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| Posted on Monday, October 21 @ 00:00:12 PDT |
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Following an on-campus fraternity’s use of the N-word on a post from their Instagram, Cal State Fullerton’s Black Student Union and CSUF students are demanding changes to the way the school has historically served African American students, who are among the least represented on campus.
Today, student government and university officials will come face-to-face with those calls for change at a town hall in the Titan Student Union.
The university’s student-led Black Student Union Vice President Kafilat Ahmed said the town hall meeting is “long overdue.â€
“Black students have to be mindful and have to think about or be aware of different aspects; such as how they carry themselves, who’s watching them (and) the precautionary measures they have to take when just, honestly, being in public,†Ahmed said.
The town hall is intended for African American students to express their concerns with the campus-wide community in regards to CSUF’s racial climate, according to Ahmed.
The meeting was called after the fraternity Phi Sigma Kappa posted an online advertisement for a philanthropy event with a racial slur watermarked on the poster .
The fraternity took down the post and issued an apology online, and then ejected the fraternity member responsible for the slur that night, but multiple organizations on campus have called for further action.
The fraternity’s statement included promises to “be transparent with our actions†and that the removal of the fraternity member responsible is “just the beginning of many steps†for “corrective measures and opportunities to right this wrong through campus resources.â€
Bethany Whittaker, Black Student Union executive board president, also issued a statement on behalf of the union on Instagram last Friday. Whittaker said Associated Students, Inc. did not contact them after the incident.
“Black students feel unsafe on and around campus due to the hostile environment and constant dismissal of our humanity,†Whittaker wrote. “As a campus that prides itself on caring about diversity, it lacks the competence to put diversity into action in regard to its black students.â€
The statement received support from alumni, students and the Black Student Unions from other CSUs on social media.
President Fram Virjee, who is also a member of Phi Sigma Kappa, released a statement through email over the weekend condemning the actions of the fraternity member responsible and commending the fraternity’s response, and also told them they still had improvements to be made.
Ahmed said that sending an email to the campus-wide community is not enough and that there are major changes to come at CSUF.
“Faculty, staff and administration need to do a lot better. There were about two or three faculty and staff that checked in on us after this incident,†Ahmed said. “That’s absolutely unacceptable.â€
Alexandro Gradilla, vice chair of the CSUF Academic Senate and Chicano/Chicana studies professor, said that the university’s Greek organizations are typically spared from serious consequences when facing repercussions for offensive actions.
“I definitely think the university needs to think long and hard about how it oversees and manages the traditional Greek letter organizations,†Gradilla said. “With each new generation of students in there, the same problem happens almost every five years.â€
Gradilla said the way the university oversees these organizations is not working and called for tighter oversight of Greek organizations.
Alpha Delta Pi, a sorority on campus, faced backlash and criticism from the community after hosting a “Taco Tuesday†recruitment event and dressing in culturally insensitive attire in 2014.
Gradilla said that many of those students went unpunished due to parents calling for the individual students to be punished and not the organization as a whole.
“ I want to make sure that doesn’t happen this time, that parents aren’t going to bail these students out,†Gradilla said. “ There has to be consequences.â€
Phi Sigma Kappa also promised to set up a plan “to educate our members on the offense and impact of the incident,†as well as undergo a full membership review from the national branch of the PSK fraternity, but Gradilla said that “self-punishment†is not enough.
“It’s like (saying) ‘We’re not going to play with our Nintendo for a week, and no Netflix for us,’ I mean, self-punishment, as admirable as it is, is not enough in this instance,†Gradilla said.
Ahmed said she would like to see a halt in the fraternity’s activities on campus.
“There are black students I’ve spoken with personally, that have been walking to class or have actually had classes with members of this organization and feel anxiety, or they feel stress, or some kind of feeling that distracts them from learning, from simply being on campus,†Ahmed said.
Gradilla said that while many universities brand themselves as diverse and inclusive, “how well they do it and what they do is way off.â€
“I think when a university has a diversity and inclusion office, it’s like when a person gets caught being racist and they point to their black friend and they say, ‘I’m not racist, I have a black friend.’ Well, universities now say, ‘We’re not racist, we have diversity and inclusion.’†Gradilla said. “It’s so thin and shallow at this point on campus.â€
Ahmed said while the university preaches inclusivity, it is not seen as a black student on campus.
“Being a black student, the reality is, we feel as though there is no diversity and inclusion,†Ahmed said. “It just seems like a gimmick at the end of the day.â€
According to Gradilla, despite slipping African American student enrollment rates, CSUF has done virtually nothing to help encourage enrollment.
“Their numbers have been slipping since I got here 14 years ago, they were at about 3.2%: now they’re at 1.9%,†Gradilla said. “This campus struggles because we don’t have active, sincere relationships with the African American community, with the Asian American community, with the Chicano-Latino community.
We don’t.â€
Gradilla said that due to the university’s low sense of involvement, it isn’t a surprise to see enrollment dropping.
“We’ve seen the red flags in terms of African American students, black students, feeling like they don’t belong on campus,†Gradilla said. “We are no longer on people’s destinations for college.â€
Associated Students also issued their own statement written by Monica Morales-Garcia, ASI’s chief inclusion and diversity officer, condemning the actions of the individual responsible.
In 2016, Associated Students passed a resolution to increase enrollment numbers and support black student success. During this time African Americans made up 2.3% of students at CSUF.
As of Spring 2019, 1.9% of students at CSUF are African American, with CSUF having one of the lowest percentages of undergraduate African American students in all 23 CSUs.
“No aspect of that resolution has been felt by the black community,†Ahmed said. “It’s nice to have, but it’s something that we think is useless to us at this point. We need to see action behind these words.â€
The town hall is set to start at 3 p.
m. in the Titan Student Union Pavilion B today. The Black Student Union has asked students to come in black shirts to show their support.
“Other universities in much less diverse settings attract African Americans more than we do,†Gradilla said. “I don’t know what happened, but when I got here there was a much more engaged university to communities of color, and now there isn’t.†0 Share
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