How the California government helped fuel campus madness in 2020

Center to Close the Opportunity Gap

California State University-Long Beach, California State University-Fullerton, San Diego State University, and San Jose State University launched a “Center to Close the Opportunity Gap” to focus on the need for “anti-racism” in K-12 education.

Taxpayers in the Golden State are footing the $3 million price tag.

The group’s website explains that “equity in the schooling context requires a focus on outcomes” due to California’s “historic inequities.”

Reparations Task Force

Governor Gavin Newsom created a state task force that will investigate the possibility of paying reparations to black people, which must include “one appointee from the field of academia that has expertise in civil rights.”

Though the bill says that slavery “constituted an immoral and inhumane deprivation of Africans’ life, liberty, African citizenship rights, and cultural heritage and denied them the fruits of their own labor,” the bill did not explain ways in which the state government of California exacerbated slavery in the United States, besides mentioning “the ongoing effects of the institution of slavery and its legacy of persistent systemic structures of discrimination... in the United States.”

California Legislative LGBTQ Caucus

Members of the United States Congress from California, joined by the California Legislative LGBTQ Caucus, urged the University of California to disassociate from religiously affiliated health providers.

Early in 2020, the school questioned a partnership with the Roman Catholic nonprofit Dignity Health over potential denial of abortions and LGBTQ-related services. In response, a letter from lawmakers expressed “serious concerns over the University of California’s affiliations that impose religious restrictions on UC providers, students, and patients, limiting the kind of medically necessary care they can provide and receive.” 

Among these “necessary” restrictions are “LGBTQ-inclusive care,” abortions, and contraception. 

The authors assert that denial of this care can be “life-threatening.”

DREAM Loan Eligibility

Due to a bill signed by Gavin Newsom early in 2020, University of California and California State University graduate students who fall under Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) became eligible for special loans to help pay for school.

“Higher education has the power to transform lives, and all hardworking young people in our state deserve a shot at it,” Newsom said. “This package of bills strikes at the forces that keep the doors of opportunity closed to too many people in our state.”

The bill served to “expand DREAM loan eligibility to a student who is enrolled in a program of study leading to a professional or graduate degree.”

Gig Economy Restrictions

Campus Reform correspondent Tahmineh Dehbozrgi highlighted that Assembly Bill 5, which kicked into effect on the first day of 2020, put California students who participate in the gig economy at a disadvantage

”While the bill was intended to protect the rights of workers, it will instead put many of them out of work or severely limit the amount of money they are able to make in a single year,” she wrote. “As a student journalist who writes for Campus Reform both to make extra money to help pay for living expenses in college, as well as to build my writing portfolio, this new law would limit my ability to gain real-world experience while still in college, which will ultimately make finding a full-time job after college much more difficult.”

“With this new government-imposed restriction, fewer students like me will be able to seek these opportunities and experience these same benefits as freelancers,” she added.

Follow the author of this article on Twitter: @BenZeisloft