Changes coming to UC Santa Cruz housing for African, Black and Caribbean students

After taking over Kerr Hall for a large part of the week, UC Santa Cruz has granted on campus housing demands for African, Black and Caribbean identified students.

“It’s a victory for us today, but the war is not over,” said African/Black Student Alliance Co-chair Imari Reynolds.

The A/BSA organized the protest. They asked for a four year housing guarantee to all students from underrepresented communities who have applied to live in the Rosa Parks African American Theme House, to convert the house’s first floor lounge back to a community lounge space, and for the house to be painted red black and green.

“The bureaucracy to get on campus housing is not benefiting Black students at all,” said Reynolds. “There’s a lot of bureaucratic processes just to get housing for a school that we go to. So there’s a lot of systems in place that make the housing here very discriminatory.”

The Alliance also said Black students experience a derogatory and racist climate on campus. They’re asking for the university to deliver in person diversity training to incoming students.

“The campus leadership recognized that these would make meaningful improvements to the experience of African, Black and Caribbean students,” said Scott Hernandez-Jason, UCSC Director of News and Media Relations. So we agreed to implement all four of their requests and are beginning to do work on making sure those things happen now.”

The Alliance said the fight continues. They will meet with the chancellor and administration to push for low income cooperative housing off campus and for them to hire an advisor for Black organizations.

The university said some of those changes will be implemented this fall. The university said they are working on the details to get them done.