Zachary Watson/Guardian

ON CAMPUS — Just three days after the Sun God Festival — as we all grasped to fading memories of freedom — came a buzz kill for the books: The UCSD Native American Student Alliance released a statement condemning those who had decorated themselves with face paint, feathers and headdresses on the day of the festival.

According to NASA, the students’ faux-tribal attire — aside from degrading Native-American tradition — contributed to negative cultural stereotypes on campus.

“As students at UCSD we should not have to see our cultures mocked and ridiculed during a student sponsored event taking place at our university,” the alliance said in an online statement.

It’s no doubt that, after Winter Quarter’s “Compton Cookout” fiasco, the UCSD student population could use a lesson or two in cultural sensitivity. The frat-planned party that mocked a disadvantaged California community — followed by a string of other racist events — warranted immediate response from the Black Student Union, and demonstrated a dire need for educational and outreach efforts.

The case of the Sun God headdress, however, is a different story. First off, as a Sun God celebrator who peppered her hair with gold feathers the day of, I’d argue many costumed students never intended to emulate traditional American-Indian dress, but rather the aesthetic of the statue itself.

The festival’s winged inspiration, after all, was created by artist Nikki St. Phalle’s indigenous handbrush. Even with all artistic classification aside, it’s still a bird splashed in primary colors — perfectly crowned with a row of gold feathers.

Maybe there were a handful of Sun God enthusiasts who, after downing a few shots on the eve of the festival, thought it’d be fun to throw on their old “Pocahontas” costumes, but most of us were paying respect to the festival’s namesake. If our beloved party God also happens to remind a small group of students of their cultural heritage, cool — the more, the merrier.

But even if we’re talking about those who did aim to sport some Sioux-inspired gear because they thought it looked cool, it’s unclear why that would be classified as mockery. If students had decked themselves in moccasins and paint and skipped around howling a sarcastic war cry, I’d say we had another Cookout on our hands. But, seeing as they were simply borrowing from the culture’s style because they think it’s awesome, it seems like more of a case of flattery in the form of imitation. America is a melting pot of heritage and tradition; many a white boy has donned a kurta to demonstrate respect for the Indian culture, or a toga for the Greeks. While American-Indians have faced especially violent hardship in the U.S. — which shouldn’t be downplayed — that doesn’t take away a collective right to appreciate their art and culture.

NASA argued that these acts “are a product of the ever-diminishing Native American presence on UCSD,” and demanded administrators up education and outreach in response.

While there are indeed pressing reasons to boost the American-Indian presence on campus, NASA is hurting its case by singling out these arbitrary incidents. Isolating students — who, in their decision to plaster their bodies with paint and feathers, were not acting out of ignorance, but celebration — will only alienate those who are otherwise on NASA’s side. Unfortunately, as was the case with last quarter’s Cookout controversy, unless a minority group can communicate its reasons for upset clearly to the rest of the clued-out campus, its message will sound like nothing more than a whine to those who need to hear it most.

So pick your battles, and we’ll stick with you when they’re worth fighting. But if you keep crying “Cookout” at every turn, all you’ll ever get is a string of e-mails from Chancellor Marye Anne Fox’s PR slaves detailing the importance of cultural sensitivity until we’re completely desensitized.

Readers can contact Alyssa Bereznak at aberezna@ucsd.edu.

Sorry, guys — that was one hell of an intermission. Act Two of “Compton Cookout: The Musical” needed some serious mulling. Plus, now that its springtime and Sun God unity is near, I think we can dig even harder on the beauty of what went down last winter — a raucous back-and-forth of action and reaction, with genius little script-quips flying between camps, and enough out-of-the-blue plot twists to send Scorsese back to the Dark Ages.

When we left off, Compton Cookout: The Party (namesake of my dear musical, which I proposed as therapy for monster racial tensions running through the cold eucalyptus groves of yesterquarter) was starting to really get loose.

Bros were aiming balls at sluts, sluts were harmonizing misogynistic Lil Jon and Lil Jon lookalike Jiggaboo Jones still lingered — like “The Wiz” in scar tissue — as a burn on our view of the awesome crimson curtain down back.

