Author: Sarah Corsa
The Coalition at Occidental for Diversity and Equity (C.O.D.E.) published an online list of demands for the college to complete in order to establish racial equity on Oct. 3. The list followed the group’s introduction to the Occidental community through Facebook, Tumblr and WordPress as the self-attributed “conscience of the institution” this fall.
C.O.D.E. formally organized and began to advertise this fall, but the fight for increased diversity began many years ago. According to the timeline posted on C.O.D.E.’s WordPress blog, the organization has been ongoing since the first non-white faculty member K.S. Inui was hired in 1916.
C.O.D.E. has proposed actions that they believe will be successful in positively affecting not only the enrollment of students of color but also the culture on campus around diversity. The first of these is implementing the position of Senior Vice President for Diversity, Equity and Inclusion. According to their list of demands, the national search would begin in Spring 2014 with the goal of hiring someone to start in the fall of 2014. This step would institute diversity at a higher level in the college, therefore providing the resources and authority to implement future changes.
Beyond this objective, C.O.D.E. wants to improve faculty retention from underrepresented groups of color, revise curriculum to reflect the college’s core values, adjust relations with alumni of color and change institutional factors. Additional goals are stated on the organization’s “Actions to Achieve Equity and Excellence,” posted to its WordPress blog.
“It’s not just pushing everyone to increase diversity, there’s a clear set of objectives and clear timelines,” DWA professor Movindri Reddy said.
Although much of C.O.D.E.’s message has been spread via social media, C.O.D.E. has recently posted flyers around campus in residence halls, academic buildings, the library and the Green Bean displaying the organization’s mission to “expose rhetoric to reality.” Some flyers featured a roaring tiger and the phrase “Coalition Rise!”
“What we want to emphasize is that faculty and students have been actively trying to increase diversity at Occidental for decades, and so in part, this coalition tries to A) emphasize that this kind of activism has occurred for a long, long time, and secondly that we’ve reached a stage, a moment, when continuing to push for this has just not been successful,” Reddy said.
Although Occidental hosts programs such as the Multicultural Summer Institute and the Multicultural Visit Program, C.O.D.E. seeks to combine the efforts on various parts of the campus and bring them together to form one cohesive group because the issues students are facing extend beyond just one sphere of their life at Occidental. Complaints submitted to the C.O.D.E. Tumblr reveal issues of racial intolerance in the classroom, by the administration or Campus Safety and in daily passing comments. The complaints claim that students have expressed dissatisfaction with the way the college recruits students of color yet does nothing to support them once they arrive on campus.
“There needs to be much, much more given what students face on this campus, all the microaggressions, all the fractions between race and class and gender,” Urban and Environmental Policy professor Martha Matsuoka said.
At the recent Berkus Hall Dedication Dinner attended by donors and trustees, both C.O.D.E. and the Oxy Sexual Assault Coalition (OSAC) dropped a banner citing statistics and actions the organizations find problematic.
“Our college is going through a real crisis now, and it isn’t just all about one particular set of issues,” Reddy said. “These are all intertwined, and so to have C.O.D.E. and OSAC as two organizations, both coalitions that are really trying to address some of the implications of the crisis we are facing, I think is incredibly important.”
The administration has yet to publicly comment on C.O.D.E.’s actions because, Director of Communications Jim Tranquada commented via email, the administration has yet to receive direct contact from the organization.
“We welcome the opportunity to have a campus conversation about an important issue that is central to Oxy’s mission, and the kinds of choices that are before us,” Tranquada said.
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