Occidental Students Stage Sit-In To Protest Campus Climate
Students continue to occupy the administration building at Occidental College in protest of the school’s policies on student diversity issues. Students are calling for university president, Jonathan Veitch to resign.
Outside the building, tents decorate the steps. There’s a teach-in to help Asian-American and Pacific Islander students learn how to respond. Inside, students are camped out with sleeping bags and laptops. A DJ plays Tupac. Staff continue to work around them.
The movement to shift campus culture around student diversity is a collaboration between many students groups including, the Black Student Alliance, for Diversity and Equity, Asian Pacific Americans for Liberation and La Raza.
Non-minority students have shown strong support for the movement. An estimated 400 students have passed through the building since a call to action was issued Monday, Mika Cribbs, Occidental’s Black Student Alliance Vice President said.
“We’re occupying the [administration building] because of its power. We’re kind of saying you need to hear us. We’re tired of feeling unsafe in this place that we pay $60,000 to go to,” Diamond Webb, President of the Black Student Alliance, said.
For one student's story click here.
Students say they have a list of demands for President Veitch, says Webb. The demands include training for staff, demilitarization of campus safety and funding to support events and programming to shift the culture. However, students’ foremost demand is the removal of President Veitch.
Abilasha Bhola, a student organizer for the for Diversity and Equity, said “during President Veitch’s time here, the only time that he’s actually moved to make a better student climate is when students have fought tooth and nail and still things do not change to the degree that we want. So what we’re working for now is to put pressure on the Board of Trustees to make that happen.”
Jim Tranquada, Director of Communications for Occidental, says they have heard the students’ demands and are considering them. “The college is supportive of the students in the sense that we applaud their bringing an important issue to the fore and having a difficult, but necessary, conversation about race, diversity and culture.”
Occidental, the alma mater of President Barack Obama, has a long history of activism. “This has definitely been an ongoing issue that’s been happening for decades,” Cribbs said. In 1968 the Black Student Caucus rallied for a black studies program, and a decade later Obama was petitioning for campus climate change and divestment from Africa because of apartheid.
For a map of other university's with recent student protests around racial diversity, click here.
“In a way, Oxy is like a microcosm of what is going on nationwide, like other institutions are battling the same things we are battling. We’re all in this fight together,” said Webb.
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