UC San Diego administrators met Friday with more than 100 students who gathered to protest a Feb. 15 ghetto-themed “Compton Cookout” and to ask for improved conditions for black students on the campus.
The students also were angered by a Thursday segment on a student-run television station that used racial epithets to defend the off-campus party, officials said.
Penny Rue, vice chancellor for student affairs, called the clip “very racially offensive.”
She said officials had agreed to student demands to create a task force aimed at boosting African American faculty hiring and addressing under-representation of black students on the campus. Less than 2% of UC San Diego undergraduates are African American.
But students, faculty and activists said the administration’s reaction had been tepid. History professor Danny Widener, who directs the university’s African American Studies program, said students and faculty members “are pushing for some kind of punitive action and some broader redress.”
“The administration would prefer to continue to solve the problem through education, outreach and town hall grievance-airing,” Widener said. “So there’s a little bit of an impasse.”
Tensions have escalated since a Facebook invitation filled with racial stereotypes advertised the gathering last weekend. The invitation included references to "dat Purple Drank," an apparent mix of “sugar, water, and the color purple, chicken, coolade, and of course Watermelon.”