So, just when the sluts and bros think they’re safe beneath the memory of Jiggaboo — who will, on the closing curtain, return to take maternal responsibility for white sluts who dress as ghetto chicks when bros on Facebook tell them so — a mysterious goo begins to fall. Bucket after bucket of deconstructed purple drank is overturned from the rafters, unleashing a glistening waterfall of ingredients: streams of chicken broth, Kool-Aid, chicken broth, Kool-Aid. The “all you bitches crawl” chorus melts into a hearty “make it rain on dem hoes” — this time, just the boys, in baritone! — and purple drank washes the remaining fried-chicken grease from the wife-beatered fronts of all partygoers. Sluts’ faces are serene, for they are remembering a craving they felt during their quiet suburban childhoods to be slimed onstage like Nickelodeon peers in braceface.

As Jiggaboo’s brothers/sisters from other mothers melt to the ground like they’re on some wicked-witch shtick, a perfect marching block of humans in black body suits (with holes only for their orifices) marches across the stage, back and forth, solemn as praying mantises, engaged in a gospel round of “Real pain/ Shut it down.” This is a practical element in that it allows bros and sluts to escape and tidy up in their dressing rooms backstage, while of course giving the audience a great feeling of solidarity with this chugging train of Black Student Unioners and whoever else may be marching beneath a body suit.

The next scene takes place at the Student-Run Television studio. Joose cans litter the floor. A row of witnesses with their hands over their eyes encircle the ratty centerstage sofa, where a particularly hairy man sits in a poncho. He bobbles his head and unleashes a string of letters in no particular order for five or more minutes, until it becomes excruciatingly incomprehensible. There is a brief pause of welcome silence until he leaps up for his operatic battle cry: “Ungrateful niggers!” The witnesses move their hands to their ears in a grand slap and begin to repeat his toxic phrasing like larks on a loop, climbing in octave until we can’t even hear the words anymore. Lights down.

Remember, this is art. It’s supposed to make you angry. The BSU block marches through once more, so that Joose cans may be brushed to the stage gutters and the SRTV office may be closed for business. They pace a little longer this time, but eventually part their rectangle to reveal the limp figure of M.A. Fox, hanging from the ceiling by a piñata levy, manned by the heroic Penny Rue. We won’t even need a real actress for Fox — a dummy with red-rimmed orbish eyeballs will do.

Sit tight until next week. The real Cookout has only just begun.

Dear Editor,

“To go to bed with satisfaction, one must wake up with determination” — Anonymous.

I found this quote to be living true with the students of Compton High School. In light of the “Compton Cookout,” I felt it imperative to meet and understand the students who were the center of so much controversy. As a Black Student Union member at Westview High School, I knew there was more to the African-American culture than the ignorance that was being portrayed.

On March 13, I was fortunate enough to travel to Compton High. I met some of Compton High’s best, those with a very bright future. As I spoke to the students, they told me of how Compton High has been stereotyped as only having gang members and drug dealers. They did acknowledge that the influence was there; however, it was a small minority of the students. Most of them want to get a good education to further themselves and the community. One of the students said he wanted to go to UCLA to study neurology to become a brain surgeon. His counselors helped him by arranging field trips for him to see the campus and showing him what he is working toward.

These are some of the things that counselors have done at Compton High that go beyond the call of duty. They have pride and believe in their students.

All the students had big dreams, from becoming neurologists to engineers to pediatricians. The one thing that intrigued me was that all of them wanted to give back to their community in one shape or form. They felt very connected and committed to Compton. Although so many people stereotyped the Compton students and residents, these students work hard daily in the community and in school, giving back to the community by being role models for the younger generation. They are living daily to break through the labels and stereotypes while educating the real ignorance that exists.

“We must try to help people to look beyond the smoke screen of ignorance to the essence of Compton [High] and the students attending it,” said Robert, the president of the Compton High Black Student Union. This statement was the most compelling of all to me. We are not­ — nor will we ever be — the labels that we have been given. Though some of the students at UCSD, labeled a prestigious university, try to portray these students and the community in which they live as unintelligent, that could not be further from the truth. These students have a vision for a brighter tomorrow while working hard every day to better themselves and the community that has nurtured them.

