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IN THEIR OWN WORDS:UC Davis Speaks![]() ![]() ![]() |
Communities in CrisisIn spring 2010, university campuses in California were host to over a dozen incidents involving expressions of homophobia, racism, sexism, and anti-Semitism. Through email and Facebook networks, members of the UC Davis community quickly learned about incidents at other UCs, in particular the “Compton Cookout” at UC San Diego. On the UC Davis campus, the LGBT Resource Center was found defaced with homophobic graffiti and a number of swastikas were found, some spray painted around campus and one carved into a Jewish student’s dorm room door.
In speaking with select individuals at UC Davis about these incidents, I (Julie) asked how they learned about what had happened on California campuses during 2010 and how they responded. Though geographically distant from some events and very close to others, student, staff, faculty members, and administrators said they felt connected to what was happening throughout the state and felt their community was under attack. Some were quick to point out the commonplace nature of discriminatory actions on campus, arguing that these incidents represent “the tip of the iceberg” of discrimination. Repeatedly, the people of color I spoke to compared their experiences of racism and other forms of prejudice on campus at UC Davis to similar experiences in the local community of Davis. Recognizing that discrimination happens here – on the campus and in the town – and is perpetrated not only by individuals but also by structural practices is a necessary step toward achieving a safe and welcoming campus community.
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-UC Davis staff member
-UC Davis staff member
-UC Davis faculty member
When members of the UC Davis campus community were asked to discuss what happened on California campuses in spring 2010, they most frequently mentioned the defacement of the UC Davis Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender Resource Center (LBGTRC), the swastikas found around the UC Davis campus, and the incidents at UC San Diego—in particular, the “Compton Cookout.” While those incidents were highly publicized through Facebook and email networks and became common knowledge for many, other incidents included in the timeline provided received far less public attention or went unreported.
In conversations, individuals at UC Davis condemned the defacement of the LGBT Resource Center (LGBTRC) as a “blatant” and “eye-opening” expression of hatred and bias that left no room for “denying [the perpetrators’] intent.” For many, the graffiti at the LGBTRC represented the overt expression of a negative campus climate that is experienced by queer-identified people in more subtle ways on a daily basis. In the words of one staff member, “to see the manifestation of all the things that we feel all the time, to actually see it physically, that was really powerful.” According to a staff member, some students experienced the defacement of the LGBTRC as an attack on the entire university community, not only the queer community.
As other incidents occurred elsewhere, community members drew connections between the disparate events and worried what else was going to happen. A staff member told me, “It’s not too far off to think the same thing could happen here or the same thing does happen here and we don’t hear about it.” Another staff member expressed being “afraid to open up my email,” fearing what horrible news might await her. Others shared this fear: a faculty member confided, “I just was really scared… last year with UC San Diego. I was just afraid someone was gonna be hurt.” The symbolic violence expressed through these incidents served as a warning of what might come if the community did not respond adequately.
Several people that I queried drew a direct connection between the 2010 bias-related incidents and the ongoing protests by students and others concerned about the university’s move towards privatization. One graduate student said, “it’s not really that shocking that… in a year where… queers of color are on the front lines of protesting fee increases and really talking about how the privatization of public education is fucking them over on a day-to-day basis, that that’s a moment when we see a backlash against marginalized communities.” The incidents on California campuses mirror those on the national stage, in particular the frequent questioning of Barack Obama’s legitimacy as President and the shooting attack on Representative Gabrielle Giffords, among others, at a political rally in Tucson. The individuals I talked to noted that in times of economic uncertainty, people become defensive, acting out by scapegoating easy targets. As one faculty member put it, “people are acting out what they sense are the secret unspoken wishes of the community,” asserting who belongs at this university and who does not.
