Students and Workers Rally to Demand Affirmative Diversity

Students and Workers Rally to Demand Affirmative Diversity
Coalition Charges UCSC with Institutional Racism & Sexism

SANTA CRUZ, CA – On Tuesday, June 6, 11:00am, starting in the Cowell Courtyard at UC Santa Cruz, outraged communities of color will initiate a high-profile action to demand concrete infrastructural support for diversity at UCSC. While the University has made a rhetorical commitment to diversity, custodians (who are predominately workers of color) continue to receive up to 30% less in wages than their counterparts at Cabrillo and CSUMB; the University has actively denied institutional support and failed to recognize the centrality of student initiated outreach and retention programs to making diversity viable at UCSC; large numbers of valuable senior faculty of color have been (or may be) forced to resign due to hostile working environments. Administrators and university policies have actively upheld all these problems. The coalition will be seeking answers from the University and outlining a vision for affirmative diversity sustained by infrastructural support.

UCSC’s custodians, members of AFSCME, have been fighting for wage parity since July 2005. While Chancellor Denton has claimed to commit to resolving this issue, to this date, UCSC custodians have not seen any results. Most of these workers do not receive a living wage. This issue reflects a larger problem of wage disparity, lack of racial and gender diversity, and a lack of positive working environments for staff.

Student Initiated Outreach (SIO) and retention programs are the primary groups currently doing the work of recruiting and supporting students of color, particularly from underrepresented U.S.-based communities. While this is ultimately the responsibility of the University, the administration’s inaction has forced students to perform these vital duties. Rather than receiving support for their imperative initiatives, the University has consistently under-funded and refused to publicly recognize their crucial contributions to bringing in a semblance of diversity at UCSC. The center for Student Organization Advising and Resources (SOAR) has also faced consistent, unnecessary cuts, and a recent suspicious robbing of their bank account by Student Affairs administrators.

Professors that have been crucial to teaching and research on underrepresented aggrieved groups have been forced out of the University, drastically affecting the intellectual and moral support networks for students of color and their allies. Institutional racism and sexism in the form of seemingly apolitical and passive university administrative practices has led to the virtual disintegration of the American Studies Department in particular, which has been one of the few spaces that consistently addressed race and ethnicity.