Posted on November 19, 2015

After Days of Protests, Students Occupy Building at Occidental College

Jason Song and Teresa Watanabe, Los Angeles Times, November 16, 2015

After several days of protesting Occidental College’s handling of diversity issues, students occupied an administrative building Monday, demanding that the school president step down if officials don’t take such steps as creating a black studies major and hiring more minority faculty.

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At Occidental in Eagle Rock, students have been protesting the administration’s handling of complaints about racism on campus and the lack of diversity. Last Thursday, a crowd of students held a demonstration that ended in a march at President Jonathan Veitch’s campus home.

After a rally on the steps of the school’s main administrative building Monday, several hundred students entered the Arthur G. Coons Administrative Center. They have presented school officials with a list of 14 demands they want met by Friday, including the creation of a black studies major, an increase in funding for minority student groups and more diversity training for faculty and students.

If their demands are not met by Friday, students said, they will demand Veitch’s resignation.

Veitch, who received a contract extension from school trustees last year that runs through 2020, was traveling Monday.

Several students and faculty were critical of Veitch for leaving last Thursday’s demonstration when students began discussing how administrators have handled allegations of sexual assault. “It made me feel like he didn’t care about our students,” said Abhilasha Bhola, a senior.

Veitch left the rally when he “realized his presence there was no longer being constructive,” said Marty Sharkey, the school’s associate vice president of marketing and communications. “He wanted that space to be a safe space and productive space.”

Sharkey said students were welcome to stay in the administrative building overnight.

{snip}Sharkey added that Occidental administrators are interviewing candidates for a chief diversity position this week. Students criticized the $100,000 budget allocation as insufficient, saying it was not enough to pay the position’s salary, fund programming and provide services.

In the 1995-96 year, 44% of non-international Occidental students reported that they were minorities. This year, about 42% of students said they were minority or multiracial, according to school statistics.

Several Occidental students said the school’s diversity was one of the main reasons they decided to attend, but that after they arrived they found the climate on campus was often hostile to minorities.

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