One person I queried used the metaphor of an iceberg to describe the 2010 incidents: “I’ve always seen hate crimes and hate incidences as tips of the iceberg, as symptoms of things [that are] not right. … I look at it as a public health issue, that you have to transform the community in which those incidents are symptoms.” Indeed, overwhelmingly, my sources expressed the sense that acts of discrimination and bias on the UC Davis campus are commonplace rather than aberrational. One staff member said, “on a daily basis I witness an act of discrimination on our campus.” Another staff member spoke of daily “microaggressions” in which individuals who are part of a dominant group exert their power over members of subordinate groups. A black professor described how, outside of the classroom, young white men are often “confrontational and hostile” toward him, seeing only his race and not his occupational or educational status. The professor described his thoughts after one such occasion:
I remember feeling that there was no way I was going to let some pipsqueak undergrad think he was going to intimidate me when I’m a fucking faculty member here – I’ll have his ass arrested first! … So it’s kind of interesting who chooses just to respect me as a human being, and… who won’t move on a sidewalk, as an example of power. |
Microaggressions like these, while not as “dramatic” or “horrific” as more overt expressions of bias, have another “cumulative impact” on members of targeted groups. Research conducted at UC Berkeley provides further evidence of this.
Several of my sources at UC Davis expressed concern that many students today are unaware of or uneducated about historical discrimination, let alone contemporary forms. A faculty member lamented the lack of knowledge concerning California’s history: students should learn “not just how the gold rush helped make a different California, but how it decimated people. It decimated people who had been here for thousands of years. So what we have we enjoy at somebody else’s expense. … I think that’s a hard lesson, but it is a lesson that kids who put stuff like that [the Compton Cookout advertisement] on Facebook have not sat with.” Although there is no way to verify what the perpetrators of the 2010 incidents knew or did not know about history, certainly their actions suggest ignorance. While some community members charitably described ignorant individuals as naïve, others, like this staff member, were more critical:
For anyone to believe that the things that happened last year were somewhat out of the ordinary, you’re full of shit. … [W]hy are people surprised? Why are people shocked by it? For me, I think it’s important to acknowledge that racism is well and alive, homophobia is well and alive, you know, transphobia, any kind of phobia, … any ‘ism,’ it is well and alive. It is well and alive because we continue to feed it institutionally. |
A professor described her lack of surprise over what had occurred, saying, “acts of white supremacy don’t necessarily shock me. I think that they are visual cuts, so to speak, that stem from deeper wounds and institutional ills in our history and present day reality of inequity. … [We] must be proactive in our healing with one another so that these pains do not re-emerge with every generation.” Both comments reflect an awareness of structural inequality, which is the institutionalization of practices that treat different groups of people in disparate ways. Because these practices are written into law and policy, individuals within those institutions may unfairly discriminate against members of certain groups without ever consciously intending to do so. In fact, as one community member said, “they don’t have to manifest it… they don’t have to personally perpetrate it… it’s in our institutions.”
One example of structural inequality, mentioned by several of my sources can be found in the UC admissions criteria, which consider GPAs and SAT scores among other factors. Students who take Advanced Placement (AP) classes in high school are able to earn a much higher grade point average than students who have fewer or no opportunities to take AP classes. Because public schools in more affluent neighborhoods are able to offer more AP classes than their poorly-funded counterparts, students attending the more affluent schools have a better chance of getting into the UC system.
Simply recognizing that discrimination “is well and alive on campus” – that prejudicial views persist and that institutional policies and practices perpetuate discrimination – is seen as the first step toward creating a more equitable campus. As unwelcome as overt expressions of prejudice and discrimination are, hate-based incidents like those during 2010 provide a teachable moment, serving as a potential reminder of the need to continue fighting for equality. At the same time, however, the experience of finally having other people recognize current forms of discrimination against one’s group can be bittersweet: a staff member said, “it was hard for a lot of students to see the attention that [the defacement of the LGBT Resource Center] got because of them feeling like they have articulated their experiences on this campus [about] experiencing a negative campus climate and [they were] not being listened to. So I think that was frustrating, in some ways, like, well, now you’re listening, but you couldn’t see it before.”
The UC system does not systematically assess campus climate, though the 2010 bias-related incidents have prompted efforts to remedy this. The UC Undergraduate Experience Survey (UCUES) provides some information about undergraduate students’ perceptions of campus climate, although the survey was not designed to measure this and it excludes the voices of many on campus, including faculty, staff, and graduate students. Comparing the data from 2008 and 2010, university researchers found evidence of a “less supportive campus environment” following the 2010 bias-related incidents and fee increases: “The campus is rated as less tolerant… and less friendly… Students are less likely to agree that the campus values either students’ opinions… or diversity…” Compared to 2008, students in 2010 also reported feeling less respected on campus due to their sexual orientation, gender, or economic or social class.
