What’s inside Sacramento State’s new ‘Antiracism and Inclusive Campus Plan’?
Campus Reform spoke with both the university and a student leader about Sacramento State's initiative, which was announced earlier this year.
The plan does call for university community members to commit to an anti-racist pledge.
The 324-page “Antiracism and Inclusive Campus Plan” (AICP) at California State University, Sacramento (CSUS) calls for a gender-neutral ombudsperson - or investigator - and campus-wide signage touting that “Black Lives Matter” and “no human is illegal.”
CSUS’s Division of Inclusive Excellence is tasked with creating what the university considers to be a more inclusive and equitable campus environment. This vision includes a requirement in the plan mandating that “all members of the campus community (students, faculty, and staff) take an Antiracist Campus Pledge.”
“I wholly disagree with the policy,” Dominic Giambona, President of the College Republicans at CSUS, told Campus Reform.
“It is not in the purview of academic institutions, in my opinion, to tell students or faculty what to think,” Giambona stated.
CSUS also plans to “[c]reate a safe space for decompressing and healing from racial stress experiences,” demands the plan. It will be “staffed by an ombudsperson (gender neutral person) available in this safe space to support and understand the situation and to help facilitate a constructive conversation.”
The AICP defines racism as “the set of institutional, cultural, and interpersonal patterns and practices that create advantages for people legally defined and socially constructed as ‘white,’ and corollary disadvantages for racial groups that are not considered white by the dominant power structure.”
Additionally, the university plans to offer non-binary restrooms and lactation rooms.
Though CSUS released the final plan last spring, the execution of it is still tentative.
“The implementation plan/process for the Antiracism and Inclusive Campus Plan has yet to be determined,” Melinda Ramey, Vice President of the Division of Inclusive Excellence, told Campus Reform.
Follow the author of this article on Twitter: @TravisMorgan76
