With Black History Month over, colleges wipe their hands of us and put us at the end of the list of their worries. UC Irvine has seemingly done their due diligence by giving us one thrown-together nine-day late post. (Yes, after UC Irvine students had to beg them to post for Black History Month in the first place). No resources attached. No examples highlighting all the groundbreaking things that Black students have been doing on campus. Nothing. The problem is, this isn’t half of the issue. The campus is failing to recognize the constant racist attacks against Black students throughout the years. From hate-groups posting outside of students’ dorms and a Black student being tackled by a cop when picking up her diploma, this is not a new issue. For a system (in this case, the University of California) that prides itself on diversity and equality, why are students of color suffering at your schools?
As a Black student that is exhausted from not feeling heard, I decided to go to the activists speaking up and inciting change. I was grateful enough to be able to sit down with two of the co-chairs of UCI’s Black Student Union: Briana Jallow and Arletha Saint-Jean. They shared their personal experiences, and how they are creating change on UCI’s campus. Here is an edited transcript of that conversation.
Can you give me a quick overview of what Black Student Union at UCI is? What do you do?
Arletha: BSU is short for Black Student Union. We conduct various meetings for the Black population surrounding different topics like colorism, police brutality, etc.
Briana: We are the safe space for Black students, so we spend all of our year trying to create events, like Ari said, meetings for Black students to discuss issues that happen in the Black community without feeling like they have to be politically correct or feeling like they have somebody else listening to them. We wanna be able to get conversations out not always to resolve issues, but to recognize that other Black students feel the same thing that you guys are feeling.
There have been some incidents in regards to race on campus; can you give me some more detail on what has been happening?
Arletha: UCI, like any university, is an institution that literally has racism built into it, so when we are talking about these anti-black incidents, it’s not like it’s a one time thing or this just happened this year or last year. These are incidents that have been happening for almost a decade. We’ve talked to past UCI Alumni and the problems that were going through as BSU and as Black students, have been going on when they were admits at UCI. We’re talking about 2011, 2008, and 2005.
Briana: 1984!
Arletha: Yes, literally at its conception. What BSU is trying to do now is speak more about these issues because they’re not brought to light. Black population at UCI is two percent, so there’s no one that is fighting for us in these offices. There’s no one that’s like, “Hey, what are the black students going through?”
Briana: What Ari is saying is exactly correct, there’s so many incidents that have happened, you can’t just pinpoint one. We’ve already had multiple instances this school year. It goes to show that UCI is an institution that was built not for Black people, but for white students and Asianstudents to succeed. We are constantly experiencing anti-blackness on this campus. It’s the same occurrences with different students since ‘84. We just had a town hall meeting and we had alumni who were basically saying, we are having the same issues. When we go into these meetings sometimes, we question the point of taking notes. It’s the same thing that’s been happening or the same issues that we are trying to solve. The school is still allowing these issues to occur, and claims that they are making change. Sometimes it can feel just like, what’s the point of taking this new thing? If we haven’t even solved what is still allowing these same things to occur.
Zoë: I’m a Freshman here so I only know what’s been going on recently but I did not even know half the stuff that happened in the past. It’s great that you both can highlight that the system doesn’t seem to be changing and there needs to be fixes happening as soon as possible.
Briana: A lot of freshmen don’t seem to know about the police officer that tackled a former graduate student at our school, that’s not something you learn when coming into the university that you chose.
Arletha: Right! And not too long ago, one of the frats made a Black face video. You don’t learn that when applying to UCI. They hide behind various diversity and inclusion initiatives to put themselves in a better light. Yet nothing ever really changes.
As a Black student myself, I have been enraged at what has been going on; how do you think other students are feeling about this? Do you think that this has been glazed over for students that aren’t Black or do you think they are trying to shine a light on this?
Briana: Personally, I feel like a lot of Black students get desensitized about the things that happen, not even just on campus but in the news of everyday life. It’s just like, okay, you know we see anti-blackness happening everywhere and it’s like this is just another cherry on top, you know? It’s not something that is, again, new. So, I do feel like the Black students are desensitized but at the same time when we recognize that the school is purposefully, or intentionally not worried about their Black students, it’s infuriating. It makes us want to not only just share posts and information, but make our voices heard.
I want to go to a BSU meeting and talk to Bri or Ari, whoever, I’m so sick of being in a place that doesn’t seem like it has intentions of making space for me. I think a lot of black students are really over it. Over the fakeness of just thinking, oh well, you know, “so many black students apply to UCI and all the statistics” that the university gives us but they’re not talking about what we actually experience here on campus.
