With Gov. Jerry Brown’s budget proposal on the table, higher public education is looking at a likely cut of $1.4 billion dollars—$500 million of which is slated to come from the University of California system. Protests took place across the state on March 2 in the second annual National Day of Action for Public Education. While building occupations and arrests were made at other campuses, UC-Santa Cruz remained peaceful—although hardly silent.
“The University sticks to the argument of economic crisis. But a lot of us don’t buy into it and we realize it’s a crisis of priorities,” says Edgar Medina, a third-year anthropology major with a minor in Latin American Studies. “What does it mean that the gym was open more hours than the library last year?”
About 80 students crammed into the Ethnic Resource Center after the March 2 rally in an impromptu conference where students of color and white students discussed white privilege, inclusion and democracy. About 35 students remained in the building overnight after being offered a meeting with Executive Vice Chancellor Allison Galloway. They accepted the offer, but after the deadline of 6:30pm, and the negotiations never took place.
Students gave the Vice Chancellor of Student Affairs, Alma Sifuentes, a list of demands that included an expanded Ethnic Resource Center, which students say is smaller than the soon-to-be-renovated “Express” coffee store next door. As working-class and minority students are increasingly missing out on higher education opportunities because of fee increases—one study showed a 12 percent drop in Latino enrollment at UC Berkeley due to last year’s fee increases—the Resource Center provides an essential support for minority students.
The demands also include the creation of an Ethnic Studies Department and Major.
“We don’t have a site where anyone who is interested in these issues can go to,” says Medina. “Instead you have to go through the whole catalogue to look for classes that address issues of racism, immigration, colonialism, and this is something that a department would serve as a resource for.”
Also at issue is whether Ethnic Studies should be a “department” or a “program.”
“A department is a physical administrative structure. At the end of the day students have to think about if they really want a department or if they want a program,” says Ashish Sahni, Campus Diversity Officer, who also emphasized that any sort of Ethnic Studies program or department would have to come from the faculty, not the administration. “The faculty are the content experts. They understand how the field has evolved since it began 40 years ago. Without their vision, it’s impossible to make anything happen.”
Medina says that students have been meeting with supportive members of faculty who are helping to draft a formal petition.
Rosie Cabrera, director of the Chicano Latino Resource Center, says the students have been trying for an Ethnic Studies department since she began working there in 1984, and that the budget cuts have sparked students to revisit it.
“This is a long-haul issue, and the budget complicates it,” she says. “I just hope that the students not get discouraged because it takes time. They’ve got to educate the younger students on the issues in order to be diligent. When a generation leaves, amnesia happens.”
