Civic CipherStudents Pushing Back Against Schools Abandoning Diversity Programs (Part 1)
Our guests are DJ – President of the Black Student Union at the University of Arizona and Ky’Jah – an activist working closely with the Department of African American Student Affairs
In the first half of the show, we talk about the importance of diversity initiatives, the implications of the rollbacks of DEI initiatives on college campuses around the country, and what communities impacted by recent legislation and political threats can do to push back.
Broadcasting from the Hip Hop Weekly Studios. I'd like to welcome you to another episode of Civic Cipher, where our mission is to foster allyship empathy and understanding. I'm your host, ramses Ja. He is Ramsy's Jaw. I am q Ward. You are tuned into Civic Cipher, Yes you are, and we want you to stick around because today we are going to be having a couple of interesting conversations. One of the things that we haven't really been able to get to because of the muzzle velocity strategy by the current administration is how the rollbacks of DEI initiatives have been affecting students on college campuses around the country. And today we are going to hear from a couple of students who are very much active in trying to fight for what is right, fight for the organizations, and fight for an inclusive campus. And hearing from them directly, I think will give us a lot of insight into what's going on. So today we are going to hear from DJ who was the president of the Black Student Union at the University of Arizona, and we're also going to hear from Kaija, who's an activist working closely with the Department of African American Student Affairs, and again both organizations are actively working against the DEI band. We're also going to have a conversation later in the show where we try to view this from the other perspective, In other words, what are some of the criticisms of DEI initiatives that are found on the right. How is this justifiable to them? What veneer of truth have they used to dig their heels in? And you know, these things we need to know. And I say that in jest. You know, there's some valid criticisms, of course, but we're going to discuss that and so much more on this episode of Saying Cipher. But before we get there, it is time for some ebony.
Excellence, shall we? I think we shall.
Today's ebony excellence comes from the Atlanta Black Star, and I think this is such a cool story, so I will share turning down a deal on Shark Tank was the best business decision for Tim and Kim Lewis. The Curl Mixed founders appeared on the show in twenty eighteen for season ten, episode fourteen of the show. Their ask was four hundred thousand dollars for a ten percent equity stake in the Black owned and operated hair system. Their pitch to dry Bar Salon proprietor Ali Webb, Mark Cuban, Lorie Griner, Kevin.
O'Leary, and Robert heard Javek.
Sorry, I don't really watch the show too often, included models demonstrating the efficacy of their flack sea gel that promises to define curls of all types.
Quote.
The main issue we have now is we cannot keep product on the shelf, unquote, said Tim. They projected one hundred and eighty thousand dollars in profits that year. That declaration, couple with the fact that it only cost a couple three dollars to produce one bottle of the jail, which retails for twenty five dollars, excited the judges. However, Cuban was the first to bow out her Javek spoke about the brutally competitive competitive market. Still, he was certain, quote this is one of the few investments that I think. I give you the four hundred thousand dollars, You're definitely going to grow and you're going to get bigger. What I worry about is the cargoes faster than and then hits the wall, hits a wall.
Sorry.
Kim shared that Kroll makes this focus on online sales was one of the ways their business differentiated from competitors. Quote, you don't have any other choice because you're not going to get any retail space. There's no way this business is worth four hundred thousand dollars right now. There's nothing proprietary. I'm out, interrupted O'Leary.
Well.
In twenty twenty four, the company entered its third year of being available for purchase at four hundred and sixty ault beauty stores nation Why they are currently valued at an estimated thirty eight million dollars.
You'll love to see it, so.
Again, shout out to Tim and Kim Lewis or their cro mix. All right, it's time to get down to brass techs. So first off, I want to welcome the two of you to the show. So welcome DJ and welcome Kaija. Do us a favor before we get into the the conversation, just take a minute or so each and just kind of give us a little bit of background on both of you. I know that DJ, you're the president of the Black student union on your campus, so you know just a little bit more so that our listeners know who we're talking to today.
