Dear Chancellor Blumenthal,

We are sending you this letter in response to your email titled “Community expectations.” As you may have heard, this email ignited a great response within the student activist communities here at UCSC. We are expressing this response to you clearly and publicly in order to bring to light the threats and contradictions your words communicate to us.

We are disturbed to read a communication intended for the campus community which so baldly condemns the actions of campus activists as grounds for serious disciplinary action. When you write, “People who choose to engage in conduct that obstructs or disrupts teaching, research, or other university-sponsored activities violate university codes of conduct and will be subject to discipline under our student handbook, employment or other applicable policies,” you inherently criminalize the important and necessary actions of student activists, as well as those of campus unions and laborers. These words display blatant hypocrisy when you simultaneously champion UCSC’s activist spirit with your campaign slogan, “The original authority on questioning authority.” If we are not allowed to question your authority without being targeted for our actions, how will you keep up UCSC’s activist reputation? We reject your threats to students, staff, faculty members, or anyone else. These threats create an even more polarized and uncertain campus climate, and directly contradict the concern you seem to express in your email.

We believe that you fundamentally misunderstand these actions and the needs of the communities forced to organize them. Campus activists are not organizing merely for the sake of interrupting learning, research, or university business. Students organized the May Day strike to bring light to the ways the university exploits its workers and to celebrate the work and heritage of Latinx migrant workers. A/BSA students reclaimed Kerr Hall only after making repeated requests over several years for certain demands which you subsequently ignored or dismissed. In short, campus activists organize out of necessity because these actions are often the only effective way to receive the appropriate and necessary response from your administration. Clear injustices exist on this campus which seriously hinder or endanger the lives of students, faculty, and staff, and Black and brown lives in particular. Actions such as the ones you have chosen to address in your email are at times the only means we have available to us in order to see proper responses to our varying needs, as seen in the success of the A/BSA protest this past May.

We assert that your requests for students, staff, and faculty to follow “community expectations” and recognize our “common humanity” must be coupled with administrative accountability. Organized actions must be met with understanding and listening rather than discipline. Better yet, the University administration can preempt these actions by fulfilling their responsibility to listen and respond to the requests of our campus communities. Because of UCSC’s size and influence, you and your administration are accountable for the many ways your actions – or lack thereof – affect the lives of students, campus workers, Santa Cruz residents, and others. This means you must be willing and available to discuss and negotiate with all affected parties when a group expresses its needs, especially when those parties are comprised of those with marginalized identities inclusive of but not limited to Black, brown, LGBTQ+, low income folks, Muslim folks, and those with disabilities. We know you are capable of addressing students needs from your responses to groups on campus such as Slugs for Israel. However, it is blatantly apparent that not all groups on campus have access to this type of necessary communication with you, particularly the students and groups who are most discriminated against on this campus.

We agree that organized actions are disruptive. They are meant to be precisely because it is these actions which prevent your administration from shirking their responsibilities to the greater community. We hope you recognize that these actions are a means made necessary by the lacking responses from your administration. We also hope you will understand that meeting these actions with disciplinary measures will only further exacerbate the issues these actions are intended to address and contribute to greater unrest on campus. In light of the recent scandals regarding the state audit of the University of California, including $175 million in hidden funds and survey data that was altered by your office, administrative accountability and campus activism are both more important now than ever.

Your email sets forth a new precedent of threatening and aggressive action perpetrated by the administration against the campus community. Furthermore, it proves to discredit and eliminate the important work that activists and organizers do for this campus, to create more equity. Political times like these characterized by rising hate crimes, assaults, and aggressions on and off campus, especially call for the need of student activists and organizers.

The activist’s role on this campus, and more largely in any community, is to ensure all peoples receive visibility, equitable treatment, and justice. Our value shall not be disreputed. The activist’s role in the livelihood of our campus community should not be diminished by threats and fear mongering as conveyed through your email. We will continue to do the very important work of protecting the rights of marginalized campus communities and our greater Santa Cruz community as a whole. We will not back down from fighting for the principles of justice and freedom which we stand for and we hope that you can stand with us.

Sincerely,

Representatives of UCSC’s Student Activist Community

Signed:

Madeleine Keller

Sabina Wildman

V Plotkin

Katherine Wethington

Dalia Gonzalez

Tyler Allman

Gabie Darlak

Maxine Jimenez

Jeff Stoll

Colleen Sparks

Angela Duong

Nazareth Velazco

C M

Students United with Renters

Fossil Free UCSC

Sam Weinstein

Alexia Daoussis

Somaya Abdullah

Jasa Fox

Andrew Chang

Bella H.

Sophia Trigonis

Noah Thoron

Banana Slugs for Animals

Sarah McLaughlin

Michael Harrold

Ellen Stone

Jacquelyne Marlene Vera

Rene Gonzalez

Ava Donovan

Sierra Kindel