{"id":29109,"date":"2022-02-24T21:22:15","date_gmt":"2022-02-24T21:22:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/cjstudents.com\/?p=29109"},"modified":"2022-02-24T21:22:15","modified_gmt":"2022-02-24T21:22:15","slug":"office-of-black-student-development-unveils-community-space-and-office-commemorates-its-founding","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/cjstudents.com\/index.php\/2022\/02\/24\/office-of-black-student-development-unveils-community-space-and-office-commemorates-its-founding\/","title":{"rendered":"Office of Black Student Development Unveils Community Space and Office, Commemorates Its Founding"},"content":{"rendered":"

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The Office of Black Student Development \u2014 created in 2020 to fulfill the Black Student Union\u2019s 2019 demands \u2014 held a community preview of its office suite located within the Student Resource Building on Feb. 19 over Zoom.<\/span><\/p>\n

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Devin Ralston \/ Daily Nexus<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

UC Santa Barbara students, alumni, faculty and administrators, including Chancellor Henry T. Yang, spoke at the commemorative event.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

The space, which offers a physical location to support and advocate for Black students, will be open to the campus community beginning April 30.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cThis office is yours,\u201d said Claudine Michel, a professor in the department of Black studies. \u201cYou have earned it. It\u2019s a center for your academic support. It is a center to support your wellbeing. It is a center to help you transition to the workforce and become responsible citizens. It is founded in our Black radical tradition. It\u2019s full of history.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

The 2019 Black Student Union (BSU) Demands <\/span>called<\/span><\/a> for the creation of an Office of Black Student Development (OBSD), the hiring of eight personnel to staff the OBSD and the creation of a building on campus to be named the \u201cMalcolm X Center for Black Student Development.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

A month afterward, Yang <\/span>promised<\/span><\/a> $900,000 toward the creation of the Office of Black Student Development (OBSD) and funding for eight paid positions, five of which have been <\/span>filled<\/span><\/a>. While the new office suite within the Student Resource Building marks the creation of a physical space for Black student services, it does not meet the BSU\u2019s original demand for the construction and use of a separate building named after civil rights activist Malcolm X.<\/span><\/p>\n

OBSD Director Elroy Pinks described the office\u2019s central aim as supporting the Black student experience at UCSB through a focus on \u201crecruitment, advocacy, holistic support, academic success, retention and graduation.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cAt OBSD, student services, resources and advocacy work together to create a positive learning environment and foster a sense of belonging and purpose,\u201d Pinks said at the event.<\/span><\/p>\n

Pinks acknowledged and thanked the organizations and affinity groups that collaborated with OBSD on the office\u2019s unveiling \u2014 UCSB Black alumni, Black Resource Committee, Department of Black Studies, Black Student Union, Black Graduate Student Association, Center for Black Studies Research and the MultiCultural Center, among others.<\/span><\/p>\n

Yang commended the students, staff and alumni who contributed to the founding of OBSD.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cI want to say thank you to all of our staff and students for your courageous leadership and advocacy,\u201d Yang said. \u201cYour collaborative efforts helped to make this office a reality. I\u2019m confident that the important work of OBSD will make a meaningful difference.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cUC Santa Barbara continues to work on raising excellence, diversity, equity and inclusion across the entire campus,\u201d he continued.<\/span><\/p>\n

The office space consists of individual offices for five staff personnel, a multifunctional community workspace and a breakroom. The breakroom, where staff and interns traditionally have lunch, will also be stocked with snacks and pantry items for the benefit of any and all Black students.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cThis is not only a space for the staff and the students who work in the OBSD,\u201d Pinks said. \u201cIt is also a place for food security to ensure that our students have a place every day that they can come and get something nourishing and fulfilling to eat.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

OBSD Business Counselor Angela Cantu, Academic Achievement Counselors Ashlee Priestley and Sai Isoke each have an individual office, and Pinks and OBSD Assistant Director Kareen Louis will be available to help meet Black students\u2019 needs at the office suite.<\/span><\/p>\n

Katya Armistead, assistant vice chancellor and dean of student life, expressed her excitement in seeing the long-awaited creation of the OBSD office become a reality.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cThis department has been needed for so long to support our Black students, so I am just so pleased and excited and so happy to be here to help,\u201d Armistead said.<\/span><\/p>\n

The effort to establish the OBSD is built on the past advocacy of Black organizers, students and faculty at UCSB, notably those involved in the 1968 Takeover of North Hall and the 2012 and 2019 BSU Demands.<\/span><\/p>\n

The <\/span>1968 Takeover<\/span><\/a> \u2014 an occupation of North Hall incited by 12 Black students protesting racism and systemic inequities \u2014 led to the founding of the Center for Black Studies Research and the department of Black Studies at UCSB. The institution is the second university in the nation \u2013 following San Francisco State University \u2013 to create a department dedicated to the study of the Black diaspora and experience.<\/span><\/p>\n

