Editor’s Note: Some sources in this article have asked to remain anonymous.
Shaniya Woods chose to attend UC Santa Cruz with hopes of an anarchist space of debate and community.
As the current programs coordinator of the campus’ Black Student Union (BSU) and vice chair of academic affairs for the Student Union Assembly (SUA), they have been privy to countless conversations about the student experience, especially for marginalized communities.
“[BSU] jokingly say[s] [UCSC is] very much a white serving institution, ‘WSI,’” Woods said. “And it’s so embedded into the structure that they genuinely just don’t know what they’re doing wrong.”
According to a student experience article published by UCSC in 2024, the racial demographics of the university’s student body have broadened compared to the 2022-23 school year, extending admission offers to 10 percent more Black students and 14 percent more Latine/Chicane students.
Simultaneously, diversity in the UCSC police department (UCSCPD), a department responsible for maintaining the overall safety of students, has decreased. In fact, the most recent demographic report shows zero black employees. This includes uniformed officers, dispatchers and clerk staff. 
According to data from the UCSCPD website and Cal Matters, the police department in 2021 consisted of 56.5 percent white police officers, compared to the 31.1 percent of white students at the time. As of this school year, the percentage of white UCSCPD police officers currently working is more than double the percentage of students who identify as European-American. 
Current SUA chair Rigo Ventura added that many of his peers cite the present attitude of UCSCPD employees as a major factor in students’ discomfort with UCSC police personnel.
“For our most marginalized students, having cops at all on our campus is where the harm is coming from,” Ventura said. “It’s not necessarily that they feel underrepresented in the police force, but that they feel that the police themselves are harming them in their communities.
“I’ve experienced police brutality from Latine police officers — police officers that looked like me, and police officers that didn’t look like me,” he continued.
Ventura also noted a discrepancy between general campus staffs’ outward enthusiasm toward students and an interaction he had with a police dispatcher. He expressed feeling as though the dispatcher viewed their interaction as an inconvenience.
In a campus climate where students are still reeling from the police raid on the pro-Palestine encampment in spring 2024, students must reckon with not only a predominantly white police force, but experience an increased police presence on campus.
“We noticed, in the aftermath of the encampment, a shift in the way that policing was taking place on campus,” said a student from the Revolutionary Student Organization. “We saw more patrols. We saw more presence at protests. We saw police cruisers driving around more frequently. It definitely created an air of insecurity, of distrust, of fear, among many students.”
Ventura echoed this sentiment, noting his own observations of heightened police presence on campus.
“We have so many different folks from different kinds of communities that our campus serves that have been feeling like, ‘Hey, I’m seeing a lot more cops around these days,’” he said.
When asked about the decrease in diversity among police department employees, Chief Kevin Domby of the UCSCPD cited a lack of applicants, high employee turnover rates and the ever-growing living costs of the Santa Cruz county area.
“I’m trying to make police officers not seen as ‘its,’ [but] as the men and women that they are, and what they’re here for,” Domby said. “I think if we can do that, then we can do great things together here as a campus.”
Many students that City on a Hill Press spoke to disagree. In an ideal world, they said, the police department and its diversity would be prioritized. However, it’s not a reality they feel they live in.
“The most beautiful thing that we can continue to move toward is a campus without a need for police,” Rigo Ventura said. “A campus [where] community members can come together, and as conflicts arise, the community holds each other accountable as difficulties take place. The community takes care of each other as we always have.”
Shaniya Woods also addressed recent budget and funding cuts faced by the university, stating that the campus community is now “fighting for the bare minimum” rather than being uplifted via community-centered safety and support mechanisms.
“We’re not even fighting to do excellently. We’re just fighting to survive at this point,” Woods said. “Fuck the police and the horse they rode in on.”
