Following up from its initial demand letter to Chancellor Henry T. Yang three years ago, student activism group El Congreso says their demands from 2022 have still not been met. They hand-delivered a letter with the previous and updated demands to the chancellor’s office on Monday.
El Congreso released an updated demand letter three years after its initial demand letter to Chancellor Henry T. Yang. Shengyu Zhang / Daily Nexus
“We just want to talk to him face-to-face about a lot of these [demands], and even if we can just get some kind of voice support, or some actual physical demonstration of support. That alone would be a huge help for us moving into whoever the next chancellor may be having some form of precedent and having some proof of ongoing conversation,” third-year Chicana and Chicano studies major and El Congreso Demands Co-Chair Django Barnett said.
El Congreso sent a letter to Yang in 2022 with a list of demands, including cancelling the now-dissolved Munger Hall project, which received negative attention at the time for its windowless design and limited room space. It was drafted to help remedy UC Santa Barbara’s unmet housing demands and fulfill UCSB’s Long Range Development Plan (LRDP) goals of increasing student beds by 2025.
The project was quietly cancelled in 2023 and the University announced it would move forward with other plans to meet its LRDP goals. A year later, the county settled a $6 million lawsuit with UCSB for not meeting its LRDP goals. UCSB proposed new student housing projects, San Benito and East Campus Housing, last year to help meet the LRDP’s 5,000 student bed goal.
Yang met with El Congreso in El Centro — a communal building on campus — in May 2022 to discuss the letter, which led to the realization of some of the demands, including the ongoing expansion of El Centro. However, El Congreso stipulates that many are still unmet.
In lieu of Yang announcing his retirement earlier this year, El Congreso drafted a new letter calling for him to meet the outstanding demands and provided updated demands related to the Hispanic-Serving Institution (HSI) director, housing contracts and the Comunidad Latinx Graduación (CLG).
“It has now been three years since we first voiced our concerns. Many of our demands remain unresolved. Let this be a reminder of our demands to the University, as well as our determination and ceaseless commitment to fighting for what we deem just,” the new demand letter opened.
Another concern in the letter is that the demolition of Santa Rosa Residence Hall — which is planned to be replaced by the East Campus Housing project — would remove the space for the Black Scholars hall and reduce the overall number of beds on campus. El Congreso asked the University to publicly outline the second phase of its housing plan and provide a proposal to accommodate for lost bed spaces.
“We’re still kind of at a point where we don’t know fully what the plan is, and we want that plan to make sense. We want there to still be an option for maximum humane housing in the coming years,” Barnett said.
El Congreso worked with UCSB Housing, Dining and Auxiliary Enterprises (HDA) last year to get housing contracts released on Dec. 24, three weeks earlier than typically released.
El Congreso met with HDA in winter 2024 to discuss the contract timeline changes. Housing Services Director Mario Muñoz said in the letter that despite the shorter application window, “the number of applications received exceeded those of last year’s cycle.” Students were able to organize their housing needs “in a more timely and efficient manner” due to the earlier contract acceptances and rejections, the letter said.
“We just want people to be more in control of what kind of housing they can get because there’s a big gap between having to fight for housing in I.V. versus this kind of easier option of housing, which is the dorms,” Barnett said.
The letter iterates that El Congreso’s goal of securing guaranteed housing for first-years, second-years and transfer students remains unmet.
The University met one of the 2022 demands by hiring the inaugural HSI director, Veronica Fematt, in July last year. El Congreso has updated its demand in regards to the director, asking that they be supported with a permanent annual budget and a full professional staff, including an assistant director, an administrative assistant, a graduate student researcher and paid HSI interns.
El Congreso also asked for the establishment of a permanent, funded infrastructure to support the director and “ensure HSI initiatives can thrive,” which could include paid undergraduate research opportunities or expanded grant-writing support. Barnett said Fematt reviewed and approved the HSI demands in the letter.