Arletha: Yeah, just to go off of what Bri said, for our Black students, I don’t think that this comes as a surprise to any of them. Right? Like Bri said, we go through anti-blackness almost daily at this point between microaggressions and often being the only Black person in a classroom. This is nothing new for the black students. I think BSU’s goal is primarily to share the Black experience and let people know what is going on. Like I said previously, you don’t know what’s going on for the Black population because UCI tries to hide it. That’s mainly what our goal is this year to say like “hey, this is happening on your campus.” There’s a population that is completely being ignored, left out, and quite frankly belittled almost everyday on this campus. As for the rest of the population, I can’t really speak for how they feel or how we’re being perceived but I hope it’s one in which they feel empathy and at the end of the day we are all students. We just want to have equal resources as much as everyone else does.
Can you give me more detail about what BSU specifically has been doing to resolve or shine a light on these problems?
Arletha: Behind the scenes, we’ve been collecting information on the needs of BSU and just talking to students, sitting down together as a Board, to really think about what the Black students require on campus and what we feel like there’s a inadequacy. This goes to like the town hall meeting that we mentioned. Most recently we had a meeting with Vice Chancellor Haynes, and basically what we do in these meetings is we sit down with them and we let them know, “hey this is what we think the Black students need on campus, this is what’s lacking, these are the resources that we need.” We point out the flaws that are currently in the system.
Briana: It’s definitely difficult to express what we’re doing because behind the scenes creating our needs and things like that is three extra hours a week on top of our actual BSU meetings because we know the lack of information we know about this school. Just like you, coming into this school we don’t know, they’re not giving us a real experience of Black students. Not only do we have to take into account our experiences the last three or four years but we also having meetings with administration that have been here years ago, graduate students, in order to make sure that the needs that we’re saying that Black students want are not only feasible, but will actually make a difference in their experience here on campus, and make a difference where it’s actually in writing, saying “Black students need this.”
A lot of the work we’ve been doing, especially this quarter, is gathering information. That’s one of the hardest parts because we don’t wanna just go out and be like, “it’s time to protest” and we’re not organized. Our biggest thing is making sure we have all the information. So, when we get asked these questions, of “What do Black students need in order to thrive in this institution?” or how to grow our retention numbers, we don’t have to scramble for that information. This has been a big learning experience not only for me and Ari, but for the board. Again, BSU has been asking for the same thing for a lot of years, decades even, and we don’t want it to be a stalemate. We want this to be our foundation, where our Freshmen, you all, get to build off of this foundation in the next few years.
What are some things that students can do, (no matter what grade) to help?
Arletha: I think overall, it’s educating yourselves, for non-black students at least it’s hard to understand the experience of someone else.
It’s showing your support, so when we are speaking and we’re trying to get our voices heard it’s a matter of uplifting instead of talking over. I think that’s what happens in a lot of these spaces, but what we really want is to feel supported by our fellow UCI peers. Whether it’s reposting our posts, or spending the time to educate yourself on the UCI Black experience. I think that’s something we hope from all our students, not just our Black students.
Briana: Just building off when she’s saying to “educate yourself,” we know a lot of students, especially non-Black students come in here not knowing issues that Black students go through. This institution doesn’t provide any type of really strong resources that are mandatory in order for students to learn about the Black experience. If you ask our chancellor, they’ll point you in the direction of long five hour modules. It’s not really beneficial for us or them.
To educate yourself, try to take an African American Studies class, or at least try to not wait for other Black students to inform you. If there’s a meeting or a town hall open to the public but it’s for Black voices, show up but allow the space for Black students to explain what they’re going through.
For students in general, I know it feels like there is nothing you can really do but even the social media posts can do a whole lot. Students share information to other students at other campuses. Getting that information out is very important because we know that if it is up to the school, they are just going to protect their image, make sure the smallest amount of people possible can know. Starting there is never a bad option, but you need to do more than just retweet things.
In both of your opinions, what are some things that the administration can do, the school in general can do to start enacting a change to the campus?
Briana: Have more Black faculty and Black counselors! We currently have ZERO Black counselors and therapists on campus. When there are anti-black incidents on campus, even dangerous incidents for Black students, it is really important that we have a large group to go to or an administration that understands what we’re feeling. There’s nothing worse than the N-word screamed at or spelled at you on your door and the person you’re talking to does not understand how much that affects you.Just having people around that understand your experiences is just so important to me, and I feel like, without that, I wouldn’t have even stayed here for that long. I feel like having Black faculty is important.
UCI is trying to pave the way to have more Black administration come here. We’ve recently just had meetings with the town hall and Chancellor Haynes, and they kept saying, “oh, we got our bid” and “we’ll hire someone this day and within a week, another UC will pay them more to bring them there.”
Why isn’t it UCI’s goal to have more Black faculty? Put that money up, so that they won’t get recruited by another school. It is important for Black students to thrive in an environment that we feel comfortable in. It is very uncomfortable to not see any administration that looks like me and to not have any counselors that look like us.