Yeah, Soggra. First, I I am the president of BSU. That's well known. But what that means for me and for a lot of students on campus is regular organization, you know, and finding unity in our spaces. This campus is very much mixed, and a lot of times there's no certain organization for students to feel safe and to feel like there's this space that they can go to. So my role in what I do on campus a lot of times is try to find a way for students to organize and to and to feel safe, you know, and to talk about the things that they may not actually always get to say in their classroom or with their friends. So I try to allow those allow time and allow spaces for students.
Perfect.
Hi, my name's Kaija.
I'm I'm the president of MAIA Chapter I Delves signdated, so already incorporate here at the University of Arizona.
I'm also a Biochem major minory and Italian.
I am also chemistry biochemistry peer mentor and advisor as well as a peer information council for the main library and research associate for Banner. So my whole thing with being on campus and being here and being the most senior member as well as are taking in our living learning communities, which is an entire dorm full of black students, is to allow us to have a space and to have the continuance of a space within these pressing times at a predominant white institution.
For those that might not know, what does the Black Student Union do and what are the benefits to the student body.
So the Black Student Union, I mean, aside from allowing a safe space, of course, you know, we often organize we have weekly meetings on Wednesdays where we usually do a variety of things. We usually will have things like Spades Nights, you know, where kids can come and learn how to play spades and have fun and chill. We also have had little parties, you know, so things along those lines. But BSU at its core, BSU is primarily for Black students, of course, but for any student that wants to learn about what black culture is like and learn how to you know, best assist in representing black black culture in the black community, not necessarily how to assimilate or how to become a part of the black community, but to but to best support it and to best learn how learned what what is really a part of this rich culture because there's a lot of things that people may not know on the service level about what the black community is.
So kayj, you do me a favorite and actually I want to hear from both of you, but Kaja, I'd like you to go first. How have the the nation, the national like attacks on d I and the rollbacks on d I have those affected You know your organizations and you know their capacity to, you know, deliver these services to the students who are requesting a lot of.
The problems that we have is to make sure that the programs that we keep are sustainable. So that's having a consistent attendance and audience as well as making sure that we have funding for these.
Programs that we have here. Without DEI, we wouldn't be able to have any of that.
And it comes to small things such as just reserving spaces in a building.
How can we do that if we don't have the building.
So it's things within that we're fighting against. Other organizations on campus that are not marginalized. We do have the privilege to go out and have these spaces on a consistent basis, whereas now we are trying to find that for ourselves and something that we had we already have and now.
It's being taken away.
Within funding as well, we are given funding through the university. This is done due grants and everything else which within DEI those no longer exists. Students are losing their scholarships and their grants, and organizations on campus are losing their grants as well.
And then there's also advisors for.
These organizations who are who work for the campus, who are considered DEI hires that are unable to have their job, which then of course affects their livelihood as well as livelihoods of the students on the campus that need their support.
Yeah, anything to add DJ.
Yeah, So I mean, like Haier said, these advisors, it's it's advisors, faculty staff. We have our own staff here. So speaking of which, we're actually doing this call from within the MLK building a cultural resource center on campus and what and things like this where we are able to reserve a room to do a meeting, to have our own events and do things along those lines. We wouldn't have them with the band of DEI and a lot of these faculty instea that we have in these centers would lose their jobs and without without even possibilities of severance pay or or anything that would allow them to find another job within the next few weeks. So they would be fired without condition, you.
Know, thinking of life as a collegiate, you know, formerly the national second vice President of the National Paneltic Council, the vice president of Phive Beta Sigma Fraternity Incorporated, the Elite Epsilon five Chapter, the vice president of the NAACP would County Chapter. I know what it's like to feel the inclusion from being a part of these organizations. Kaider, from your purview, what are some other organizations besides your own that you see affected by these executive orders from the current administration?
Other organizations.