— Nolan Nahar

Sophomore, Westview High School

If you’ll accept my disclaimer: I do understand the tenderness of this topic. Racist gags at UCSD, all inexcusable, have been consuming our thoughts and guts for almost three weeks now; personally, it’s hard to remember a time when Geisel Library made me think of cool spaceships instead of lynches/punctured pillowcases, or the days when I would have defended the First Amendment to the death — before I watched it contorted into an excuse for exploiting the pain of a vulnerable few.

But solemnity has proved just as toxic. After 4,000 words of soul-sucking editorials and a lifetime dose of drippy-eyed airtime on CNN, this bitch needs to cope.

So, because Koala humor should only be enjoyed alone, in the dark and on the toilet — followed by an immediate trip to confession — and seeing as no other campus rag has access to its funds in this time of need (here’s to you, King Gupta) — I’m here to try my hand at halfway tasteful, good ‘n’ controversial, angst-airing art therapy for the masses. That’s right: Real hip-hop is back up in the building.

It’s called “Compton Cookout: The Musical,” and it’s written with love.

(If there’s one thing we can learn from “World Trade Center” and the recent swarm of Iraq war films, it’s that the “too soon” principal is a thing of the past. Might I also remind you, dear reader, that many of history’s greatest travesties — namely, the Holocaust, and it doesn’t get much worse than that — have turned gold on a stage with some showtunes to carry them. Now is our time.)

Fade in. Pale-faced frat boy sits, hunched over his Dell, in darkness. A cruel spotlight bores down, casting a forest of dastardly shadows (shout-out to my man M.A. Fox for the hip new vocab) from his nose and eye sockets, haunting the Greek letters body-painted across his chest.

The mouse on the desk makes a deafening click. Above, “Wizard of Oz” style, the looming visage of Jiggaboo Jones, YouTube extraordinaire and alleged “Compton Cookout” mastermind, materializes — some millennium shit — onto a blood-red velvet curtain (best kind of curtain, always, for any purpose), his hands pulsing and contorting as if simultaneously beating back the bass in his head and puppeteering our poor brain-slugged party planner into the darkest realms of evil stereotype hell.

The boy is now furiously typing out the Urban Dictionary definition of “ghetto chicks,” as fed to him by Jones, in a flurry of ticks and echoes. Fade out, to tune of ghetto-rific cackle — as the wizard’s ringlets shiver and quake — and a trailing mountain call of “No. 1 Nigga in Americaaaaaaa!” that shakes the cupholders. All is dark.

Don’t go — here comes the party. Wish you could have been there to pop some watermelons on some mo’fuggin skulls? Now is our time.

A string of girls in wife beaters and Baby Phat shuffle, shackled, from the wings, fried chicken stuffed in their mouths and empty red cups in their hands. (Yes, they’re shackled. Borderline, I know.) They stand center stage, waiting silently, until one girl opens her mouth to begin a heavenly round of “to the window, to the wall,” soon joined by all her friends, chicken spilling from their mouths and streaking greasy down their fronts.

Just as they reach a harmonic pinnacle on the bone-chilling line “all you bitches crawl,” the boys begin to file in, ping-pong balls in hand, circling said sorority choir. Ever seen CollegeHumor.com’s “Brohemian Rhapsody”? (If not, get your nose out of the school newspaper and YouTube it, ya dork.) It shows us that beer pong lends itself beautifully to musical theater; in this case, the boys will be trying their hardest to make their balls into the girls’ cups. Get it? Their cups.

This play won’t end in tragedy. Up next week: the bobblehead in the poncho, refrigerator box-sized evidence and an earsplitting commie cameo. You don’t want to miss a thing.

Less than a week after a noose was found on the seventh floor of Geisel Library, police are investigating another racially charged act on campus: a Ku Klux Klan-style pillowcase hood, complete with a hand-drawn KKK symbol, placed on the Dr. Seuss statue outside Geisel.

The discovery was made at 11 p.m. on Monday, March 1, and has since been confirmed by UCSD Head Librarian Brian Schottlaender. In addition to the hood, a rose was placed in the statue’s fingers.

The statue was donated in 2004 by Audrey Geisel — widow of Theodor Geisel, also known as Dr. Seuss — who also donated $20 million to the construction of the library.

According to an article in the San Diego Union-Tribune, Geisel was contacted by a librarian regarding the incident. She said the act was an example of “a little faction” that gets “carried away” with the attention these events receive.

