Black Student Group Threatens to Takeover More Buildings if Demands not Met

Blumenthal issued a May 4 memo announcing the concessions and reasons for the university’s capitulation.

The student demonstrators raised a number of issues with campus leaders, issues we fundamentally agree upon. Students from historically underrepresented communities deal with real challenges on campus and in the community. These difficulties include things that many people take for granted, such as finding housing or even just a sense of community.”

Emboldened by its success, the Alliance issued three additional demands to be met by the fall quarter of 2017. If the university does not respond appropriately, the group threatens another “reclamation.”

The new demands are:

1. The university must purchase a property “to serve as a low income housing cooperative for historically disadvantaged students;
2. $100,000 must be allocated for Santa Cruz’s SOMeCA student organization support department;
3. UC Santa Cruz must create a Black Studies department or a Black Studies minor or major.

The university has not responded yet to the additional demands. In his memo to the campus community, Blumenthal denounced the takeover of buildings as a means of protest because it displaces the campus community. Kerr Hall is the primary administration building on the campus.

In its list of demands, the Alliance concluded the document with a quote from Assata Shakur, a former member of the Black Panther Party and a convicted murderer:

It is our duty to fight for our freedom. It is our duty to win: We must love each other and support each other; We have nothing to lose but our chains.”

The Alliance points out its rejection of the term “occupation” and why it favors “reclamation.” It cites the largely white composition of the “Occupy Movement” that’s recently sprung up among leftists.

A UC Santa Cruz spokesman declined to say if any disciplinary action will be taken against the students who forcibly took over Kerr Hall.

News reports of their original takeover:

Source: The College Fix