Feature Archives

The Federal Department of Homeland Security provided the Pentagon with information on anti-war protests at UC campuses last year, according to the most recent government documents released to the ACLU of Northern California. This disclosure includes two previously redacted reports on student protests at UC Berkeley and Santa Cruz. Following an administrative appeal, that information was released. Both bulletins indicate that the source of the information was "a special agent of the federal protective service, U.S. Department of Homeland Security."

Josh Sonnenfeld writes: As I read through the articles, stories and remembrances of former UC Santa Cruz Chancellor Denice D. Denton, I feel like I’m meeting her for the first time. I’m meeting the role model and mentor of women in science and engineering. I’m meeting the first openly queer woman to lead a major research university. I’m meeting the person who publicly challenged Harvard’s sexist President. I’m meeting the woman I, and most in the Santa Cruz community, never got the chance to know.

On June 7th, UC Santa Cruz students concerned about their missing journalism program asked questions of Bill Ladusaw, UCSC’s Vice Provost and Dean for Undergraduate Education. Ladusaw seemed to place blame on UCSC’s faculty for the loss of the journalism program, while dodging questions about the misappropriation of funds at the administrative level.

On June 6th, communities of color at UC Santa Cruz held multiple rallies and confronted Chancellor Denice Denton to demand concrete infrastructural support for diversity at UCSC. While the University has made a rhetorical commitment to diversity, custodians (who are predominately workers of color) continue to receive up to 30% less in wages than their counterparts at Cabrillo and CSUMB; the University has actively denied institutional support and failed to recognize the centrality of student initiated outreach and retention programs to making diversity viable at UCSC; large numbers of valuable senior faculty of color have been (or may be) forced to resign due to hostile working environments. Administrators and university policies have actively upheld all these problems. Read more

photos: UCSC Charged With Disadvantaging Students, Faculty and Workers of Color || Students & Workers charge institutional racism & sexism; Demand affirmative diversity
video clips: Surprising Denton || Denton giving in to watching the students' skit

see also: Affirmative Diversity Talking Points

On May 23rd, UC Santa Cruz's custodians, part of the union AFSCME, continued their hard-fought wage parity campaign by staging a respectful protest inside Chancellor Denice Denton's Brown Bag event. The workers are frustrated over the Chancellor's lack of support for custodians and their families. While the Chancellor consistently refers to 'market rates' to justify top admin salaries (she earns upwards of $400,000/yr.), she has yet to support custodians whose poverty wages are up to 30% less than neighboring colleges. At the event, AFSCME organizer Julian Posadas announced that some workers were considering a hunger strike and that the Chancellor has June 5th as a deadline to support the workers.

While over 1,700 student petitions were delivered to the Chancellor, showing student solidarity with workers, many students associated with the successful C.A.R.E. (Community and Resource Empowerment) measure from last spring attended to remind the Chancellor of her yet unfulfilled legal commitment to provide the funding she promised for Student Initiated Outreach (SIO) and retention programs. The SIO programs, housed in the student-run Engaging Education (e^2) center, are responsible for the recruitment and retention of thousands of students of color on campus. Yet, when the Chancellor announced that UCSC's class of 2006-2007 was, for the first time in history, majority people of color, she failed to mention the students who are largely responsible for this occurance. Read more and view photos

On May 18th, students at UC Santa Cruz held the annual Take Back the Night. Starting with a rally at 6:30pm in Baytree Plaza, there were speakers and live performance addressing issues such as prison violence, sterilization, borderline violence, and institutionalized patriarchy. After marching through the colleges on east side of campus, the march stopped outside the College 9/10 Multi-Purpose Room for performances by UCSC's Slam Poets Team, before making their way through the rest of the colleges. Finally ending up at Oakes, students ate food while listening to testimonials about gender-based violence.

Take Back the Night has been organized at UC Santa Cruz since 1983 - two years after the event was started in San Francisco. Traditionally an empowerment space for women-only, this year's event, controversially, was open to all genders. Read more and view photos

On May 17th, students, workers and unions were at the UC Regents meeting held at UC San Francisco, primarily in response to University of California's plan to cut workers' pensions. The unions were united and unapologetic, cheering loudly as three California State Senators, including Figeroa (D) and Maldonado (R), called for President Dynes' resignation. ( Audio | Photos)

For the second straight year, anti-nuke/demilitarization activists from around the state disrupted the second day of the UC Regents meeting at UCSF on May 18th. In addition to concerns of corruption on behalf of top UC officials, students continued the decades old tradition of opposition to UC's vital role in the production of weapons of mass destruction. Through it's management of both Los Alamos National Lab and Lawrence Livermore, UC employees have designed every nuclear weapon in the U.S. arsenal. As such, the University of California would be complicit in the event of a nuclear strike on Iran. Read more and view photos.

past coverage: DeNuke UC! -- UCSC Students Rally Against Bechtel and Nuclear Proliferation || UC Regents Ignore Massive Resistance, Vote to Build Nukes