Repeatedly, UC Davis community members affirmed that, yes, discrimination happens here, in our community in Davis. Contrary to the idyllic image of the university town as a liberal haven of tree-hugging bicycle-commuters, the city of Davis – like the rest of this country – has an unsettling history in relation to race. One administrator recalled that during the 1950s Davis was an “exclusive community,” home to white residents only. Also, during the United Farm Workers’ grape strike in the 1960s, Cesar Chavez visited every UC campus except Davis, for fear of his life. For these and other reasons, Davis is known as “the Mississippi of the West,” according to one faculty member I talked to.
In 1983, the murder of a Vietnamese American student, Thong Hy Huynh, at Davis High School, brought “unwanted attention” to the city, in the words of one professor. In response, the city established the Human Relations Commission to promote “mutual respect, understanding, and tolerance between all persons.” Twenty years later, a series of racially-motivated incidents at the high school sparked a number of community members to action, resulting in the youth-led creation of a multiracial history class at Davis High. A faculty member and Davis resident explained that this project “was an investment [we] put in to change the wallpaper, to change the landscape of conversations kids are having, to equip them so that they can police themselves.” These efforts are documented in the film From the Community to the Classroom, which is freely available online. Many Davis residents responded to these incidents of discrimination and bias with denial, unwilling or unable to understand that the experience of living in Davis is shaped by one’s racial/ethnic appearance and racial/ethnic identity.
Few UC Davis students are aware of Huynh’s murder, which one professor attributes to a lack of institutional memory about race on campus. Another gap in that memory concerns the 1975 discovery that Alpha Gamma Rho (AGR) fraternity members included in their initiation rituals a song called “Lupe,” which contains racist and sexist lyrics targeting Mexican women [1]. The fraternity, which is the oldest Greek society on campus and one with alumni among the UC Davis elite, apologized for the song, but faced few repercussions. In 1992 conflict again sparked between AGR and the Chican@/Latin@ community: this time at both UCLA where a copy of “Lupe” had resurfaced and UC Davis where the university named a room in its new alumni and visitor’s center after the fraternity following a sizeable donation from fraternity alumni. In 2006, the campus newspaper The Aggie reported, “Many members of the Latino community pledged never to step into the AGR Room. … [They] feel the room represents deep-seated injustices that make holding events there intolerable” [2]. Although the university now provides an annual scholarship for farmworkers’ children who are involved in social justice activities, the conflict between the fraternity and the Chican@/Latin@ community on campus is not resolved. Most people on campus likely are unaware of this history concerning AGR. In my conversations with UC Davis community members, I did not ask about the AGR controversy and it only came up once when an administrator mentioned the lingering tension. Finding evidence of this history either online or on campus is challenging, and reflects the lack of institutional memory about race.
My sources frequently mentioned the occurrence of racial profiling by Davis and UC Davis police officers. A professor reported being told by a student that when students do ride-alongs with Davis police, they are informed matter-of-factly by the officers that police routinely question individuals who are suspected of not belonging in the community. The professor told me, “They call that ‘making contact.’ See, I call that racial screening in an unobtrusive way… I find that chilling. Because that’s the kind of racial screening that has kept people out of neighborhoods… So yeah, that’s life in Davis.” Research published in UC Davis’s undergraduate research journal confirms that students of color are more likely than white students to “perceive racial disparities in police practices.” In 2005 a group of “concerned campus affiliates” released a report alleging racial profiling by city and campus police. In response, the UC Davis Police Department committed to establishing a Citizens Academy, reviewing internal procedures for handling complaints, and providing additional diversity training. The 2006 UC Undergraduate Experience Survey, which included questions about UC Davis students’ interactions with police, found little difference by race in experiences on campus, but off campus African American students reported higher than average police-initiated interactions.
For students who are undocumented – commonly known as AB 540 students, after the California law that allows certain undocumented individuals to pay in-state fees at state universities – simply being questioned by the police can result in deportation. One professor explained that AB 540 students have established an informal network to protect each other from police searches: when police set up drunk-driving checkpoints, for example, students will text each other so they know to avoid the area – not because they are drunk, but because they “are just deathly afraid of getting pulled over by the police.” Such concerns are not even on the radar of most citizens, yet these are daily worries for a number of UC Davis students.
