Campus police ‘give students a feeling like they’re in prison … They all have access to weapons, and this is really terrifying to students of color…’
Faculty across California State University are demanding that the school and each of its 23 campuses adopt a slew of social justice-related reforms, including disarming campus police, requiring a new class on ethnic studies, and providing free tuition for black students.
The reason for the spending spree: because the education system is “fundamentally grounded in a white supremacist colonial discourse and culture,” according to Summit News.
The California Faculty Association, the union representing faculty across the university’s campuses, released its list of demands last week.
The “Anti-Racism and Social Justice Transformation Package” would require CSU to create departments solely devoted to African American studies, increase the number of black administrators, and overcompensate black staff members to prevent racial pay gaps in the system.
This “racial pay equity” is necessary, the report states, because the “workload is higher for Black faculty given that CSU faculty are majority-white, and CSU students are majority of color, resulting in ‘cultural taxation.’ ”
The package also states that CSU must “provide free tuition for all Black, Native, and Indigenous students,” according to Campus Reform.
And to increase admission of these “marginalized students,” CSU must make efforts “to overturn Proposition 209, the ban on affirmative action.”
CSU spokesman Michael Uhlenkamp told Ed Source that the university is “committed to working to address racial inequities,” but not by using “the tactics” laid out by the CFA.
He reiterated the university’s support for campus police departments, and clarified that CSU already supports overturning Proposition 209, which prevents CSU and other public universities within the state from considering race or ethnicity while making admissions decisions.
Several faculty members, however, said that campus police officers’ presence is a non-starter, because they “give students a feeling like they’re in prison,” according to Sharon Elise, the union’s associate vice president of racial and social justice.
“They all have access to weapons,” Elise said of campus police, “and this is really terrifying to students of color.”