Michel, the first tenure-track Black woman to be hired at UCSB, said that the historic act of civil disobedience marked a critical moment in the broader \u201cfreedom movement\u201d at universities across the country.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cWe were the second one after San Francisco State University to create a Black Studies Department, and it was part of a freedom movement, a freedom struggle that had started way earlier, when the students compelled universities throughout the nation to open up their curriculum, and they were challenging this cyclic exclusion, marginalization and oppression of Black people within and outside the academy,\u201d Michel said.<\/span><\/p>\n

2020-21 UC Student Regent Jamaal Muwwakkil, a second-year Ph.D student in the linguistics department and president of the Black Graduate Student Association, said he hopes that students form a desire to continue campaigning for racial justice in reflecting on past advocacy efforts.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cI am situated in a tradition, in a history of students who have said, \u2018This is not good enough, and I\u2019m going to do something about it,\u2019\u201d Muwwakkil said.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cI want to encourage all those who would be undergraduates and graduate students on our campus to see themselves as well-situated in a history of advocacy and progress, with a subtle sense of obligation to do something with this opportunity that we\u2019ve been given,\u201d he continued. \u201cAfter each iteration of advocacy, each generation, the floor raises. We start from a higher position than our forebears did, and we have an obligation to continue to raise that floor.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Yoel Haile, director of the Criminal Justice Program at the ACLU of Northern California, graduated from UCSB in 2013 with degrees in Black studies and political science, and helped negotiate the 2012 BSU Demands.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s very exciting to see from where we were back in 2012, in the initial demands that my comrades and I worked on at that time, to all the things that you all have done to present day to getting us to a point where we can have a full office,\u201d Haile said.<\/span><\/p>\n

Haile expressed how OBSD\u2019s ability to provide a specified, physical space for Black students to organize is crucial for future advocacy.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cWe used to only have the AdCRC [African diasporic Cultural Resource Center] where we did everything. Every Black-zoned group would meet there. We would have to kick some people out just to have a quiet, private meeting about the demands because there was literally nowhere else for us to go sit and conspire and plot what we want to do with our demands,\u201d he said.<\/span><\/p>\n

Vice Chancellor for Student Affairs Margaret Klawunn emphasized the importance of supplying qualified staffing in addition to a physical office suite in order to adequately support Black student life and services.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cI know that our students also realized that getting an office, if we didn\u2019t have the dedicated staff that were going to carry that mission forward, was not going to mean enough. Like [Michel], I admire the audaciousness of the task and really appreciate that the chancellor came through with eight positions for the Office of Black Student Development,\u201d Klawunn said.<\/span><\/p>\n

Klawunn also recognized persisting shortcomings by UCSB and the continued work that administration must do to meet the needs of its Black campus community.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cEven with good intentions, we don\u2019t keep up with the needs of our students, and often our students are then pointing the way for us towards the next steps.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Likewise, Haile pressed students to be leaders in this charge for progress and build upon the work started by generations before them.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cEven when there is a large contingency of people who are going to say, \u2018We don\u2019t think you\u2019re going to win\u2019, and even if the administration tells you, \u2018No, we\u2019re not going to do this,\u2019 that is never the end of your demand,\u201d Haile said. \u201cAlways dare to struggle because if you dare to struggle, then you dare to win.\u201d\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

OBSD will hold a ribbon cutting ceremony on April 30 from 9 a.m. t0 1 p.m., officially making the space public to the campus community. At the ceremony, the Educational Opportunity Program (EOP) will also announce the scholarship recipients of the Allison Jackson Memorial Scholarship and the minority Alumni Scholarship Fund, according to EOP Director Aaron Jones.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cI have over a 30-year history associated with this campus, and it\u2019s an honor to see this latest development on the continuum of Black student activism on campus beginning in 1968, and continuing on through to the present day,\u201d Jones said.<\/span><\/p>\n

Jones echoed Haile\u2019s statement, expressing excitement for future activism.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cI would only say that this is not an endpoint,\u201d he continued. \u201cThis is not a static point. This is part of the progression of activism that will continue. I am very, very excited to work alongside OBSD. I think we\u2019re going to be joined at the hip in a lot of ways in supporting our Black students, and we\u2019re really excited about this collaboration.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

A version of this article appeared on p. 3 of the Feb. 24, 2022 print edition of the Daily Nexus.<\/i><\/p>\n

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Nisha Malley<\/p>\n

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Nisha Malley (she\/her\/hers) is an Assistant News Editor for the 2021-22 school year. She can be reached at news@dailynexus.com.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div><\/div>\n

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