A group of faculty and student organizations at California State University-Los Angeles have created a list of demands for the university, urging them to “take immediate, concrete steps to eradicate all manifestations of anti-Blackness on campus.”
The petition claims that CSULA administrators “have allowed institutionalized racism to function,” citing a decline in black student enrollment at the school. It also claims the university has “forestalled the potential appointment” of Dr. Melina Abdullah as the dean for Ethnic Studies. Abdullah spearheaded a campaign to attempt to shut down YAF’s Ben Shapiro speech at the school back in 2016 and has labeled the Young Americans for Freedom chapter a “white supremacist group,” leading to a free speech lawsuit against the university which YAF won.
The groups behind the petition, including the Black Student Union, Black Faculty and Staff Caucus, BLM Los Angeles, California Faculty Association, and others are demanding that the school:
- Appoint Dr. Melina Abdullah the dean of the College of Ethnic Studies, noting she will “contest the entrenched manifestations of academic neoliberalism and anti-Blackness so prevalent at CSULA.”
- Defund the campus police and replace it with “non-punitive forms of accountability”
- Redirect funding from campus police to “racial and gender justice teaching, research, and anti-racism training for campus employees” as well as creating a Center for Black Student Success
- End all contracts between the school and local, county, state, and federal police departments and agencies
- Declare a state of emergency for Black students which allows the Department of Pan-African Studies to admit a minimum of 500 students per year
- Give students veto and voting power on the hiring of campus administrators
Activist faculty and students also plan on taking part in a “tweet storm” on August 5th, to spam the university’s official Twitter account with a flurry of tweets demanding the school appoint Dr. Abdullah as dean and fulfill their laundry list of demands.
These activists do not identify how CSULA, which is home to only 5 percent of white students, promotes “anti-blackness.” The student body is comprised of more than 66 percent Latino students.
Daniel Barron, chairman of the CSULA YAF chapter, noted that the demands will make campus much more dangerous. “From disarming and defunding campus police to ending all contracts with local and county police, these demands will create a campus unsafe for its students,” Barron told YAF exclusively. “Dr. Melina Abdullah and her mob have silenced conservative students before–one can only wonder what else conservative students might have to face in the future.”