By Bobby Rivera

Staff Writer

Editor’s Note: Staff writer Bobby Rivera spoke to 21 people while gathering information for this special report, including current students, staff, faculty, former employees and a few community groups.

Knock knock. Who’s there? No one of color. The knock-knock jokes are rhymes we say as children. Yet in culture, children’s rhymes can have undertones of bias and racism.

In recent weeks, there have been heated discussions about racism within organizations on campus. Latino students have expressed outrage over two incidents involving photographs —- one last month and one five years ago —- where students and administrators were dressed in clothing that some students felt represent negative Latino stereotypes.

In April, photographs of members of the Alpha Chi Omega sorority (some white and some Latina) dressed as “cholas,” the phrase for women who dress in the attire often associated with Latino gang members, showed up on the organization’s Facebook page. Around the same time, a 2008 photo resurfaced showing university President Karen Haynes wearing a sombrero and poncho to a campus “fiesta” party. Both the students and Haynes issued apologies for what they described as cultural insensitivity.

While these may be isolated incidents, there are concerns among some students and faculty on campus that Latino and black students need to be better represented and reflected in the university’s faculty.  Is there a color line on campus? It’s a phrase used by civil rights leaders Frederick Douglass and W.E.B. Du Bois to refer to racial divide that prevents African-Americans from improving on their economic conditions.

Three percent of the students on campus are black, which is equal to the number of professors on campus who are black. But 28 percent of CSUSM students are Latino, compared to 13 percent of faculty, according to the 2012 – 2014 catalog profiles and university information.

On her university welcome statement, Haynes said that among the five strategic goals for the university’s third decade is to improve “education equity.”

“These principles are central to who we are, where we have been, and what we want to be,” she said.

CSU Board of Trustees student trustee, Cipriano Vargas, said that the plans made for education equity and diversity under former associate vice president of diversity and educational equity Derrick Crawford need to be accomplished.

“One of the things we value here at Cal State San Marcos is diversity and while it is a work in progress, we have a long way to go. Not only do we need to broaden the diversity among the faculty but also among the curriculum,” Vargas said.

In a speech May 1 at CSU Channel Islands, new CSU Chancellor Timothy P. White  said that universities should be diverse and inclusive of people of different backgrounds.

“Often when you come to a place and you … don’t look like (the) majority,  it doesn’t feel as welcoming,” White said, adding that Channel Islands has been “purposeful” in reaching out to underrepresented groups.

When CSUSM was founded in 1989, there was only one black professor on the faculty, Dr. Charlotte Bell, who was part of the Founder’s Circle. Today, the campus still has just one black female tenured faculty member, Dr. Sharon Elise.

Professor John Halcon, in the CSUSM college of education, said some departments on campus are better than others at implementing diversity.

“It has to do with how committed they are to handling diversity,” Halcon said. “A gap with African-American faculty, Native American faculty, and Hispanic faculty exists. The solution must come from our leadership, I see no follow through and people held accountable.”

Many organizations on campus are geared toward civility and diversity. The Office of Community Service Learning, for example, has been forging meaningful and productive community partnerships for the past 20 years. The department serves nonprofits that represent the poor and victims of crime (many of whom are minorities). However, in June, the Service Learning department will be restructured and department director, Dr. Darci Strother, is changing positions. Strother said that the university goals and actual actions conflict and are causing the a shift in university policy.

“Apparently the university wants to project a different ‘face’ to the community, one of which polished white people in suits are what the public sees rather than students, many of color, who are struggling under the ever-growing burdens of high tuition, and all its ramifications,” Strother said.

Theater professor Marcos Martinez sees a connection between the incidents involving culturally insensitive photos and a possible university shift in service learning policy.

In regards to diversity playing out on campus, “It is a very personal style of leadership…which doesn’t seem to have direction. I sense and hear of an environment of fear,” Martinez said.

“What a curious coincidence that we receive an apology from the President after a letter asserting offense take over the sombrero picture, which has now received attention in the U-T San Diego (newspaper),” Martinez said.

Denise Hollis, a former CSU San Marcos employee who worked in the Affirmative Action Office from 1993-1996, which that focused on diversity, and former adviser to a black student group, said that in her years on campus there was a commitment to hiring a multiracial faculty.

“The Affirmative Action Office when I worked was focused on making sure there was diversity in the hiring of faculty, and thus there was a very diverse faculty. The founding faculty had been diverse and the Office of Affirmative Action’s charge was to make sure that diversity continued to be reflected,” Hollis said.

She said that she dealt with many race-related controversies like the photographs that surfaced last month.

“It really amazes me that the issue of race has not been adequately addressed at CSUSM and to hear that the diversity of the faculty has decreased really saddens me given the focus of my work during my tenure,” Hollis said.