composed of 25 members, the troupe is the only African-American theater arts troupe in the entire UC system. According to Williams, who founded AATAT 17 years ago, it has helped UCSC by contributing to the recruitment and retention of African-American students. It has also been able to help the students; with the money collected from the performances, the troupe gives annual scholarships to two participants, based on outstanding achievement and leadership.

AATAT productions have ranged from comedy to gospel musicals throughout their two decades of performance. This year’s play, on a more serious note, takes place in a courtroom and follows the character of Victoria Dryer as she sues two stereotypical depictions of black women in the media for having made it harder for her to be successful.

The two prosecuted stereotypes are the Mammy Louise and Safreeta Mae characters. Louise is the humble, nurturing archetype seen in such films as “Gone with the Wind.” Mae, on the other hand, an over-sexualized temptress who lures white men to sleep with her. As the trial unfolds and these women have the chance to testify, Dryer begins to see that the stories of these women were unfairly captured by history and that the two women are simply products of a racist society.

Old cartoons are projected in the theater throughout the play and during intermission, revealing many degrading depictions of African Americans. Lisa Evans, a second-year history major who plays the defense attorney in the production, used to watch some of the cartoons as a child.

“I remember sitting there and watching these [cartoons] when I was little and I didn’t know those were supposed to be black people, because when I was six I just thought they were funny-looking people,” Evans said. “I’m like, ‘I don’t know anybody who looks like that.’ [This play is] examining how these images are depicted and how we accept them and the ways they get perpetuated.”

These messages of misrepresentation and convoluted histories climax at the play’s end, when the stage transforms to resemble a slave ship and the cast steps forward to recite the names of about 50 slave ships.

Astrid Heim, a third-year student who plays the role of the judge, says the ship emphasizes the significance of memory and oral history as a way of reclaiming one’s history and to prevent it from being lost.

“During these times [not all] slaves were documented, so by knowing these ships, knowing the people [and] the experiences that they suffered on these ships, we’re keeping it alive,” Heim said. “We’re not letting people say that the experience wasn’t that bad. It’s a way of us reclaiming our own history.”

When one showing finished, and the messages and deliberations of the actors had resonated throughout the audience, the Stevenson Event Center fell into complete silence. Until, that is, it was shook by a boisterous standing ovation.

“The Trial of a Short-Sighted Black Woman vs. Mammy Louise and Safreeta Mae” will be performed at Santa Cruz High this Friday and Saturday at 7 p.m.

For some, a knock on the door is never as harmless as it seems.

“You always have this fear of having to look over your shoulder,” said Luis, a fifth-year computer engineering major. “You have to be careful of what you say, because [if] you tell the wrong people you never know what might happen to you. There might be a knock at the door saying, ‘This is ICE [Immigration and Custom Enforcement].’”

Luis, who like other members did not wish to give his last name, has been involved in Students Informing Now (SIN) for two years. SIN is an action-based organization composed of both AB 540 students and their allies.

The group’s activism is based on the education and promotion of immigrant rights, specifically AB 540, the non-resident tuition exemption law under which undocumented students and non-resident documented students qualify to pay in-state tuition at California universities after three years of attending a California high school or earning a California GED.

Although non-resident students can pay in-state tuition at California universities, they do not have the opportunity to apply for financial aid.

Therefore, they are frequently forced to finance their education through working multiple jobs and applying for private scholarships.

Juan, a first-year SIN member, talked about the extra struggle that AB 540 students face in order to make ends meet.

“We’re students, yet we have this extra stuff that we have to worry about,” Juan said. “Unlike many other students who were privileged enough to be born here in the United States and who don’t have to worry about not having enough money for tuition, we have to apply to many scholarships in order to have enough money to pay for tuition and housing.”

For this reason, SIN advocates the right to a free education for everyone by promoting and advocating the Federal Dream Act and the California Dream Act, which would allow immigrant students to gain permanent status if accepted to a four-year university and thus be allowed to apply for financial aid.