One of the jobs I have is I work as a pure information counselor for the main library in.
A bunch of the culture resource centers on campus. So they all have their clubs.
Without DEI, they wouldn't, like I said before, they wouldn't have their spaces, they wouldn't have their funding. A lot of the things they get is support from local businesses.
And everything else like that.
But if they are not able to continue having a space, if they decide to rally against it, which we have been threatened with expulsion and termination and not be able to continue our credits, which as.
A senior here at the university, it's.
A little daunting, but without it, we wouldn't be able to continue. There is its complete erasure of our organizations, us as a people, like there is no opportunity for us to thrive here.
There's when you're going to class and you're.
Seeing people that don't look like you, and you come back to a space where everyone is able to relate and have fun and we're experiencing black joy.
It's difficult to be happy somewhere where you're obviously not accepted.
Yeah, you know, one of the things that you know, So to Q's point, you know, I also have the experience of being like you did you. I was the president of the Black student union on my campus. And then you know, further down the line, you know, I recall being in those enormous lecture halls. I went to the business school and those those lecture halls, and I remember being in classrooms where I remember being the only black person in a classroom. So that's first, but I also remember, you know, sometimes there might be one or two other people, but we'd be so far apart that there'd be no sense of community, there'd be no sense of you know whatever. And the tough part about that, at least the way I remember it at a very different time than what you guys are living through, is you know, sometimes people would say things and they would just be wrong, or they would lack perspective, and I never felt like there were enough of us in a classroom. Certainly when I was the only one in a classroom to speak up to say hey, that's not right, or hey that is a little offensive or whatever, I just kind of had to take those things on the chin. There was also this feeling I remember one time I was in a finance class, and that feeling of am I smart enough?
It turns out I absolutely was.
But you know, when you're struggling personally, you don't have that sense of community where there's someone else to say, hey, look I'm going through this too, and you'd be embarrassed to go to everyone else who doesn't look like you, and you already carried the stigma that's associated with being black, like you know, stupid, criminal, all these other things, you know, a bad student, all that you don't want to go to someone else and then reinforce the stereotype by asking for help, right, And so you can be very much isolated in you know, a c full of people, because it's that cultural tie that often helps you out of little things like that. And I named a couple, but you know, my whole collegiate experience was filled with them, and I was the president of the Black Student Union, right, so I know the value full well of community on a campus. And what I'm trying to get from you, and you're doing an excellent job, is sharing with our listeners around the country what that feels like for folks who haven't had this experience or haven't had this experience recently. Right, So let's talk about what you've been up to. DJ will come to you for this one, and then, of course, Kaija, if you have something to add, please, But what has been done on campus to combat the ban of d I Kaija? I remember you mentioned the risks involved, so you know, I know that they could take your credits and all this sort of stuff. But what have you been trying to do to push back against this erasure and these attacks on you know, your the expression of your culture and the resources for your culture.
Yeah, So I'll start off because Kaija has been involved many things, but from the perspective of Black Student Union and everything that I've been trying to work on organizing, it's it took a little bit of first analyzing where where we stand with the university and really assessing how we can best make an impact. But within that, we have all a lot of our organizations have released statements stating exactly what is happening. You know, Executive one four, one five one is not something that we are in agreements of, and it is quite literally tearing apart what we've come to know. But also on top of that, you know, it's packing the resource the resource centers, the cultural centers that we have. It's bringing students into these spaces and letting them know, hey, you have a safe space on campus. You can come here and you can always feel like there is somebody else that will understand what you're going through. And and so that's that's taken form in our organization, how we organize and how we go about our organization. You know, before we may organize, we have may have a BSU meeting in the library. Now it's not unless it's not as much about that we want to organize in the MLK Center here. But also on top of that, you know, it's petitions, it's it's really rallies and and finding different ways to bring the community together and and also just raise our voices. You know, not with one voice cannot be heard, but with many together you can reach as far as you'd.
