After University of California, San Diego students held a Feb 15 party off-campus (the “Compton Cookout“) that mocked poor black people, and Black History Month, the university held a teach-in Wednesday designed to promote tolerance.
Not good enough, said students. Larry Gordon of the Los Angeles Times reports that hundreds of students walked out of the event in the school’s auditorium to protest the weakness of the school’s efforts to address issues of diversity:
Administrators may have thought the teach-in “would make us quiet,” said Fnann Keflezighi, vice chairwoman of the Black Student Union. But she said minority students do not believe that the university will take significant steps to improve the situation. The controversial party, she and others contended, was just the spark that ignited long-simmering ethnic tensions on the campus.
The “life in the ghetto”-themed party was held in La Jolla, the most exclusive neighborhood in San Diego. Less than 2 percent of students at UC San Diego are black. Last fall the school enrolled only 46 black freshmen in a class of almost 4,000.
Under Proposition 209, the University of California system is prohibited from considering race in admissions decisions.