More than just a student organization, SIN has become a safe haven for AB 540 students searching for security in a country which they feel has been hostile towards their identities, through realities such as immigration raids and minutemen that terrorize immigrant communities and force them to live in a constant state of fear.

Mariela, a third-year theater arts major, explains how SIN is a safety net that turns the apprehension evoked by one’s illegal status into a platform for resistance, allowing herself and others to live a life “sin vergüenza,” or “without shame.”

“Our presence as a group, our [mere] existence is a way of creating safety in an unsafe world because the world isn’t welcoming to what we do,” Mariela said. “In a world where you live in fear because of your identity, SIN is a form of resistance toward that fear and a way of fighting it.”

In collaboration with UCSC professors Kysa Nygreen and Veronica Velez, the SIN collective wrote an academic article that is already accessible in two different UCSC course readers.

The article is titled “Students Informing Now Challenge the Racial State in California without shame … SIN vergüenza.”

They will be presenting this scholarly article at the American Educational Research Association in New York over spring break. However, due to issues of legal status, not all members of SIN will be able to attend the conference.

Despite this, members who consider themselves privileged enough to travel, such as Mariela, recognize the importance of representing what SIN stands for across the country in a responsible and conscious manner. Not all people living in this country live with the same freedoms, Mariela said.

“SIN is recognizing the privilege I carry by having a social security number,” Mariela said.

_For more information on SIN, contact the group at

sin_ucsc@yahoogroups.com._

New Year’s celebrations didn’t end on Jan. 1.

This year UC Santa Cruz’s Vietnamese Student Association (VSA) held the Tet Celebration Night Feb. 7, an event to commemorate the Vietnamese New Year.

Tet is the weeklong celebration of the Vietnamese New Year, in accordance with the Chinese lunar calendar, said Thanh Nguyen, head coordinator of VSA.

“Like the Chinese, the Lunar New Year is one of the most celebrated holidays,” Nguyen said.

According to the Chinese zodiac, 2008 is the Year of the Rat, which begins this year on Feb. 7 and ends Jan. 25, 2009. The Chinese zodiac assigns an animal to each year, a cycle that repeats every 12 years. Because the rat is the first animal in the zodiac calendar, those who are born in this year are said to be leaders, pioneers and conquerors.

VSA is a student organization open to Vietnamese and non-Vietnamese students at UCSC.

“Our mission is to provide a friendly space for all UCSC students to get together to learn and share Vietnamese culture, as well as create connections and long-lasting friendships,” Nguyen said.

To start off the celebration, VSA gave out lì xì, red envelopes traditionally filled with money, although VSA substituted candy. Elders give the envelopes to children in exchange for good luck wishes. Other traditions include lighting firecrackers, paying respects to ancestors, cleaning the house and spending time with family.

“Vietnamese people are very careful about what they do on New Year’s Day. The events on New Year’s Day determine your luck for the rest of the year,” Nguyen said. “Therefore, everything and everyone you are in touch with on New Year’s Day should symbolize good fortune.”

Students who attended the event tested their luck by playing games and having their fortunes read. They were given handfuls of candy to gamble with in a game called Bau Cua Cá Cop, a three-dice betting game traditionally played during Tet.

Ryan Brenner, a second-year Oakes student, joined VSA because of his interest in Vietnamese culture.

“I learned how to play the traditional gambling game,” Brenner said. “It’s actually really fun.”

Tran Nguyen, a first-year Oakes student, said she joined VSA to get more involved with her Vietnamese community.

“It was nice seeing people our age get together and carry on a tradition, because I don’t see that a lot nowadays,” Tran Nguyen said. “Our generation is Americanized.”

Many parts of the event exhibited both Vietnamese and American traditions. Pizza, soda and cookies were served instead of traditional Vietnamese food, such as bánh chung, a sticky rice cake typically eaten during the Tet holiday. The lack of traditional food was due to time constraints and the unavailability of Vietnamese food in Santa Cruz, Thanh Nguyen said.