Like within that and just going based off Yes, we've had rallies on campus, but it's also making sure that students are educated and.
The community is educated.
We are not to succeed in the way that we want to unless everyone is on the same page. There's a lot happening. There's a lot of different voices, there's a lot of different opinions, but we know what.
The facts are. So making sure education is.
The foremost important thing when we're going about radicalizing or coming together as marginalized groups. But it's also making sure that we are speaking to our administration because at the end of the day, they are the ones that are going to make the decision. So having these open conversations with our data students and the provosts and trying to get in contact with the president to see, hey, we are students and our funding and well, sorry apologies, your funding does not equate to our experiences.
Or our livelihood on this campus.
So having those open conversations and making them understand that you are in this position because we are students that go to your school, because we don't just fit into the standard of.
Being a white on this campus, will also do matter.
And might I add I didn't mention it earlier. I am a second year student. So for me, you know, I think, I think with Kaija, it's a lot more about making sure that this space is reserved for us in the future. For me, it's about it's about having somewhere next year, you know, it's about having somewhere that I can actually still go to and study and get work done and find and build community and make connections that cannot be done if we do not have these have these resources. You know, there's a lot of things that are provided in just having a space, and that's not even not even including everything that they've done for our community and for our sense of community on campus.
Now, we've watched organizations and universities capitulate to just the influence of the administration, not even the demands, with very little resistance, kind of voluntarily what do you say to a school where you pay tuition because you're not nonprofit students, it's a for profit institution where tens of thousands of students paid to attend. What do you say to a school when their response as well, we might lose our federal funding if we don't capitulate. What's the message as a student that pays tuition at an institution where that's the case.
I've said something like this before. I'm glad you asked a question.
I said it was cowardice, because how can you ask or provide me a scholarship to attend your campus and then turn around and use me as a statistic to say that you have marginalized students on this campus, to continue to build up your classes and then no longer support.
Us as the years go on, as the days go on.
It's cowardice, I think, just because we're not in this standard version of what they perceive as academia. Basically, it's unfortunate. It's saddening as a whole. We knew coming into this university that was a PWI. This wasn't something that was guaranteed for a lot of students or a lot of people that look like us.
We are privileged within.
That sense, so to know that we've made it here, we fought to be here, we've done we made sure our grades were good in high school and everything else, and then to be completely disappointed once again over and over by this administration, which in particular here like they've taken away our funding on multip occasions, they've fired our directors, they have not paid our directors before, which has caused them to quit. It's it's something that we have expected and that we hope to have changed, which is insanity, which the definition of insanity. But it's still once again disappointing, and we just try to continue to have hope.
For it as a home.
Well, you know, the uh, the truth of the matter is that if it's tough on us, if it's tough on us, it can be tough on colleges too, conceivably, right, And if this administration is making life hard for us, it could be hard for them too, and they could stand with us in solidarity and support us, particularly because we're paying for it.
That's just my thoughts, but you.
Know, it's your it's your story here. Now, I got one more question. Just about maybe thirty seconds or so, people around the country are listening to you. And then and you know, people around the country have colleges in their own towns. Right, just again, just in brief, what could people do to kind of support campuses or organizations on campuses around the country that are suffering because of these DEI robacks.
So, actually, this is a very good question to ask, because you know, we're giving examples of what's happening on our campus alone. But this isn't to speak to what's happened already at you at the University of Ohio, you know, where they actually already banned a lot of their DEI and diversity related programs. You know, this is this this executive order is not something that just affects us. It affects all public universities across the nation and any any school that has any form of cultural resource centers any way for students to organize in marginalized groups. They are all at significant risk of being entirely dismantled or remodeled.
And I know, ten seconds or so.
But yeah, and so what we've started to do is just put out statements, organize, find any way to really stand together and unify. Okay, you know, use your voice it is, it matters
Okay, all right, well we'll take that