As in any college town, the relationship between UC Davis and the city of Davis is not always harmonious. One staff member described the university as both a “fortified city” and an “island” within the city of Davis. Tensions between long-term residents of Davis and the transient student population occasionally flare. While property values price many staff members out of Davis, the university grants special housing loans to faculty members to encourage their local residence. Many members of the university community prefer to live elsewhere and commute to campus. One African American woman that I spoke with shared that she chose to live in Sacramento because of Davis’s reputation around race.
Figures from the 2000 census indicate that whites and Asians are over-represented among Davis residents, while Blacks and Latin@s are under-represented, compared to California as a whole. Among undergraduates at UC Davis, the same pattern holds. However, the university brings greater racial diversity to the town as UC Davis undergraduates are more likely than Davis residents to be Asian, Latin@, or Black. The median household income of Davis residents mirrors the state median, but Davis residents are much more likely than Californians in general to have graduated high school or college.
[1] Deena J. González, 2002, “‘Lupe’s Song’: on the origins of Mexican-woman-hating in the United States,” Pp. 251-264 in Velvet Barrios: popular culture and Chicana/o sexualities, edited by Alicia Gaspar de Alba, NY: Palgrave Macmillan.
[2] Dyanna Quizon, 2006, “The Legacy of ‘Lupe,’” The Aggie, January 25.
*Note: Not all of these incidents involve clear-cut expressions of hate or bias. In particular, the incident at UC Irvine is considered to be a matter of free speech for both the Israeli ambassador and the eleven arrested students. Likewise, the defacement of the mural at UC Davis was interpreted as both an expression of violence and an expression of love.
Date |
Location |
Incident |
February 8 |
UC Irvine |
Eleven students were arrested for disrupting a speech by the Israeli ambassador. |
February 10 |
UC Riverside |
Three men students assaulted two other men students while using anti-gay slurs (announced February 26th). |
February 15 |
UC San Diego |
The “Compton Cook Out” party was held off campus. Claiming the party was intended to “celebrate” Black History month, party organizers used racist and sexist stereotypes to advertise the party on Facebook. |
February 18 |
UC San Diego |
Students appearing on student-run television program in support of the “Compton Cook Out” used racial epithets. |
February 19 |
UC San Diego |
A sign reading “Compton Lynching” was found at the office of Koala Newspaper. |
February 19 |
UC Davis |
A swastika was found carved into the door of a Jewish student in Tercero dorms (announced February 26th). |
February 25 |
UC San Diego |
A noose was found hanging from a library bookshelf. |
February 26 |
UC Davis |
The LGBT Resource Center was found defaced with homophobic graffiti. |
March 1 |
UC Santa Cruz |
A picture of a noose was found in a bathroom. |
March 1 |
UC San Diego |
A KKK-style hood was found on a statue of Dr. Seuss outside the campus library. |
March 3 |
UC Davis |
Three swastikas were found spray-painted around campus. |
March 14 |
UC Davis |
A swastika was found on a message board in the Kearney Hall dorm. |
April 15 |
CSU Long Beach |
An assailant assaulted a transgender student in a campus restroom and carved the word “it” into his chest. |
April 18 |
CSU Chico |
An assailant repeatedly stabbed the student body president while yelling racial slurs. |
Late April |
UC Davis |
Anti-gay hate speech was found on the stairwell at the Rainbow House, a queer-friendly dorm. |
May |
UC Davis |
The wrestling team planned a “Hoes and Hermaphrodites” party, for which it later apologized. |
September 20 |
UC Davis School of Law |
After a public awareness campaign by the Lambda Law Students Association supporting a repeal of the military’s “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” policy, all of the group’s posters were removed from around the school and the group’s bulletin board was stripped. |
September 29 |
UC Davis |
“The Unfinished Dream,” a multicultural mural at the Memorial Union, was found defaced. A Star of David had been drawn over the Palestinian flag, which was depicted as a dove on the mural. |
October 3 |
UC Davis |
Two men shouted racial and anti-gay slurs and then pushed and grabbed the victims. |
November 8 |
UC Davis School of Law |
A poster on the Lambda Law Students Association’s bulletin board was found defaced with a homophobic slur. |
December 11 |
UC Davis |
Derogatory slurs were found written across victim’s picture in dorm hallway. |