Questions raised about diversity at President’s open forum
Faculty and staff showing images of Arturo Ocampo at diversity open forum. Photo by Rhiannon Ripley.
February 10, 2016
Campus community members protested at President Haynes’ open forum about diversity to challenge structural and leadership shifts to the Office of Diversity, in addition to presenting a list of demands to campus administrators.
The Open Dialogue on Educational Equity & Inclusion forum, which took place from 2 p.m. to 3:15 p.m. on Wednesday, Feb. 10 at The Clarke Grand Salon, was preceded by a protest circle. Members of various student organizations, campus departments and offices formed two lines prior to walking into The Clarke. Led by student activists Karen GuzmXn and Selena Arellano, the approximate seventy protesters hoisted signs with an image of Arturo Ocampo, former Associate Vice President for the Office of Diversity, Educational Equity, Inclusion and Ombuds Services. Protesters shouted chants such as “We are fighting for justice, we are fighting for Arturo!” and “Ain’t no power like the power of the people ‘cause the power of the people don’t stop.”
After proceeding into The Clarke, protesters filled the seats and lined the walls of the Grand Salon to voice their opinions on Ocampo’s departure from the university and question what this means for the future of diversity at CSUSM. Attendees were asked to write their questions on notecards to submit for the potential of being answered during the forum.
President Haynes sat within the forum circle and responded to questions about if the university is truly committed to diversity.
“We are always looking at best practices and how to improve what we do,” she said. “… When I came to CSUSM, I said we would raise the educational retainment rate of this entire region and bring more underrepresented and diverse students to this campus than we have before. [I also said] that we would become a Hispanic Serving Institution. We did all of those things.”
During the forum, Arellano and fellow M.E.Ch.A. member, Alejandra Rosas, stood before the forum and read a letter on behalf of the United Students of Color Coalition, which listed their demands for President Haynes. These demands included increased funding for Ethnic Studies and Women’s Studies departments, the reinstatement of Arturo Ocampo, renaming campus community centers as Social Justice Centers, the opening of a black student center on campus in fall 2016, gender neutral bathrooms in all buildings and Associated Students Inc. “establishing true autonomy and no longer reporting to Student Affairs.”
“CSUSM students call upon the administration to take action,” Arellano said.
The United Students of Color Coalition letter also addressed Haynes directly.
“We demand the resignation of President Karen Haynes if student demands are not addressed and if it is made clear that President Haynes is not able to support and acknowledge student concerns regarding diversity, as seen over the course of the last week. If the president is incapable of addressing concerns of diversity now, it is appropriate to ask for her resignation,” Rosas said.
Other students spoke out at the forum and expressed frustration with the answers that were provided, including student Julius Bautista.
“We are hungry for diversity. We want to be successful. We are hungry to become a community that empowers individuals and organizations on campus,” he said.
President Haynes responded to student comments by saying that she would read through the list of demands and work with various departments to champion diversity work.
“Diversity has to be embraced across this campus by all populations: students, faculty and administrators,” she said. “… There is always diversity work to be done. There is always more to do. There’s always places where it can be done better.”
Campus community members who would like to submit additional questions or concerns about diversity at CSUSM can email [email protected].
Yolotl Aztectl • Feb 18, 2016 at 1:47 pm
I have been a student at CSUSM for 4+ years and have seen many changes take place on this campus during my education. I was also fortunate to work with and get help from our former Diversity Officer, Arturo Ocampo and I appreciate his great work during his short time at CSUSM.
With that said, I want to comment on how disappointed and upset I get when I see some CSUSM students holding the sign “Diversity is Dead” while they are protesting. I felt proud as a Mexicana/Latina and US Citizen to see my peers using their student power to protest, but was disappointed at the same time when reading their signs. To openly state that “diversity is dead” is a contradiction to their protest. I am all for the freedom of and right for protesting, yet I believe it should be done with dignity and knowledge. Diversity is not one person. Diversity is each and every one of us. Just look at what the definition of diversity is in the Merriam-Webster Dictionary. Diversity is “the state of having people (more than one) who are different races or who have different cultures in a group (more than one) or organization”. I state my point again, diversity is more than one person. Just take a walk on campus during university hour and you can clearly see all around that WE (all of us) ARE DIVERSITY! I hope that the student using these offensive signs remove them from their protest because they are not just offending others, they are offending themselves.
Brian • Feb 11, 2016 at 7:18 pm
Any student making demands at a public university in this country should be escorted off campus by security and given a refund for that semester’s tuition. And be arrested for trespassing if they come back on campus without having a business purpose. No one is forcing anyone to attend any college in this country. A college education is a privilege. Only spoiled, petulant children make demands of a privilege.
Christopher Daskalos • Feb 11, 2016 at 1:31 pm
First things first: Arturo Ocampo was NOT fired for misconduct or poor job performance. If you can believe Karen Haynes (President of CSUSM), Ocampo was just the unfortunate victim of her “structural realignment” in the bureaucratic hierarchy on campus. So let me repeat that one more time: Arturo Ocampo was NOT fired for misconduct or poor job performance.
With that out of the way, I’d like to reflect on the open “dialogue” which was held (and hosted) by Karen Haynes on 2/10/2016. I wonder if this “dialogue” was intended by the powers-that-be to serve as an organizational “pimple popping”, a way to drain off the “bad blood” created when the administration fired the hard-working and well-respected Ocampo who headed the beloved Office of Diversity. I suppose the thinking was that if there were a venue for the disaffected to let off steam now, there would be fewer “unpleasantries” later on…especially with the accreditation folks coming to campus soon (check the digital countdown in front of the Kellogg Library for the exact date and time). Oh and don’t forget the looming faculty strike.
Whatever the expectations were, what transpired in the Clarke Grand Salon was a collision between a defensive chief bureaucrat and a large number of engaged students. Both sides seemed to know from the start there wasn’t going to be a real dialogue held that day…the ground rules laid down for “talk” by the administration saw to that immediately. To be fair, I don’t think many of the students present really wanted to hear whatever weak organizational explanations Haynes was there to deliver. The students want Arturo Ocampo and his forward-thinking vision of diversity back at CSUSM…period.
In the end, Haynes got to once again state her oft-repeated (and somewhat threadbare explanation) of Ocampo’s dismissal as a “structural realignment” as well as to claim that all sorts of things were either beyond her control or not her fault. For their part, students got to express their rightful displeasure, sometimes in an impassioned manner, with Haynes’ recent actions and their entirely justifiable fears that, without Arturo Ocampo on campus, diversity will go to hell around CSUSM. An actual dialogue never really happened.
Haynes can now claim she tried to explain her actions in an “open forum”. On the other hand, students got the satisfaction of having the president of the University account for those actions (however self-servingly) before them….which is fairly rare in the organizational world of unaccountability and bureaucratic obscurification. The question remains as to whether or not this administrative “pimple popping” resolved anything…I wonder if the problem is systemic and in need of a more comprehensive remedy such as that contained in the students’ demand for the resignation of Karen Haynes.
Cordially:
Christopher Daskalos, Ph.D.
“The limits of my language mean the limits of my world.” Ludwig Wittgenstein