The April 18 Student Senate meeting marked the boiling point for many University students who attended the meeting gagged with bands representing the silenced oppression they feel in the University community. They say these feelings of suppression, discrimination and institutionalized racism have been building for a while.
“This really is an issue and this whole idea of ‘I’m not racist’ is bullshit because everybody is racist to some degree,” said Zadok Taylor, a University sophomore and LGBTQA member.
University students from the Multicultural Center and Black Student Union said racism exists on many levels within the University community.
The Senate has reduced funding to student unions and the administration has failed to hire diverse faculty and staff of color, these groups said. Students of color said they feel like tokens within the classroom, which the student body has failed to recognize and the Emerald has not covered adequately.
Overall, a lack of diversity – and efforts from the administration to rectify this – have led to institutionalized racism within the University community, they said.
“I think what’s difficult is people have no tools to understand institutionalized racism,” said University student Josué Peña-Juárez, the ASUO gender and sexual diversity advocate who also works for recruitment and retention at the Multicultural Center.
Peña-Juárez said being defensive is a common reaction to claims of racism, which he said is how the Senate reacted to these accusations.
“People are really comfortable talking about culture,” he said. “But people are not comfortable talking about race context within the U.S.”
Mai Vang, co-director of the Multicultural Center, said while student unions work to educate themselves about the Senate, the undertaking is not returned.
“We make the effort to educate incoming leaders about the ASUO, but the Senate, PFC and ASUO don’t, and there’s all this talk about communication,” she said.
Ty Schwoeffermann, a member of the Black Student Union and recent ASUO presidential candidate, said he and others wanted to start an open discussion about racism at the April 18 Senate meeting.
“It’s really out of control and us going to the Senate meeting the way we did I feel is really respectful,” Schwoeffermann said, adding he believes the Senate has shown institutionalized racism against student organizations by disproportionately cutting their funding.
Taylor agreed. “The student unions aren’t a place to make up for the incidental fee,” he said. “It’s racist and it’s homophobic because a lot of these people don’t have anywhere else to go.”
Taylor said he believes the University’s problems with racism go beyond the Senate and into the University administration, which neither prioritizes the hiring of a diverse group of professors, nor holds on to the ones it has, such as with the University’s former history professor and director of the Ethnic Studies Program, Martin Summers.
“When I can think about it, almost all of my contact with professors of color have been in ethnic studies” courses, Taylor said.
Vang said she believes cluster hiring faculty of color would benefit all students.
“I think the University has done a horrible job of recruiting and retaining students, staff and faculty of color,” she said.
Peña-Juárez said he believes the reason the University doesn’t recruit Asian-American students is because there is a misconception on campus that the international Asian students are really Asian-American, so the administration is perceived as being successful in its recruitment.
Most of the students interviewed for this article agreed supporting the multicultural organizations, which are losing funding from student government, is essential to preserving what diversity exists on campus and providing allies and places free of discrimination for many students.
White students can “step on Oregon campus and be part of the majority, but the only time I can do that is in the BSU, which is a 10-by-10-foot box,” Schwoeffermann said.
Other students said they often feel like tokens in their classes, and are pressured by faculty and staff to speak out and represent their culture or ethnic identity.
“If our teacher talks about slavery and I’m the only person of color in the class, then I’m looked at for verification,” said Kari Herinckx, a Multicultural Center co-director.
Taylor said being made into a token is something he’s had to fight, and he believes our society tends to lump people into groups, according to their race or ethnicity.
“Just because I’m LGBTQ doesn’t mean I understand these issues,” he said of his frustration with being looked at as a representative of all LGBTQ people and voices.
Taylor and others said they think the University should require more courses about diversity, privilege and ethnic studies and agreed the current multicultural credit requirements are too relaxed and don’t accurately cover what students should be learning.
“I really feel a good majority of this campus doesn’t know anything about institutionalized repression or retention efforts,” Herinckx said. “We should be doing everything in our power to combat that.”
In part of the effort to encourage diversity and understanding, some students said the Emerald needs to focus more coverage on the issues at large and not provide “superficial coverage.”
When reporting on issues as emotionally driven as racism and discrimination, it is understood all experiences are personal and cannot accurately represent the opinions of all students. Other student unions and organizations of color were requested to participate in this article. E-mails and/or phone call attempts to contact these groups were not returned.
Contact the people, culture and faith reporter at [email protected]