According to an article from KPBS San Diego, the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the District Attorney’s Office and the U.S. Attorney General’s office are all investigating the recent offensive acts on campus.

Both Director of Library Communications Dolores Davies and Assistant Manager of University Communications Christine Clark said the planting of the hood is being treated as a crime, and all those responsible will be punished under the law. Police have removed the items and are processing them for evidence, including fingerprint and DNA analysis.

“This is being treated as an investigation which is being treated with all authority,” said Clark.

Officers at UCSD finished their investigation of the noose today and submitted it to city police. The student who claimed responsibility for the noose is currently suspended, and has been charged with a possible hate crime.

The hood is the latest incident in a two-week rise in hate speech throughout the UC system, which included the scrawling of a noose on a UC Santa Cruz bathroom — with the words “UCSD lynching” near it — and the vandalizing of the UC Davis LGBT Resource Center with homophobic slurs.

Erik Jepsen/Guardian

Student protesters occupied the Chancellor’s Complex for over six hours on Friday, calling for the university to be shut down, and for the administration to respond to a list of 32 demands issued one week before by the Black Student Union. The latest in a string of racially charged events — including a “Compton Cookout” party held Feb. 15, and slurs aired on Student-Run television on Feb. 18 — was a noose discovered hanging from a light fixture on the seventh floor of Geisel Library Thursday night.

UCSD police received reports about the noose at approximately 10:30 p.m., but said it could have been placed there as early as 8 p.m.

The BSU immediately mobilized, sending out word of a protest scheduled to begin at 8 a.m. Friday morning, which drew over 300 supporters. The demonstration included speakers from the BSU, faculty, LGBT community and local high schools.

At the protest, Campuswide Senator Desiree Prevo referenced the recent opposition from student media organizations over A.S. President Utsav Gupta’s emergency funding freeze last Friday. She said this was not, as the media organizations had contested, a free-speech issue.

“The bill of rights in which the free speech document came from was never meant to include my people, our people, so how do you expect me to respect free speech when I was never supposed to have free speech?” she asked.

Chancellor Marye Anne Fox also emerged from the Chancellor’s Complex to speak for a few minutes. She stressed the university’s commitment to improving campus climate, and said all criminal violations would be punished.

Vice Chancellor of Resource and Management Gary Matthews then revealed that a female student had come forward earlier that morning to turn herself in for planting the noose, along with two witnesses. According to a police bulletin sent to all UCSD students and faculty, the event is being treated as a crime with “intent to terrorize.”

Fox said the student has been suspended for an undisclosed amount of time, but did not explicitly state that criminal prosecution would be pursued.

BSU leaders asked that the student receive stricter punishment, and that administrators respond to their list of 32 demands by 5 p.m. — not March 4, as previously requested. They then demanded that the campus be shut down until all students felt safe.

At approximately 12 p.m., protestors mobilized from their sitting space on Library Walk and marched into an occupation of the Chancellor’s Complex, shouting ‘Shut it down!’ and “Real Pain! Real Action!”

Fox emerged once more, emphasizing to an emotional crowd that the university was doing all it could to take action against the incidents.

“I strongly condemn the offensive acts of hate and bias that have occurred over the past days,” Fox said. “It is deplorable that while our students, faculty and staff work to heal the campus, a few misguided individuals tried to divide it.”

Vice Chancellor of Student Affairs Penny Rue echoed these sentiments.

“You can’t imagine how pained we are,” she said. “We are heartsick.”

UC President Mark Yudof also issued a statement condemning the incidents.

However, as Fox made no mention of a shutdown, BSU leaders asked her once again to meet with the Academic Senate in order to determine if a shutdown was feasible. In the meantime, protestors moved into her office and hosted an impromptu sit-in. At approximately 2 p.m., the chancellor announced that she saw no reason for a shutdown; however, protestors decided to continue occupying her office until the 5 p.m. deadline for responding to their requests.

At 5:30 p.m., members of the BSU revealed that their meeting with the Chancellor had concluded, and announced that she had not met their demands.

“They handed us over a bullshit-ass document,” BSU Vice Chair Fnann Keflezighi said. “Basically, it said everything that we already knew, no concrete things on how they’re going to implement anything. They’re dumber than we thought they were — dumber than I thought they were.”

