UC Santa Cruz College Ten Renamed for John Lewis
UC Santa Cruz held a ceremony on May 6 to formally rename College Ten — a residential learning community at UCSC — as John R. Lewis College after the late U.S. congressman and civil rights activist.
The residential learning community is social justice and community themed and was previously undedicated until UCSC decided in the fall to officially rename it after Lewis.
Over 500 individuals attended the ceremony, according to the Santa Cruz Sentinel, among them being UCSC Chancellor Cynthia Larive, UC President Michael V. Drake and members of the UCSC Black Student Union.
“The fact that the university is coming together to name this college for him to serve as a platform for remembering his name and remembering his work as we go forward is something that we’re all very proud of,” Drake said at the ceremony, according to the UCSC Newscenter.
Students from the Black Student Union spoke on stage before the ceremony’s closure and voiced their discontent with the university and the treatment of its Black students. Black Student Union Political and Cultural Affairs Chairperson Airielle Silva felt the renaming was a performative effort when Black students at the university still have inadequate access to basic needs.
“Where is [the] urgency when your current Black student population on campus still does not have equitable access to housing, sustainable food resources and mental health care?” Silva said at the ceremony, according to the Santa Cruz Sentinel.
The keynote speaker, National Association for the Advancement of Colored People National Youth & College Division Director Wisdom O. Cole, closed off the ceremony and supported the students comments, urging university administration to make sure the renaming was “not performative, but … transformative.”
UC San Diego Park and Market Opens to Public
UC San Diego opened its four-story Park & Market complex to the public on May 11, following a ribbon-cutting ceremony the day prior. The building features a 225-seat theater, a cinema, conference rooms, classrooms with a computer lab, a café and a bistro.
“Park & Market is a hub of scientific and civic energy, of arts and culture and of human experiences unlike any other in the United States,” UC San Diego Chancellor Pradeep Khosla said.
The park is also home to a $75 million, 66,750 square foot mixed-use room available to be rented out for anything “from intimate gatherings to grand events,” according to its website.
The building connects via trolley to UCSD’s campus and the San Ysidro border crossing into Mexico and will “host global experiences that drive fresh expressions from our collective humanity,” according to the site.
UC Climate Justice Curriculum To Debut Systemwide Spring 2023
The University of California is currently developing climate justice courses across UC campuses, with students already signing up for a Fall Quarter 2022 pilot course at UC Merced ahead of a planned expansion to all UC campuses by Spring Quarter 2023, according to the UC Merced Newsroom.
The curriculum is being funded by a grant from the UC Office of the President and developed by Associate Professor and UC Presidential Chair Tracey Osborne, who founded the UC Center for Climate Justice.
“I think what we’re doing now is unique and it’s something needed now more than ever, which is to focus on various dimensions of climate justice,” Osborne said.
The courses are designed to mobilize students toward climate action and cultivate prolonged climate engagement.
The lectures given in the curriculum will center around the impacts of climate change on communities of color and low-income communities, according to the program’s site.
Lectures will be delivered by a diverse group of faculty members and will explore topics that center the disproportionate impacts of climate change on low-income communities and communities of color.
Instructors across all UC campuses are lecturing as part of the program, including UC Santa Barbara professors David Pellow, Liz Carlisle and John Foran.
A version of this article appeared on p. 2 of the May 19, 2022, print edition of the Daily Nexus.
