SANTA CRUZ - This time last year, UC Santa Cruz literature professor Margo Hendricks was preparing to retire after two decades on the tree-studded campus.
As her final days wound down, a black student wrote Hendricks about racist graffiti found at UCSC. Hendricks, herself black, responded in a lengthy e-mail. When the time came to hit send, she chose to share her thoughts with the entire campus.
"The fact that racism has been alive and well on the campus during my tenure at UCSC has never escaped me," she wrote. "Students, staff and faculty of African American descent (regardless of color) experience subtle and not so subtle attacks in the classroom, in evaluations, and personnel actions."
The message arrived in in-boxes while the entire UC system was responding to a series of racist incidents on campuses statewide. Most notably, students at UC San Diego held an off-campus party dubbed the "Compton Cookout" and encouraged partiers to dress as blacks. A noose was found on the UCSD campus after the party became public. At UCSC, racist graffiti including a noose image was found after the UCSD incident.
"The campus has lost sight of what, despite the whiteness of Santa Cruz and the campus general community, drew a number of faculty of African descent to the campus: the belief that political activism and intellectual inquiry are not mutually exclusive; the belief that the foundation of social, intellectual and political change emanated from the sum total of one's learning; a belief that a university was not about job training but a life-long engagement with what it means to be human," Hendricks added.
Exactly one year after Hendricks' e-mail, about 200 students, faculty and employees rallied recently in UCSC's Quarry Plaza to demand a more diverse student body and the creation of an ethnic studies department.
In the past two years, both UCSC and the UC system as a whole have started various committees and programs to help address racism and bigotry on campuses. At UCSC, two top administrators have been meeting with different student groups to hear first-hand their concerns and impressions of the climate on campus regarding diversity and tolerance.
Some students at UCSC view the creation of an ethnic studies program as a necessity to improve dialogue and understanding, while also filling what they see as a hole in the university's curriculum that should have been addressed decades ago.
"The fight for ethnic studies is really a larger movement," UCSC senior Laura Lystrup said. "This isn't just about forming a new department. It's about making the system more accessible, and creating a more democratic system on campus."
Right around the time UC Santa Cruz was set to recognize its first graduating class in 1969, UC students and others in the Third World Liberation Front at Berkeley were demanding academic programs that would focus on the histories and situations of African-Americans, Asian-Americans, Chicanos and Native Americans.
The movement led a group of UCSC students to protest at the 1969 commencement, and it sparked the creation of what would become ethnic studies departments at both UC Berkeley and UCLA.
Since then, UCSC students, faculty and administration agree, there have been recurring requests for an ethnic studies program at the campus. UC Riverside and UC San Diego also have ethnic studies departments, UC Irvine, UC Davis and UC Santa Barbara do not have ethnic studies departments in name, but do have similar programs. UC Merced, the smallest and newest UC campus, has no such program.
"My aunt went to UCSC and she participated in a hunger strike in support of ethnic studies when she was here in the late '60s or early 70s," said Adam Odsess-Rubin, a current UCSC student who has joined the movement for an ethic studies program. "They thought then that the administration listened, but here we are today still asking for it."
Groups of students and UC employees would lobby over the years for ethnic studies, but the nature of college made it difficult to keep up momentum.
"We call it four-year amnesia," said UCSC senior Edgar Medina. "When students graduate, the incoming ones don't know the history, what's been fought for."
The current effort stems from numerous factors, according to student organizers. They range from the long history of demands for an ethnic studies program to the recent suspension of Community Studies and American studies - two programs that, while not ethnic studies, touched on similar topics - to what organizers call an unwelcoming, sometimes racist atmosphere on campus.
"There is an insensitive climate on campus," UCSC junior Chris Cuadrado said. "The racial climate and cultural incompetence are a major strain on students of color here. The amount of racist graffiti is overwhelming."
After the Quarry Plaza rally on March 2, about 100 students ran into the nearby Ethnic Recourse Center to stage a sit-in, with approximately 35 spending the night there before leaving and presenting their demands to the administration.
While cooped up in the Ethnic Resource Center, the students created a blog, ucscethnicstudies.wordpress.com, where they could lay out their case, create a historical record of the movement, share information and also keep a photo record of racist graffiti found in bathroom stalls and elsewhere on campus.
The student group has circulated a petition calling for an Ethnic Studies and Critical Race Studies department, increased funding and more space for the Ethnic Resourse Center, greater recruitment of underrepresented and underserved communities and more grant-based financial aid for working class students and students of color. They say they have collected roughly 1,000 signatures so far.
