Dear League Supporters:

Over the past few weeks, I have been involved in one of the most disturbing University of California incidents in recent memory, as the University of California San Diego’s African American students have been subjected to a very disturbing series of incidents.

It started with the “Compton Barbeque” a few weeks ago - an event which openly mocked Black History month, and made the African American students on campus feel persecuted and vulnerable. That was followed by a series of incidents, including the hanging of a noose and later a KKK hood in public spaces, and the open defiance of Caucasian students (who voiced their support for their free speech rights to humiliate African Americans) via campus television and publications.

The Los Angeles Urban League has responded to these incidents swiftly, and supported the growing coalition of Social and Civil Rights Organizations that have united with the students to find solutions. As many of you know, one of the underlying issues for such campus racial strife is the exceptionally low number of African American students on the campus (African Americans only represent about 1.5% of the student body at UCSD). Chris Strudwick-Turner (our Marketing VP) and I worked with community leaders on a similar issue at UCLA over the past few years. The ultimate result was a more than doubling of African American students at UCLA. We intend to bring the same approaches to this problem.