Reply #58: "Governor demands end to racial unrest at UCSD" [View All]

[Nikki Stone1]

http://www.signonsandiego.com/news/2010/feb/27/governor-demands-end-racial-unrest-ucsd/

Governor demands end to racial unrest at UCSD
BY CRAIG GUSTAFSON, UNION-TRIBUNE STAFF WRITER
ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED FEBRUARY 27, 2010 AT 6:04 P.M., UPDATED FEBRUARY 27, 2010 AT 7:32 P.M.

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger said the recent “horrific incidents” that have caused racial unrest at the University of California San Diego must stop.

“The acts of racism and intolerance that we have witnessed are completely unacceptable and I join with the University of California president, chancellors and student leaders in condemning these terrible incidents,” Schwarzenegger said in a statement released Saturday afternoon. “There is no excuse for this kind of behavior in our system of higher education or anywhere else and it will not be tolerated.”

Three high-profile episodes with racial overtones involving UCSD students have occurred in the past two weeks, leading many black students and others to say they now fear for their safety on campus.

The turmoil was sparked by an off-campus party Feb. 15, dubbed the “Compton Cookout,” that mocked Black History Month, and further stoked by a show on a student-run TV station that supported the party and called blacks ungrateful, using a racial slur.

Then a noose was discovered Thursday night hanging in the UCSD library, which led about 150 students to stage a sit-in in Chancellor Marye Anne Fox’s office the following day to demand the university push harder to boost enrollment of blacks and other disadvantaged minorities.

Fox told the students Friday that the racial incidents were “abhorrent and untenable"