LA reacts to election results

“I’m hoping at some point today, someone will call to question to actually vote on the resolution, and that your senate can move forward and understand how difficult and how emotional this has been for those of us who are African American,” said McKeever.

Dale Fields, chairman of the physics department, cited philosopher Paulo Freire to help him verbalize more succinctly ways in which the senate members can be efficient allies of the Black community at Pierce College.

“Oppressors are those who dehumanize an oppressed by removing their agency, and for that reason the liberating action is the claiming of agency by the oppressed. Therefore, the action of an allyship is to listen, to trust and to show up for the group claiming their agency,” Fields said.

Fields forcefully concluded his commentary and said, “The people of color at Pierce College have spoken in their agency. Today, please respect that agency and perform allyship by passing their resolution so that we can get going on the anti-racist work that is to follow.”

Another faculty member that spoke up was sociology professor Anna Bruzzese who said, “it's really time for us to take a stand, pass this resolution and then write future resolutions if necessary to address parts that we missed or other concerns along these lines.”

As the meeting progressed, matters in the calendar and other topics were discussed such as the retirement of 11 members of the faculty, Pierce College getting a grade “C” from the Health Department because of students smoking in non-smoking zones, and the successful growth of transfer students to UCLA from 38% to 42% for the Fall 2020 semester.

The members proceeded to resume discussions on the Resolution Against Systemic Racism, and while some requested amendments to be edited or to change certain words, some called to proceed to vote for the resolution.

Christopher Lay spoke as the representative for the philosophy and the sociology departments and called to move and effectively end the debate and vote on the resolution itself.

“If we continue to debate this resolution’s fine grain details, we will miss the resolution’s vital and timely point of addressing antiblack racism,” Lay said. “Here and now, we need to ensure that the Academic Senate does not let this resolution die because of an inability to agree on those fine grain details.”

Eventually, the 44 voting members of the Academic Senate proceeded to end the debate and to formally vote to pass the antiracism resolution.

The next Academic Senate meeting will take place Nov. 23.