This year, the club participated in the Vietnamese Spring Parade in San Jose during the weekend following Tet. It was the club’s first time doing so, Thanh Nguyen said, and it is a tradition that VSA wants to establish.

“For our generation, the Vietnamese tradition might not be exactly how it is in Vietnam or how our parents see it,” Thanh Nguyen said. “We are trying to preserve as much as we can, even if it’s altered, even if we have something new in there that we connect with more.”

Poetry shook the Porter Dining Hall, as legendary poet Saul Williams captivated the audience with a message: a movement is coming.

UC Santa Cruz celebrated the fifth annual Kinetic Poetics Project (KPP) festival last week, a five-day spoken word and poetry festival with free writing workshops and performances by featured artists.

After the Feb. 6 slam team finals for a spot on the UCSC Slam Poetry Team, Williams, HBO Def Jam poet, performed, drawing a large crowd and generating much excitement.

Audience members, such as UCSC alumnus Jorge Martinez, felt artistically rejuvenated by what Williams had to say. “[The performance was] a factory for sanity in an institution [that] often insinuated insanity,” Martinez said. “Real education, free, and I’ve graduated. Damn!”

After the performance, Williams was surrounded by fans waiting to shake his hand, give their praises and get autographs. Amid the commotion, the musician, author and renowned spoken-word artist found a few moments to share his opinions with City on a Hill Press (CHP).

CHP: Where do you think art and activism overlap?

Williams: They usually overlap in the work of great artists. In the artists that I admire: Nina Simone, Billie Holiday, Bob Marley and Fela Kuti. Writers like Salman Rushdie or Alice Walker or Angela Davis. I think the two can be one and the same.

CHP: What do you think about the increasing interest in poetry and spoken word among the youth?

Williams: I think that popularity of poetry among youth today is really cool, especially when you think about the times when poetry gets popular. It’s always right at the point when there’s a movement. [It lets] you know when we’re on the cusp of a movement. You wouldn’t have had the hippie movement if it weren’t for the Beat Poets of the ’50s. You wouldn’t have had the civil rights movement if it weren’t for the Harlem Renaissance poets. You wouldn’t have had the Black Power movement if it weren’t for the Black Hearts movement, which preceded it with those poets. So any time poetry gets popular, it usually means that there are some new ideas such as freedom or what have you getting popular. First comes our fight to articulate it and then we embody it. So any time poetry gets popular I’m excited.

CHP: Do you think we are living in a time of epic proportions? And if so, what is your take on social movements?

Williams: All times have been epic. All times have played a role and have been something that people can look at and go, ‘Wow, there’s never been any day like this,’ and it’s always been true. Living life ferociously, having fun, blasting music, dancing with strangers — even that is a form of social activism. We don’t need to take ourselves so seriously and think that social activism is if you’re dressed in hemp and holding a sign. There are several ways to express it. Spending the afternoon learning how to play the guitar, changing your major to what you’re passionate about versus what you or your parents think will earn you money, is a form of social activism. There are many ways that can be expressed. Imagination is epic — that’s what’s important and that’s what should distinguish these times from earlier times, is how much we delved into our imaginations and created something wonderful, unforeseen, unthought-of.

CHP: Who would you vote forpresident?

Williams: Right now I’m voting for Obama.

CHP: You talk about spirituality in some of your poetry. How would you personally justify the existence of God?

Williams: How would you justify the existence of every single individual in this room? Is it up for us to justify? That doesn’t have to be justified. God is looking me in the eyes right now in the form of about 12 or 18 people all staring in this direction looking at me and I am looking back at them and you know, we’re all looking at each other. God doesn’t have to be justified. God is not something in the air. God is not some hierarchy or monarchy where this man sits on top. God is holding the microphone right now and recording.

_Additional reporting by KZSC’s Jake Margolis._