To Ask or Demand: How to Survive at the University of California at Irvine as a Black Student
It is our duty to fight for our freedom!
It is our duty to win!
We must love and protect one another!
We have nothing to lose but our chains!
Linked, in a linear side by side stance, Black students on the campus of the University of California at Irvine chant to protest in solidarity of the students nationwide experiencing racism on their campuses. Recently, the Black students at the University of Missouri demanded that the Chancellor of the university step down from his position as they felt Black students experienced racism on campus while he and administration did nothing to implement change. As a result of this striking political move, the Chancellor stepped down, causing the students on campus to quarrel on the incident.
Some students felt it unnecessary to call for the Chancellor to step down being that he is not at fault for students experiencing racism, however, other students felt as Chancellor of the university, he should be held responsible.
This debate of whether or not the Chancellor is at fault is not the real issue and should not be the focus of the protests. “Black students are experiencing anti-Black violence and their experiences need to be validated and affirmed,” says Mia Ogundipe-Tillman, a former Black Student Union chair.
But what’s significant about the recent protests on college campuses is the solidarity across the country. When Mizzou’s Black student population resisted against the university to hold it accountable, many people supported by holding protests on their own campus in addition to sparking political movements on their campuses.
One thing to note, is the fact that campus climate has always been an issue for Black students on college campuses. On the previous campus climate report from march 2014 at UC Irvine, “respondents felt that the campus was least respectful (“disrespectful”/“very disrespectful”) of African American/African/Black people (7%).” Although, in this study, respondents felt that the overall climate was respectful of “people of color” at 81%, it is important to note that Black students specifically do not feel respected. This is also a reflection of how statistics can be flawed or even in need of a critical analysis.
Across the country, Black students have experienced racist acts on their campus with lack of administrative support. UC Irvine is not alone in Black student unrest. On the University of California at San Diego, students linked to fraternity Pi Kappa Alpha held a party called “Compton Cookout” urging participants to perform in various forms of Blackface and Black racial stereotypes. On the University of California at Berkeley, cutouts of Black people hung from nooses. At the University of Virginia, a Black student, Martese Johnson, was slammed to the pavement by a police officer. At the University of Oklahoma, a fraternity, Sigma Alpha Epsilon chanted racial slurs degrading the entry of Black students into their fraternity. Needless to say, Black students were not happy and as a result, they spoke up and resisted against these acts of anti-Black racism.
According to Nicholas Brady, a UC Irvine PhD student, “Anti-Blackness is the paradigm that binds blackness and death together so much so that one cannot think of one without the other. Meaning, it is a structure that connects Black flesh with the positionality to always be in a constant state of death. Every Black person has this experience, so students are no exception. This experience is violent and because it is consistent, Black people experience it on a quotidian basis.
When me and my friends are walking to our campus gym and students yell out their car, spit, and throw juice at us. When we are walking through the campus housing parking lot and someone asks “do you want some fried chicken.” When a professor critiques the content of my paper rather than the quality because I choose to write about Black death. When a Black student gets a “go back 2 Africa slave” note in her backpack while at the library. When a white woman yells at a Black student “you nigger bitch” and another Black student says the same thing happened to her. When multiple students are asked if their hair can be touched. When a non-Black students decides saying “nigger” is okay. When racial topics arise, and it becomes you against the class (and sometimes the professor). This list can go on forever as Black students have to resist everyday.
But regardless of the difficult work, Black students have to resist because it gives them sanity. They may not get the responses they want, however, demanding what is deserved, speaking up when something is wrong, and holding people accountable is necessary.
This is what motivated me to act. As one of the chairs of the UC Irvine Black Student Union last year, we created a demands team which organized and released nine demands calling the university to implement institutional change for Black students. To this date, some demands were met, however, Black students are still working to ensure its fruition.
It all began in the summer of 2014. BSU is a part of a political group called the Afrikan Black Coalition (ABC). This group, was made up of Chairs/Presidents from each University of California campus which created the executive board. It also holds an annual conference which is held on a different UC campus every year. The purpose of this organization began “in 2003 by Black students within the University of California system who found the low admittance and retention rates of Black students intolerable,” according to their website. In the summer, the ABC staff hosted a Black Student Leadership Training (BSLT) for the UC Black/African Student Union’s board members to teach them effective ways to run their organizations. There are presentations, discussions, and guest lectures that go into the training.
During one particular presentation, a student named Yoel Haile did a presentation on demands from the University of California at Santa Barbara. On his campus, he and several other students created a list of demands to their chancellor, demanding them to execute resources for Black students. They demanded “two full-time Black psychologists at UCSB,” and the Chancellor authorized it. They demanded aggressive recruitment of Black faculty and received a $2 million endowment to do so. Given, these demands were not met exactly, I was still inspired by the fact that they wanted something, and they got it. It seemed simple.
So when the training was over, I told my co-chair at the time, Mia Ogundipe-Tillman and another board member, Sandra Johnson about working on demands and they agreed. Sandra recruited two more members, Khaalidah Sidney, and Damiyr Davis and we began meeting regularly to share research and begin crafting the actual demands, which we did not finish until about a week before the ABC conference which scheduled us to do our release. We created a press release and gathered a bunch of media outlets to send the release to once we presented.
Minutes before our presentation, Mia, Yoel, and I worked on the presentation. We knew we were going to present them, but we needed a way for attendees to support in a concrete way while at the conference because the chances of them cooperating after was a gamble. So in the food courts in front of Wahoo’s on campus, the three of us worked on getting the information out as we blasted it to everyone: university officials, media outlets, listservs, and specifically the Chancellor.
When it was our time to present, I was nervous and a little shaky. The conference was bigger than previous years with about 700 people in attendance and the biggest group I had ever presented to at that time was maybe 50. On the two giant screens, was the code, @a9eff for the attendees to text to 81010 to receive texts from an app called Remind 101. Once they did this, we sent out a message for students to send to the Chancellor declaring support. In addition we sent a petition link for people to sign, which had all the demands made out to the Chancellor.
Previously, Black students at UC Irvine had released demands consistently. In 2013, after the Lambda Theta Delta fraternity performed Blackface, it sparked protest and the organization released four demands. Some included for the university to take accountability for the neglect and experiences of Black students. It also included to see the African American studies program be fortified into a department.
I wanted to tell this part of the UCI demands team narrative because it is often lost. Many people know that the Black Student Union released demands from the university, however, they fail to understand that we worked hard on these demands since the summer, they were not hasty. We put in time, effort, and although we are against respectability politics and symbolically name ourselves Jungle Pussy, we are serious. Everything we have done came with contemplation and planning because Black students need support and deserve it.
To date, we have 1,185 petition signers, and at least one of our demands have been concretely met which is a for the resident advisor for the Rosa Park house to be in charge of solely that house, rather than responsibility of two houses. Additionally, in the Arroyo Vista housing campus community a Black scholars hall was created, which is a model for one of the demands to have Black freshman housing in another housing community. The university regularly sends out emails on the progress of implementation, however, I have yet to see fruition of the demands we specifically asked for.
So just as we fought for Black students, Black students have and always will resist. These movements are organized and draining, but the work must be done. These students put in hard and effective work contrary to how it is perceived. Organizing a protest is difficult, creating demands is difficult, holding people accountable is difficult. As the recent Black student movements continue, it is important to note that it is hard but we still do the work. Currently, over 70 university campuses across the nation have released demands holding their university accountable.
