Dear valued community members,
As many of you may know our student development offices are currently under attack through various phases of restructuring that will affect the experience and authority of these offices as we know it. We urge you to please send this message with your name filled into the blank spots repetitiously to the Vice Chancellor of Equity and Inclusion, Gibor Basri, via email (vcei@berkeley.edu) and/or delivering a signed copy to his office located in 104 California Hall #1500 beginning Wednesday October 17th, 2012 and ending at our next town hall meeting (TBA) as we begin to move into phase two, if necessary. If you are contacted in response to this message by the Vice-Chancellor and any of staff members in his cabinet please forward to the organizing committee of your respective communities.
In Solidarity,
ASUC Senator Klein Lieu
Dear Vice Chancellor of Equity and Inclusion Gibor Basri,
My name is ___________ and I wanted to convey my discontent with the recent changes you have implemented for the Multicultural Student Development (MSD) Offices.
The MSD offices are integral to students of color here at the University of California, Berkeley given that it provides retention resources to marginalized groups on campus. The MSD offices are the epicenter of cross cultural collaboration and often times spark communal bonding to represent the diversity that our university prides itself in dearly. We are not merely just the African American, Chicano/Latino, Asian Pacific American or Native American Student Development Offices, but rather a collective coalition known as the Multicultural Student Development Office with the purpose of promoting academic excellence, fostering multicultural competency and celebrating individual and collective experiences. Not only are these offices critical as they provide a refuge from the various microaggressions that we face on a daily basis at the university, but in addition the MSD offices serve as an umbrella organization to provide data analysis on retention efforts for student organizations to efficiently retain people of color on this campus.
As a community member and product of the MSD Offices I am displeased with the lack of transparency that results in my voice and the voices of many other students being silenced in the midst of what we perceive as an unjust demotion. As a student who is deeply invested in this space of inclusion and retention, I urge you to pledge your commitment to sustaining and furthering diversity at the University of California, Berkeley campus by executing the following:
- keeping the academic coordinator titles for MSD directors
- creating a multicultural council/ advisory committee with a level of authority and respectability to adequately advocate for student rights
- restoring a direct line of communication between the MSD offices and the Office of Equity and inclusion by eliminating the Executive Director of MSGC
- creating a memorandum of understanding between the multicultural student development offices and the university
- increase the available resources through the fiscal support of these office to ensure their efficiency and effectiveness for the service of underrepresented students on campus
In closing, it is my expectation that this correspondence is the catalysis of change to ensure that the aforementioned becomes tangible as we further the pursuit of establishing a transparent and collaborative restructuring of the MSD office into a more empowering and enfranchising framework reflecting the needs and request of our community.
With Concern,
Student Name (_____________)