She announced to the remaining supporters that BSU would take to Library Walk once again on Monday at 10 a.m. to demand more progress on meeting the list of demands.

In light of these racial tensions, many events on campus have been cancelled, such as the LGBT Non-Sexist Dance scheduled to take place last Saturday night, as well as the Dr. Seuss birthday celebration scheduled for March 2.

Erik Jepsen/Guardian

Hundreds of students walked out of an administration-planned teach-in yesterday morning to attend a counter teach-in organized by the Black Student Union.

The Feb. 24 Price Center protest began with a press conference held by the BSU, the student organization that declared campus climate to be in a “state of emergency” last Friday. The BSU has addressed the “toxic” environment with a rally and a list of 32 demands. BSU Chair David Ritcherson called for the UCSD chancellor cabinet to respond to the organization’s demands by March 4 — the same day as a systemwide protest against limited accessibility to higher education — with a “thorough, written timeline for immediate action.”

Press-conference speakers included history professor Daniel Widener, who applauded A.S. President Utsav Gupta for his recent decision to freeze funding for all 33 student media organizations, then asked administrators to disregard the current budget crisis in favor of meeting all the BSU’s demands.

John Hanacek/Guardian File

“We will not allow any discussions of the budget crisis to affect discussions of our demands,” Widener said.

After the press conference ended at 11:30 a.m., participants marched from Library Walk to the official teach-in, scheduled to be held at the Price Center East Ballroom. The crowd — which included community members, as well as students from Cal State San Bernandino, San Diego State and the University of Southern California — chanted slogans such as “Real Pain, Real Action”.

Following speeches by theater professor Nadine George and LGBT Center director Shaun Travers, A.S. Associate Vice President of Diversity Affairs Jasmine Phillips and BSU Vice Chair Fnann Keflezighi called for the attendees to walk out and attend a counter teach-in instead.

“If you truly care about our university, if you want to stand in solidarity, you will join me in walking out of this teach-in and joining us at our teach-in,” Keflezighi said.

Erik Jepsen/Guardian

The majority of participants left the room and convened at the stairs above the Triton statue.

Speakers at the counter teach-in included Cross-Cultural Center director Edwina Welch. She stressed that the protests were not about individual acts of racism, but an institutional problem.

“You’ve felt racism if you’ve gone down Library Walk and not been handed flyers, if you’ve sat in class and nobody’s sat by you,” she said. “What gets lost is the day-to-day macro and micro aggression on campus.”

Literature professor Daniel Childs agreed with Welch, condemning the system instead of individuals.

“This is a white-supremacist, racist, classist, misogynist institution,” he said.

Eleanor Roosevelt College junior Niko Arranz, a student protestor, said the counter teach-in was more powerful than the one the administration had planned.

“The first teach-in was a joke,” he said. “I was falling asleep because it wasn’t relevant.”

Keflezighi said she created the counter teach-in because she wanted to educate the community according to BSU’s own terms.

“We were angry when we weren’t asked to be part of the [teach-in] planning process,” she said.

Vice Chancellor of Student Life Penny Rue responded positively to the counter teach-in.

“I’m delighted that our students found the right platform to express themselves today,” she said.

She said it was too soon to know if all of the demands of the BSU will be met.

Readers can contact Angela Chen at shchen@ucsd.edu.

Rebekah Hwang/Guardian

The question of whether we should enforce affirmative action at the University of California — one of the most contentious and drawn-out issues of our generation — has never been more relevant.

Yesterday, approximately 400 students from the Southern California area joined in a Black Student Union-led protest to address racism on campus. They asked Chancellor Marye Anne Fox to comply with a list of demands that would increase outreach efforts on campus, expressing hurt and alienation over the frat-affiliated “Compton Cookout” party and the racial slur made on Koala TV last Thursday.

Though BSU is correct in believing it must attack underrepresentation by way of changed policy, not all of their demands are fiscally feasible. There’s only so much funding Chancellor Fox can put aside for a resource center or an art space after systemwide cuts have left us with mere scraps of an already depleted budget. However, we can more realistically attack the problem at its source by immediately tweaking our admissions process.

