Monday, May 9, 2022
The Student Voice of California State University, Fullerton
Volume 111 Issue 18
ASI Virjee a no-show at ASI meeting; WoMen’s Center plan protested debates new parking plan
The board of directors disagreed with the cost of the proposal. HEATHER EYRE Asst. Editor
Students for Quality Education expressed their concerns during the public comment portion of the meeting. ( Spencer Otte / Daily Titan )
SPENCER OTTE Editor
EDER RAMIREZ Dept. Editor
The Associated Students’ May 3 board of directors meeting was interrupted by a protest by members of the Cal State Fullerton activist group Students for Quality Education.
During the public comments portion of the meeting, members of the group voiced their concerns, including the amount of funds allocated towards the campus police and the sudden closure of the WoMen’s Center. However, tensions at the meeting began to rise when CSUF President Fram Virjee, who was scheduled to speak before the board, was not
present at the meeting. When recess was declared at 2:11 p.m., the students rose from their seats and began to wave signs and chant, “Where is Virjee?” The meeting, which was streamed online, was subsequently muted, and eventually ended, excluding the attendees viewing the stream. Mary Chammas, the board of directors chair, said that the board was
not sure why Virjee did not attend the meeting. When urged to leave, they reached a mutual compromise with the board to stay for the following meeting and wait for Virjee, who did not appear at the meeting. Chammas agreed to a meeting between members of the board and the activist group. The May 3 meeting was the final ASI board meeting of the semester.
Members of the Associated Students Board of Directors questioned presenters on a new proposal that calls for a significant increase in the cost of parking permits, while decreasing capacity for students living on-campus. “You mentioned that in a regular year, about 40% of residents purchase parking permits. It’s estimated that there will be about 2,200 students living in housing in the fall,” said Kira Dawson, the vice president of ASI. SEE PARKING
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In campus diversity attempts, the solution is complicated In 2019, Phi Sigma Kappa posted a flyer with a racist watermark on their Instagram. JESSICA CHOI MICHELLE IBAÑEZ AUDREY PARAYNO
Increasing diversity within university student organizations, such as sororities and fraternities, has been a seemingly endless ongoing effort since a series of incidents in 2019 nudged both the administration and students to take action. Even now, a Daily Titan investigation shows frustration is still simmering. The troubled Phi Sigma Kappa fraternity was investigated in 2019 after posting a flyer with a racist watermark on their Instagram account. This led to a series of conversations on campus about what it meant for members of Greek life organizations at CSUF – and the
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university as a whole – to condone racist behavior. The investigation into the flyer incident was followed by demands from CSUF’s Black Student Union for university accountability. Three years later, the Black Student Union – the catalyst for change following the flyer incident – is in dire financial straits. The flyer incident and its aftermath starkly illustrate the complicated interactions between a sprawling public university system and its independent student organizations. Also in 2019, CSUF President Framroze Virjee, a Phi Sigma Kappa alumnus, was awarded a medallion of merit by the fraternity. The award stated that Virjee had learned the value of diversity and inclusion from his fraternity brothers. The flyer incident prompted the Black Student Union to host a campus town hall to express their frustrations and urge the university to
respond to a list of demands. This included a request for $500,000 increase in scholarship and program funding, and hiring more Black faculty members. The specific list of demands was not fully met, except for the allocation of $75,000 for the Afrikan Black Coalition Conference and a $6,000 allocation from Associated Students. In 2020, an ethnic studies requirement law targeted all California State University students. “It was really eye-opening to see how ignorant a lot of the people on campus were because they didn’t understand why we needed any kind of inclusion,” said Luke Blackburn, current president of the Black Student Union. In 2020, the CSU trustees voted to approve a general requirement for all CSU students to take either a class in one of the four ethnic studies disciplines or any course with a social justice component. CSUF applied the requirement for their students starting in fall 2021.
Blackburn said that the requirement for students to take an ethnic studies course was a huge accomplishment that not many people recognized. “I think more needs to be done,” Blackburn said. “People think that it’s funny to be racist really needs to be solved, and the only way to do that is through education and through, like the diversity requirement that we now have in this campus.” In 2019, the Daily Titan reported that Phi Sigma Kappa informed Student Life and Leadership about the flyer, and was later present during a Black Student Union town hall. Their president at the time, Jacob Robles, said that the fraternity had immediately gone to the university and was fully ready to cooperate. The CSUF chapter for Phi Sigma Kappa, whose slogan was “Damn Proud since 1966,” is currently inactive, their social media presence stopped in 2019, with their last post
being published on Oct. 6 of that year. The town hall was on Oct. 21. The former Phi Sigma Kappa house at 2125 N. Teri Pl., is on what is known as fraternity row, neighboring other CSUF fraternity houses, and is no longer occupied by Phi Sigma Kappa fraternity members. Blackburn said he was present at the town hall in 2019, not yet a member of the Black Student Union. He said the student union had requested money for operational purposes, and while some were allocated, the union is still very financially limited. “We ran out of money for the BSU earlier this semester, and now we’re really trying to take the very last money that we have and try to divvy it up to make it go as far, and stretch it to the end of the semester,” Blackburn said. “I still don’t believe we have enough money to be as impactful forces as we need to be.” See Pages 6 & 7
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