Arletha: I think on my end, it’s not just hearing black voices, but it’s listening to Black voices. I can’t tell you how many times Bri and I go into these meetings and we’re just being talked at for the first forty-five minutes—and it’s an hour long meeting. Taking the time to really listen to Black voices, to listen to BSU. Quite frankly, we’re screaming at this point. It’s taken this long to finally get their attention. We’ve issued out multiple statements, put out many fires and it’s taken them this point to be like, “maybe we should take a meeting with BSU.”
It’s only during Black History Month, that all these people are hitting us up for meetings and stuff like that; it all feels very performative. Listening to Black voices for the entire year because at this point we just feel unheard on a level that makes us feel like we are being ignored. It’s my goal and hope for this administration to really take the time and just listen to our needs, then properly enact them.
Briana: I really liked what Ari said. We don’t want people to read this article or read our posts and just think Black students want sympathy or Black students want more. We see the numbers, we see the population of Black students, we see the retention rate of Black students, so obviously something is not happening. We’re not having the resources we need in order to succeed, and that’s what we want to scream about and what we want to highlight. It’s not that we want anything extra. We want to be able to get to that finish line, whether it’s graduation, a job etc. Just like the other students who applied and got in here as well.
Do you think there is a way to unite the UC campuses (because this happens at all of them) to highlight a better space for everyone?
Arletha: I think that the way we unite each other is through our similar experiences. The most recent example being when UCI’s BSU called out the lack of a Black History Month post. Our fellow student unions at UCLA and UCSD reached out like, “hey, it happened to us too.” It being however many days into Black History Month and they haven’t posted anything. Across UC campuses, it’s apparent that all Black voices are being ignored. It’s not even just the UC system, it’s a universal problem because across campuses Black people are the lowest population and quite frankly that’s a national problem. We’re just tackling it at UCI and that’s what we can do for now. I think the way that we can unite everyone is through our experience. If you go to UCLA and ask, “how many Black counselors do you have?”, I can guarantee that their numbers are similar to ours. If we’re saying, “hey, do you guys experience an alarming amount of microaggressions? Are you the only Black person in your class?” They’ll most likely say, yes, and I think that’s the way we unite all of us.
Briana: We recognize that this is not just UCI but all of the UC’s. They are still run by one person, they’re still a group for the UC system, there’s a board for the UC’s. So, when they don’t post for Black History Month for UCI, you can guarantee that there’s at least a few other schools, as well as the UC system, that haven’t. We recognize that this is one big institution that we’re trying to critique. No matter the UC, the Black students share the same experiences, I don’t think it’s divided at all. We’re still screaming at the same institution. When there’s situations that happen at other schools, our BSU gets the information very quickly. To me, it doesn’t feel like a bunch of separate UC’s. It just feels like the same situations happening between NorCal and SoCal.
Any final thoughts left to add?
Arletha: I guess my whole thing is that, even though we’re UCI’s BSU we’re really speaking for a lot of Black voices. Like we said, this is a shared experience. Our only hope is that we go through UCI’s administration and they make these changes that hopefully other UC’s follow suit. Or that we also inspire other BSU’s to make those changes to fight their administration.
Above all, our whole message is for the Black students on campus: you are not alone no matter what. Even if you don’t have time to go to BSU or you just need someone to talk to, BSU at the end of the day is here to cater to it’s Black students and that has always been our number one goal, to create a safe space for Black students to feel welcomed in a university that is unwelcoming.
Briana: Black students, you deserve to have resources. You’ve already gotten into this institution. You deserve to be successful, and feel comfortable, along with having a great college experience like any other student that’s on campus. Like Ari said, we’re here for you all, if you just want to talk or even if you feel like you might not have the exact experiences as another Black student, there’s a ton of us. I feel like you’ll find one that meets your niche. Just don’t ever forget that, this school, this institution, this place, is something we pay for. We are the people that are making sure that it keeps going, so the institution needs to give you back the resources that you’ve earned, that you deserve. Don’t ever stop asking for what you need to be successful.
Arletha: Emphasis on that part: “Don’t ever stop asking for what you need to be successful!” That’s literally how they designed this institution — to keep us quiet, for us to be content with what we have, but we shouldn’t have to. We shouldn’t have to take anything second-rate. Honestly.
Briana: Period.
For more, follow @uci_bsu on Instagram.
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Overall, it is time for colleges to recognize that there is a problem, that they can’t just use us to create “good statistics and a good image” only to push us aside. It’s time for you to wake up and realize the power that we hold. We are ready to make change for good. It’s voices like Briana’s and Arletha that show me that there are leaders fighting for my justice, for my voice. They inspire me to strive for greatness within myself and my community. Black Student Union has given me a community to confide in and have my back when speaking out against the injustices that face us.
Hello, world. We are ready to show you what we are made of! We are the future leaders, trailblazers, change-makers, and pioneers. We are here and we belong here. We matter.
Interviews have been edited for length and clarity*