UC San Diego - Lessons and Action: Message from League President/CEO Blair Taylor

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.

The UCSD Administration, in my opinion, has not responded swiftly or decisively. Importantly, while the “Compton Barbeque” certainly stoked the embers, many of these issues have been trending for a long time according to the students. As such, beyond the admissions and matriculations issues lies some even more disturbing trends – one of which is the tacit acceptance of totally inappropriate practices by this school’s administration.

In our recent visit to San Diego (last week), and in our many discussions with students and faculty there over the past several weeks, we have found myriad evidence of the administrations casual, laissez fair attitude toward flagrant hate speech. Incendiary language now permeates nearly every quarter of the campus. The campus television station broadcasts provocative hate speech, as do the campus newspapers. Derogatory and inflammatory language is occurring at parties on and off campus. And until very recently, all of this has been “tolerated” by the Administration.

Now, just in case anyone believes we are overreacting, there is a student newspaper (www.thekoala.org) on the campus, called “KOALA”. It is almost unimaginable for me to say this, but this paper is actually funded with student fees. I ask that you please read it (be prepared to be appalled), but then send it to every single reasonably minded person you can, and ask that they ring-in aggressively with UCSD or the UC President. This is one of the most disgraceful and divisive publications I have ever read. And this thing is not published “underground”, either. Instead, it is spread openly, and read widely across the campus.

I have contacted the Governor’s Offices and asked that they work directly with me and the LAUL to absolutely get this newspaper shut-down. Minimally, such specific steps must be taken to show that there is no tacit condoning of racial animosity. These public land grant institutions simply must have a zero-tolerance.

Let me know if there are any questions.

More coverage of these events has been featured on our Facebook page.