Ethnic studies programs have not been immune to controversy, and discussions over their place in academia often become politicized.
In 2001, University of Colorado ethnic studies professor Ward Churchill wrote an essay arguing that U.S. foreign policy provoked the attacks of 9/11, and said the financial sector employees who died that day contributed to "ongoing genocidal American imperialism." The essay became national news, and in 2007, after an investigation into his work, Churchill was fired over "serious research misconduct" related to other publications.
In July 2007, Los Angeles Times columnist Gregory Rodriguez, in writing about Churchill's case, skewered ethnic studies programs.
"Created in the wake of the ethnic pride movement in the early 1970s, many [ethnic studies programs] simply never had the same kind of academic oversight as more established and prestigious fields. Those professors generally toiled with little funding in isolated intellectual ghettos," Rodriguez wrote. "Their scholarship wasn't tested in the high-stakes, high-profile competition that hones other academics and other fields."
Last year Arizona passed a law that aims to ban ethnic studies in state schools, targeting a Tucson school system's Chicano studies course. Those in favor of the law said the classes are divisive, while opponents called it yet another law targeting Latinos in the state. The bill, HB 2281, bans schools from teaching classes designed for students of a particular ethnic group, and ones that promote resentment or advocate ethnic solidarity over treating pupils as individuals.
California Assemblyman Luis Alejo, D-Watsonville, said he believes ethnic studies play a role in educating all sectors of California's population, and has co-authored a resolution with Assemblyman Ricardo Lara, D-South Gate, that would express the state's support and appreciation of ethnic studies programs.
"Over 70 percent of the kids in California public schools are students of color, and it's important for us that the curriculum reflect that," said Alejo, who studied ethnic studies at Berkeley. "Ethnic studies is not divisive but unifying. Education is one of the most powerful ways for people to come together. It's ignorance and lack of understanding that creates fear and stereotypes and biases. We have a common struggle, and all our ancestors have a common dream."
A 2008 UC survey of undergraduate students offered the statement "Students of my race are respected on this campus," then asked the students if they agreed or disagreed with it.
Among African-American students, less than 48 percent of UC Santa Cruz undergraduates agreed. Only UC Santa Barbara, with 47 percent, had a lower percentage.
Through the whole UC system, African-Americans and Latinos were the least likely to agree with the statement, with less than 80 percent of both groups responding affirmatively.
According to 2009 enrollment statistics, white students make up a larger percentage of the student body at UCSC, 48 percent, than all other campuses except for UC Santa Barbara, 49 percent.
UCSC's percentage of African-American and Latino students, 2.6 percent and 17.2 percent respectively, like the majority of UC campuses, is well below the percentage those groups represent in the state's general population of 6.2 percent for African-Americans and 37.8 percent for Latinos.
The school's percentage of Asian and Pacific Island students, while not underrepresented, is the second lowest in the system at 17.5 percent.
"I transferred from San Diego Community College, one of the most diverse community colleges in California," UCSC senior Shawn Freeman said. "To go from that climate to here was a shock. The attitudes here are different. They are not as inclusive."
Ashish Sahni, UCSC's diversity officer for students and staff, said the school has implemented programs to recruit more underrepresented students, such as using current minority students to recruit students of color who have been accepted to UCSC but have not yet enrolled.
"This year for the first time our incoming class will be more than 50 percent minorities; it's the highest percentage of student of color we've ever had," Sahni said, "A lot goes into our ability to attract minorities. It is a function of who is applying, for one thing. Geography is another factor, not being in an urban area we don't attract as many minority applicants as Berkeley or UCLA. Also, we lose a lot of academically qualified students of color to other UC schools, private schools and out-of-state universities."
UCSC Chancellor George Blumenthal created and chairs the UCSC Advisory Council on Campus Climate and Inclusion. Two years ago he remodeled the university's Equal Employment Opportunity/Affirmative Action department, which had largely served for compliance with state and federal law. It was renamed the Office for Diversity, Equity and Inclusion and charged with maintaining the compliance duties while also conducting more campus outreach and sponsoring events and programs.
Sahni, assistant chancellor and chief of staff, was named diversity officer for staff and students, while Herbie Lee, mathematics professor and vice provost for academic affairs, was given the task of diversity officer for faculty. Together they have been doing a "road show," meeting with students in small groups around campus.
