President William A. Covino,
 
Anti-Blackness and white supremacy undergird the very foundation of the United States. The vestiges of settler colonialism, chattel enslavement, Jim Crow segregation, mass incarceration, and racial apartheid continue to influence the cultural, educational, legal, political, and social institutions of our society.

There is a long documented pattern of anti-Blackness at Cal State LA that has created an unwelcoming environment for Black students, faculty, staff, and community members. Many Black people and others at this campus continue to lose confidence in the University leadership’s professed commitment to social justice, equity, and inclusion. The current national tragedies of institutional anti-Blackness, are not isolated from this institution. This University must not only reflect on its success, but also its failures. Touting the success of launching the second College of Ethnic Studies while Black faculty, staff, and students are denied equal treatment, and the benefit of a welcoming campus is a travesty. We cannot allow the selling of a false narrative. Instead of the boldness shown by many universities who are owning up to the systemic biases at their institutions, we have experienced disregard, delay tactics, empty platitudes, and rhetoric.

During this #BlackLivesMatter movement-moment of national uprisings against racial injustice and state-sanctioned violence, we call upon Cal State LA to take immediate, concrete steps to eradicate all manifestations of anti-Blackness on campus. Administrators must end the practices that have allowed institutionalized racism to function—overtly and covertly—in the day-to-day operations of the University. For example, over the past decade, there has been a precipitous decline in the percentage of Black students attending Cal State LA, with no coherent plan of action by administrators to address the problem. Currently, the Black student population on campus has dropped to roughly 3%, which is three times smaller than the percentage of Black students in LAUSD. Upper administrators have also forestalled the potential appointment of Dr. Melina Abdullah as the inaugural dean of the College of Ethnic Studies despite her long history of fighting for the expansion of Ethnic Studies in K-12 and higher education. She was told in no uncertain terms that they would not appoint her due to her unapologetic opposition to all expressions of anti-Blackness on campus and in the community.

Therefore, in solidarity with the Black Student Union, Black Faculty and Staff Caucus, Black Lives Matter - Los Angeles, California Faculty Association, the Department of Pan-African Studies, the Latin American Studies Association, LatinxFaculty4BLM, and El Movimiento de Estudiantil Chicanx de Aztlan, the students, faculty, staff, and community of Cal State LA recognize the urgency of this movement-moment and call on President William Covino and campus administration to make Black Lives Matter and build a Freedom Campus by meeting the following demands:

Leadership:
1. Appoint Dr. Melina Abdullah as the inaugural dean of the College based on the collective demand of students, faculty, staff, and community. We believe she is the only person capable of leaning into the role of Dean on day one to help stabilize the fledging, new College of Ethnic Studies. Melina has the humility, integrity, and visionary insight necessary to navigate the CoES during the global COVID-19 pandemic, budgetary crisis, and nationwide uprising against police violence. The College urgently requires a leader who will be responsive to the needs of students, faculty, staff, and the community, and who will contest the entrenched manifestations of academic neoliberalism and anti-Blackness so prevalent at Cal State LA.

Defund The Police and Reimagine Campus Safety:
Meet the demands of the Black Faculty and Staff Caucus:
2. Disarm and divest from Cal State LA campus police and replace it with non-punitive forms of accountability, including restorative and transformative justice, trauma-informed crisis teams, and other community-led public health and safety programs.

3. Redirect the resources from policing toward racial and gender justice teaching, research, anti-racism training for campus employees, and community initiatives, as well as increased material support to hire more Black mental health counselors, faculty (this includes resources for increased hiring and retention), staff, and students workers on campus. More specifically, some of those resources should be allocated to the creation of a Center for Black Student Success and to provide scholarships for Black students who balance outstanding academic records and commitments to addressing current social issues. A committee of faculty experts in Pan-African Studies and other departments, as well as Black students, staff, and workers will develop the plan for the redirection of both immediate and ongoing resources.

4. End all contracts between Cal State LA and local, county, and state police, federal police departments, and security agencies, including but not limited to LAPD, the LA Sheriff’s Department, the California Highway Patrol, the Alhambra Police Department, the Department of Homeland Security, and ICE. As part of this demand, we want a public accounting of all existing contracts, memoranda of understanding, and other agreements with such agencies.

Student Admissions and Empowerment:
5. Make Cal State LA an open admissions campus, beginning with the removal of “impacted” campus status.

6. Declare a “state of emergency” for Black students that funds and enables the Department of Pan-African Studies to outreach to and directly admit a minimum of at least 500 students per year.

7. Fully support and fund the Halisi House, with autonomy over residential requirements and programming in coordination with the Department of Pan-African Studies.

8. Expand the number of counselors to the number required for on-demand student counseling services, placing all counselors on the tenure track, and prioritizing the hiring of Black counselors and counselors of color.

9. Give students the power to vote on and veto the hiring of campus administrators and establish a student-driven process for the removal of administrators.

Ethnic Studies:
10. Give the College of Ethnic Studies autonomy over its own undergraduate and graduate student admissions process, with unlimited admissions.

11. Provide each Department within the College of Ethnic Studies a minimum of twelve tenure-line faculty.

12. Impose no restrictions on the number of courses offered by the College of Ethnic Studies and fully fund faculty to cover courses.

13. Defer on all Ethnic Studies requirements and courses to the College of Ethnic Studies.

14. Support AB 1460 to make Ethnic Studies a CSU graduation requirement and withdraw support for the Chancellor’s proposal to undermine Ethnic Studies by watering down its definition.

15. Guarantee and support a maximum 3-3 teaching load for research-active and community-engaged tenure-line faculty and 4-4 for lecturer faculty.

If you would like to help us win these demands, please add your contact information below.