Know your issues: National race relations are integral to campus climate issues
(Bijun Liang/Daily Bruin)
By Arthur Wang
July 19, 2015 7:39 p.m.
Opinion columnists outline the issues incoming students need to know, but aren’t always told. Here are the things your new student advisor doesn’t tell you at orientation.
The UCLA viewbook’s claim that the campus sees 329 days of sunshine a year has long amused me. Not that it isn’t true, but it betrays darker realities and incidents that have marred the campus experience for students. The catch-all term of “campus climate” generally refers to how comfortable students feel on campus, and how receptive the campus is, in both demographics and actions, to students of differing backgrounds, ideas and experiences. Race is pertinent to campus climate conversations as minority groups may feel alienated or discomforted by insensitive or discriminatory remarks or policies.
While UCLA claims to take diversity seriously, a significant portion of this campus is unprepared or unwilling to consider or discuss race and sometimes actively resists attempts to do so. That’s not to say this won’t change, as high-profile incidents from Ferguson, Mo. to Charleston, S.C. led to nationwide reflections on the pertinence of race – something that will surely be reflected on our campus.
Context
- In response to the Moreno Report, a 2013 investigation of campus climate, UCLA appointed former School of Law professor Jerry Kang as its inaugural vice chancellor of equity, diversity and inclusion in late March. Two discrimination prevention officers were also hired December.
- Students and activists reacted to several national and local issues pertinent to race last year. In November, UCLA students at the Bruin Plate dining hall booed students protesting a grand jury’s non-indictment of the police officer who shot Michael Brown in Ferguson, Mo. In April, spearheaded by the Afrikan Student Union, the campus community at large condemned the anonymous posting of racist stickers commenting on civil unrest in Baltimore following the death of Freddie Gray.
- After decades of student advocacy, the faculty of the College of Letters and Science passed a proposal requiring students to take a general education course on inequalities based on different identities. Before the April vote, UCLA was the only UC campus besides UC Merced to not have such a requirement.