Still, Sahni admits it is not an easy task he has been given, and much work remains to be done.
"We have been hearing lots of different things from students," he said. "Many feel like there are silos within the different colleges and groups. There isn't much mixing going on, and we need to overcome that."
Sahni also has started UCSC's Diversity Inclusion Certificate Program, an educational training program that introduces participants to issues involving the disabled; the lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer community; and minorities. This is the first year the program has been offered. It is currently only open to staff, not students or faculty, and 60 people enrolled for the first course.
UCSC also has a problem other UC campuses have struggled with, too: racist graffiti.
Students have reported seeing racist epithets carved into and scrawled on walls. Most recently, several swastikas and a message reading "Blood will be shed 4/20/11" were written in a bathroom stall at Porter College.
"Graffiti is an ongoing challenge for the campus. It's a systemwide issue," Sahni said. "The challenge is that most of the time we don't know who did it, but the system is in place to hold them accountable."
While the administration has established councils, committees and various programs, an ethnic studies program also could play a role on the academic side of campus in starting needed conversations and informing students, Sahni said.
"An ethnic studies program would undeniably create more dialogue," Sahni said. "The big challenge is defining what ethnic studies is. I don't think you can get five people on campus to agree on a definition. It has to be faculty-driven; we as the administration can't define it."
Margo Hendricks is now enjoying retirement in San Diego, but stands by her email sent a year ago.
"What drew me to UCSC when I came in 1991 was that I saw faculty of color across all the departments," Hendricks said. "I think back then I had reservations about ethnic studies, because at that time, on some campuses, it was a ghetto for minority faculty and no hiring was going on in other departments. Now it may be an intellectual and political necessity for UCSC to have an ethnic studies department as faculty diversity has diminished."
Hendricks added some conditions for her support, including guaranteed funding that can't be cut so the program develops and grows, that it not displace another program, and that it has the support of faculty and administration at all levels.
"Why create a program that will flounder and die in five years?" she asked.
Under UCSC's shared-governance guidelines, the administration handles financial matters and organization while faculty leads academic policy.
New programs and departments are typically started when a group of faculty formulate a proposal. The plan is then reviewed by administration to determine if it is feasible and the resources are available. UCSC's Academic Senate then evaluates the proposal and decides if it should be implemented.
Currently a faculty group is being formed to hash out what an ethnic studies program might look like.
"The unfortunate truth for those who work in critical race studies is we get disproportionately called upon to remedy the lack of ethnic studies through all sorts of interim courses," said Christine Hong, a UCSC literature professor participating in the faculty group who also is teaching an independent study course for students interested in ethnic studies. "We are overburdened with service requests, and it's not a tenable situation for faculty, staff or students to devote a great deal of time fighting for changes in curriculum."
Even while the UC system is struggling with successive years of budget cuts, and more coming for next year, programs have been created at UCSC, including Jewish Studies recently being offered as a major and a brand new major in robotics.
"The easiest way to go about creating an ethnic studies major would be to develop an interdisciplinary program that draws on faculty and courses from different departments," said Lee, the vice provost for academic affairs. "The faculty themselves have been resistant to an ethnic studies department. They feel like the study of ethnicity should go on within departments."
Academic Senate Chair Susan Gillman echoed Lee, saying that a full-fledged department is not necessarily the best way to proceed.
"There's is a lot of discussion about the best way to conceive it," Gillman said. "It's not an easily defined object or method of study, and it's very inter-disciplinary. ... We have several departments that are too small, and there are more flexible ways of creating the program. We don't want to copy Berkeley or UCLA. We want to put our unique Santa Cruz stamp on it."
However, students and faculty who are the most adamant about the need for ethnic studies say an inter-disciplinary program will merely serve as a "place holder" and not establish a well-defined and funded framework with dedicated faculty.
"What's wrong with that piecemeal approach is that it represents at best a holding pattern," Hong said. "Ethnic studies has developed in an uneven pattern, with Asian-American studies, African-American studies and Native American studies historically underdeveloped. There should be an overarching and comparative and theoretical structure where faculty who work in these areas can come together in critical conversation."
The students and faculty who participated in the March 2 rally are reaching out to student and university organizations and committees, working on their own vision for the program and doing their best to keep momentum going into next year, when many of the organizers will have moved on after graduation.
"We know we won't benefit from this because we'll be gone by then," Freeman said. "This is a movement and a project for Californians, for the students who will come after us, particularly the underrepresented groups."