Of course, it isn’t legal to consider race in admissions just yet. But, thanks to the actions of student-based coalition “By Any Means Necessary,” that might change. Earlier this month, BAMN filed a class-action lawsuit to overturn Proposition 209 — the 1996 law that banned affirmative action at all California public universities. According to the organization, because of the precedent set by 2003 Supreme Court case Grutter v. Bollinger — which declared affirmative action both necessary and legal — BAMN has a good chance of overturning Prop. 209.

We hope that’s the case, and urge students to funnel whatever energy they have after parading Price Center’s perimeters this year and channel it into helping level the playing field at a legislative level.

The fewer minority students there are at UCSD, the more other students will think events like the Cookout are no big deal. Without a challenge to the privileged point of view, the more graduates we release to the world without a trace of cultural sensitivity.

While we’re waiting on BAMN’s lawsuit, however, we recommend that the university do what it can within its limitations. Currently, all UC campuses save UCLA and UC Berkeley make admissions decisions based on a comprehensive system that awards each applicant a certain number of points according to his or her academic record, economic status and personal achievements. At UCSD specifically, an applicant’s academic record makes up for 74 percent of his or her score — meaning those who don’t earn enough points based on their GPA or SAT scores won’t even get a chance to be reviewed for personal achievements.

The holistic review that UCLA and Berkeley use, however, avoids forcing a value on any one aspect of an application, and assesses candidates based on all factors of their application. Even if, say, an applicant’s academic SAT score is low because he couldn’t afford a prep course or find time to study while helping his parents pay the bills, his evaluators would still be able to consider him based on other merits. Accordingly, UCLA and Berkeley have more than double, almost triple, our 1.3 percent of black students.

And let’s face it. The way we deal with everyday challenges almost always says more about our ability to learn and adapt to difficult situations (i.e. blazing through with two weeks of midterms on top of a part-time job) than the grade you weaseled out in AP History.

It’s true that such a prestigious institution of higher learning as UCSD should value academic record very highly in the admissions process. But if you really think about it, no matter how many worksheets on chemical titration you filled out in high school, you probably don’t remember any of it now. Your high-school resume often has more to do with the resources and encouragement you received — opportunities far from equal in California’s fund-biased education system.

So, we hope that Associate Vice Chancellor of Admissions Mae Brown means it when she says that her department will be launching a pilot program incorporating holistic review next year. Far more than punishing frat boys or student media, a new system would foster campus diversity and, therefore, awareness.

Our student population is in a state of obvious disproportionality — one for which no safe space nor free tutoring session can compensate. Starting-line coexistance is the only answer. If UCSD were to eventually incorporate a form of affirmative action into its admissions process, should Prop. 209 be overturned, the holistic system would be more likely to ensure that applicants aren’t simply receiving points for race, in isolation from experience. Rather, race could be considered within the context of any other strengths or weaknesses, advantages or disadvantage.

I would like to thank everyone for their support, and for standing in solidarity with the community against hate speech and for the human right to be respected.

At first, I felt really discouraged because it felt like many people were supporting this ill-intentioned “free speech,” and were so reluctant to sympathize with the racial hostility that I and many others on this campus have felt because of — and even before — these incidents.

But after Feb. 24, 2010, I am more than confident that there are many non-ignorant people here at UCSD who, like me, realize the necessity of mutual respect in a public space shared by a variety of people of many affiliations and backgrounds. We stand in solidarity against these acts of hate, and will not tolerate them on this campus or any other publicly social atmosphere of our community — that includes Facebook and public fraternity activities.

The “Compton Cookout” invitation and party is a perfect example of externalizing subconsciously internalized stereotypes of American black culture, taken from the media and used as comedy for a party in celebration of Black History Month. For those who do not take this month seriously, this may have seemed like a harmless and humorous excuse to throw a party. Yet for others, it was horrifying; for those that understand Black History Month as a time to honor American black culture in ceremony of respect and appreciation, and a time to recognize suffering and accomplishments, this party was disrespectful on so many levels.

Even if it had not been the month of February, the event would have still been disrespectful, because the invitation and party itself was a mockery of low socio-economic status and a degradation of Black women. Imitation is a form of flattery and respect, a way of highlighting positive characteristics — but mockery is intended to be offensive, and shows an ignorant lack of respect for the subjects one is portraying. As a black woman, I was appalled, and honestly do not feel entirely safe walking around a campus where people could find it within their capacity to base a party on misogyny and malicious stereotypes.

