Regents Picketed Over UC Latino Percentages

About 20 Latino students carried signs and chanted outside the University of California Board of Regents meeting on the Irvine campus Thursday, protesting what they said were low percentages of Latino faculty and students in the UC system.

The brief protest by students from UC Irvine and UC Riverside came as the regents were hearing a staff report praising the increase in the number of Latino students in the system during the last 10 years. The report, read by UC Vice President William R. Frazer, said minority undergraduates grew from 6.6% of the UC enrollment in 1977 to 14.1% in 1987.

But the protesters asserted that the UC increases over the last 10 years still do not reflect the dramatic growth in California’s Latin population.

“Hell, no, we won’t go,” the students chanted, as they stood outside the ceiling-to-floor windows of the UCI University Club, in clear view of the regents who were meeting inside. “We Hispanics are pushing for our rights, and we won’t go away,” a student declared.

The demonstration did not disrupt the regents’ meeting, but those inside had to raise their voices to be heard above the chanting.

In conjunction with the student protest, about 10 Latino leaders from around the state attended the regents’ meeting and later held an outdoor press conference with the students.

Dr. Manuela Sosa, a dentist who also heads the Riverside-based Concilio for Educational Excellence, was allowed to address the regents’ meeting for about five minutes. The protesting students, meanwhile, quietly filed into the room and took seats open to the public.

“We’re here to tell you that with respect to minorities, with respect to Hispanics, you haven’t done the job,” Sosa said. She added that Latinos throughout California are gearing up to take sanctions against UC if “immediate” action is not taken to increase Latino students and faculty in the system.

She said the proposed sanctions would include:

- Urging the Legislature “to freeze salaries of all administrators who earn over $100,000.”

- Asking the Legislature “to refuse to allocate additional funds to the university (system) until it develops an overall plan approved by the Hispanic community” for increased numbers of Latino students and faculty.

- Discouraging UC alumni and charitable foundations “from contributing to the university until an effective affirmative action plan is developed.”

- “Going public in a variety of ways in order to create more public awareness of the UC system’s disregard for the Hispanic.”

During the outdoor press conference, one UCI graduate student, Stephanie Lopez, charged that the Irvine campus is “racist.” Lopez and other UCI students contended that they are sometimes insulted or subjected to racial slurs by some other students or administrators on the campus.

UCI Chancellor Jack W. Peltason, when asked for comment on the criticism, said: “We are painfully aware that our campus does not fully represent the state’s population percentages for all minorities. We are trying to make improvements, and we are also trying to make the campus sensitive to the needs and the feelings of all minority groups.”

Peltason said he would not categorically deny the charge of racism on the UCI campus “because this is a very big campus with many students and many faculty, and there have no doubt been times when someone said something that should not have been said.”