Submission: UCLA must address violence against women in light of student’s death

We, the undersigned graduate students, faculty fellows and lecturers of the UCLA Department of Spanish and Portuguese, wish to express our sadness after learning of the death of Andrea DelVesco. Andrea was a fellow member of the Bruin community and she was also our student. As teachers we have the precious opportunity to get to know and engage with our undergraduate students. Although many of us have more than a hundred students over the course of a year and our time with them is fleeting, we sometimes encounter students like Andrea who leave us with a lasting impression.

A few of us had the pleasure of teaching Andrea, who was one of those students we remember with fondness and compassion. She was a curious and outspoken student who made our classrooms a fun and enjoyable place to work and study. Our colleague Elizabeth Warren taught Andrea and recalls her energy, intelligence and outgoing personality. Inês Dias remembers her visits to her office hours, her desire to improve her writing skills in Spanish, her diligent work ethic and her enthusiastic participation in class.

As we mourn Andrea’s passing, we cannot ignore recent acts of violence against students, and in particular, female students. These atrocities have become commonplace, but they continue to shock and outrage us. In the weeks since Andrea’s death, school shootings at Umpqua Community College, Northern Arizona University and Texas Southern University have claimed the lives of nearly a dozen students. Many of these shootings have occurred in states that allow people to carry concealed firearms on public campuses, a dangerous policy which has only increased the noxious atmosphere of violence and insecurity in colleges across the country. This violence is not limited to campuses. In 2015 alone, there have been more than 300 shootings in which four or more people were wounded or killed.

As students of the cultures, literatures, languages and history of Spain, Latin America, Lusophone Africa and Portugal, we know that violence against students is not an isolated phenomenon. The disappearance of 43 students from the Ayotzinapa Rural Teachers’ College in September 2014 is only the most horrific case of violence against students in recent years. And we have come to study and to teach at UCLA from places like Ciudad Juárez, México, where femicide and the disappearance of women have become systemic.

This violence, perpetrated against a student of ours, causes us deep sadness and furthers our conviction that our campus is not a safe place for women. We have seen how Andrea’s case has been pushed into the private sphere and her memory has been concealed behind moral judgments. We condemn these discourses, which oppress and disempower women suffering from violence. Andrea’s death is a tragic manifestation of the ways in which women in our community and across the world are subject to violence in their lives. No student, no woman, no person should have to live in fear or be subject to the unrelenting violence that has consumed us in recent weeks.

We call on fellow Bruins to take advantage of the resources offered by the university and the community at large in this difficult time. Although places like Counseling and Psychological Services, Student Health and Wellness, and UCLA’s Title IX Office are overburdened and understaffed, they can be invaluable for students in need. Furthermore, we ask that you please report any case of violence on campus. We must ensure that our campus is free from the threat of violence.

To this end, we call on Chancellor Gene Block, University of California President Janet Napolitano and the UCLA administration to implement effective training programs – not just another online tutorial – for staff, faculty and students about preventing and responding to violence and sexual assault on campus. Finally, we demand that the UC take an active stance to bring attention to and end violence against women, students and teachers, and that it provide survivors of violence with support worthy of our core Bruin values of accountability, integrity and respect.

For Andrea, who was taken from us too early, we offer this stanza from Gabriela Mistral’s poem “Todas íbamos a ser reinas” (“We were all going to be queens”): “En la tierra seremos reinas, / y de verídico reinar, / y siendo grandes nuestros reinos, / llegaremos todas al mar.”

In solidarity with all of the women and students who have been victims of violence,

En solidaridad con todas las mujeres y estudiantes que han sido víctimas de violencia,

Em solidariedade à todas as mulheres e estudantes que foram vítimas de violência,

Tukuy warmikuna kishpiy kawsayta charinkapak sinchita kaparinchik!

A full list of signatures can be obtained here.