This so-called representation of black culture by a group of fraternity members was based on their limited knowledge of it, and just goes to show how ignorant they truly are about the black community. Am I really surrounded by such uneducated people?

I can still hear it. “Well, if black people weren’t so offended and accepted it as a joke, there wouldn’t be a problem.” This “joke” implies all poor black people are uneducated and animalistic, with no manners. Any realistic person would interpret this as extreme sarcasm — a rhetorical device used here to express contempt for black American culture. This was subconsciously abusive behavior toward members of another race, or subliminal racism.

Please realize that negative media representations produced about minority subjects are patriarchal tools that perpetuate their oppression. Maybe if students were better educated in ethnic studies, or actually went out and affiliated themselves with other communities, they would understand that our oppression is real, and our pain is real. Stop contributing to the backbone of an institution that functions on injustice and inequality. Whiteness is not the problem — our entire capitalistic society is the problem. But when you add fuel to the engine, you make yourself part of the problem.

The event created a hostile environment (although it was not on campus, it was hosted by UCSD students for UCSD students, so it reflects directly on the school) for a minority already underwhelming underrepresented and marginalized in this area. Because of this unreceptive treatment by the few who seem to doubt that the party was insolent and fail to sympathize, we have become marginalized even more. The UCSD community should be shocked that it is contributing to the oppression of minorities in 2010.

My only relief is that the situation has remained relatively civil and no one has been hurt, because in such aggressive atmospheres, violence is often inevitable. I’d bet that if violent behavior had occurred, people would not be calling it a “joke” anymore; they would realize that the words on the party invitation and on Koala TV were fighting words, and not anything to be toyed with. Please, think of the consequences of your actions, and take accountability for them.

Though hostility was not intended, the Compton Cookout initiated racial hostilities for the personal gain of enjoyment (at the expense, mind you, of many others’ subjugation), and is historically known as racism — aka hate speech. In challenge to the First Amendment, words that “by their very nature, involve danger to the public peace” become unconstitutional (Justice Sanford, 1925 Gitlow v. New York.) I ask for support from my peers in achieving and retaining this peace by supporting the demands of the Black Student Union, which aim at stemming the intimidating climate of UCSD toward minorities and making this campus all of our campus. I have had enough of this shit, I will not get over it, and because you don’t think it is a big deal, I will make it a big fucking deal. I may only be part of 1.3 percent of this campus, but I matter. I will not give up.

Readers can contact Vernesha Potts at vpotts@ucsd.edu.

Dear Editor,

As educators, advisors and outreach professionals who work off campus in historically marginalized communities, TRIO Outreach Programs is sending this open letter in solidarity with the Black Student Union and others who are expressing their frustrations, and are asking for immediate action. An outrageously racist party took place, UCSD students were involved and we expect those students to be held accountable for their gross violations. We also acknowledge that there is a larger systemic problem with the campus climate at UCSD that has to be addressed, as expressed in a recent statement from Dr. Jorge Mariscal and Dr. Patrick Velasquez.

With respect, we think the campus should take the following measures to continue to address this larger issue of continued hostility toward communities of color:

Budget decisions — Programs that serve underrepresented students should be given consideration to the value that they add to the campus, and these programs need to be considered as part of the larger goal of promoting diversity.

Admissions policies — The recent WASC recommendations included efforts to implement a holistic approach for UCSD, and we encourage the university to take steps in this critical aspect of looking at what types of students’ comprehensive life experiences the campus values.

Develop a major for African American and Chicana/o Studies — Majors and minors which promote interdisciplinary research and study in fields such as African American Studies and Chicana/o Studies will make significant progress toward demonstrating the university’s priority in the attraction of and retention of historically underrepresented communities.

Student initiated programs — Every effort needs to be taken to develop, support and maintain the recently developed Student Promoted Access Center for Education and Service.

Create a social justice and community building taskforce — The university should provide a comprehensive space so that a variety of people from various units, departments and expertise can contribute to taking concrete steps to address the need to build and sustain social justice and community building efforts at UCSD. These efforts could focus on the critical needs of historically underrepresented populations.

It is imperative that we send a strong message to those communities that have been historically excluded from higher education that this is their campus, too.

— Carri Fierro

Director, UCSD TRIO

Outreach Programs