El Congreso asked to be recognized by the University as the student initiative that hired Fematt. Members from El Congreso served on the HSI director search committee, the letter stated.
El Centro is a communal building located on campus in Building 406 near the UCSB Library and provides physical space for multiple multicultural, Chicanx/Latine and political organizations. It is the first-ever cultural resource to be founded on campus and was born out of the UCSB Chicanx/Latine studies movement in the 1960s that created the curriculum for the field of Chicanx studies and the Educational Opportunity Program.
In the 2022 letter, El Congreso asked for expansion and improvements to be made to the space, including disability accessibility, as there is no elevator to the second floor.
Yang has since allocated $1 million for the expansion of El Centro — $600,000 for improvements and restorations and $400,000 for the beginnings of the expansion process, including the hiring of an architect and creating a detailed project proposal. El Congreso is currently in the detailed project proposal process, Barnett said.
El Congreso is now asking that a full-time director be appointed to the space. As part of a 2022 agreement, Vice Chancellor Margaret Klawunn agreed to hire a part-time graduate director to support staff and students, which El Congreso agreed to at the time based on the expectation that the University would eventually hire a full-time director.
In the interim, the letter stated, graduate student Fabián Pavón was hired for 2022-23. Though he was promised full tuition and fee remission, it was not put into effect in a timely manner, the letter said, which eventually led Pavón to resign. Subsequent appointments have lasted for less than a couple of months and left the coordinator position “virtually empty for two years.”
Jimmy Ojeda Pedraza serves as the Counselor/Coordinator for both El Centro and the Chicanx/Latinx Cultural Resource Center (CLCRC). The letter states that splitting these positions comes “at the expense of his well-being.” Barnett said El Congreso has worked with Pedraza to create a job description and a budget for what a full-time director would look like.
“Jimmy’s been great, I think I’ve really appreciated him in the space, but we recognize just as much as he recognizes that this job needs full attention, and that’s something that he can’t provide with his current role,” Barnett said.
El Congreso’s last stated demand in the letter is that CLG and all necessary university services for the ceremony are fully funded by the University while maintaining its status as a student-run event. CLG has historically been the largest cultural graduation on campus and is funded and facilitated by students.
“It’s because this university has been an HSI since 2015, and there hasn’t been enough showcase that we are an HSI. It took us until basically this year to get an HSI director, and that’s personally what I believe why the University should pay. It shouldn’t be on the students because CLG alone is super expensive,” second-year film and media studies major and El Congreso Demands Co-Chair Mariana Del Carpio Salgado said.
Last year, the University asked CLG to move its graduation ceremony to Harder Stadium and has made the same request this year. El Congreso demanded that the ceremony not be moved, as it “would impede the ability of the event coordinators to set up important components that add to the overall cultural value that CLG provides to graduating students, their friends, and their families.”
“We write this today in anticipation of your final days as Chancellor at this university. El Congreso’s demands were made to you, and in leaving some unfinished and many unaddressed, you are communicating a lack of responsibility towards one of this campus’s oldest organizations, as well as the entire community that we represent. We demand a meeting with you, Chancellor Yang, in which we can discuss a path forward together, a path that lies in the interests of all students here at UCSB. Times like these are demanding for change, such as the change we ask,” the letter concluded.
Nine other student organizations signed the letter, including CLG, El Centro Mesa Directiva, M.U.J.E.R. de UCSB, Black Student Union, Students for Justice in Palestine, Mauna Kea Protectors, UC Divest Coalition at UCSB, Pages for Individuals in Prison and Raíces de mi Tierra.
The University did not answer questions regarding the specific demands, and UCSB media spokesperson Kiki Reyes told the Nexus, “UC Santa Barbara has a long tradition of listening to and working with our students to enhance campus life. The campus looks forward to continuing discussions with representatives from El [Congreso] regarding their proposals.”
A version of this article appeared on p. 1 of the May 8, 2025 print edition of the Daily Nexus.
