UCLA will host the 20th annual Student of Color Conference this weekend, a conference which aims to increase the number of students involved in on- and off-campus community work and organization and emphasizes diversity on campus.
“Call to ACTION: Educate, Empower & Implement!” is this year’s theme.
Sponsored by the University of California Student Association, the conference is expected to be “the biggest SOCC thus far,” SOCC Committee Chair Stephanie Roberts said.
“We are expecting 1,030 students and are really looking to mobilize students around important issues that we face everyday on the statewide and national level,” Roberts said.
The conference, which lasts three days, consists of a film screening, club night, workshops, caucus spaces and cultural performances, she added.
The conference will begin tonight with a screening of the film “41st and Central,” a documentary about the Black Panther Party movement in Los Angeles that addresses the role that the Black Panther Party played at UCLA during the 1960s.
The opening ceremony on Saturday will be followed by performances, caucuses and three workshop sessions on race and equality. Titles of some of the caucuses are, “Differently Abled,” “Working Class” and “Gender Nonconforming/Transgender,” said Dina Mahmood, SOCC committee co-chair.
Various ethnic caucuses will be held as well, including the African/Black Coalition, Latin@/Chican@/Raz@, Asian/Pacific Islander Unity and Middle Eastern caucuses. These will be held in various rooms of Haines Hall and Royce Hall.
Performers include Los Rakas, a hip-hop, reggae and dancehall music duo, Bambu and Aesthetics Crew. Workshop titles include “Applying to Professional Schools,” “Women of Color Incarcerated” and “Redefining Hip-Hop as a Tool for Social Change,” according the SOCC 2008 program booklet.
“There are over 60 different workshops at the conference covering a wide range of topics that address education, organization and advocacy,” Mahmood said. “These caucus spaces should serve as a safe place for students of similar representations to discuss issues that face their communities as well as ways to advocate for them.”
On Sunday, the final day of the conference, there will be a rally held in Bruin Plaza about stopping another fee increase proposed at this week’s UC Board of Regents meeting at UC San Francisco, Mahmood said.
“We will be marching from Bruin Plaza to the Federal Building where our closing ceremony will be held,” Mahmood said. “The Federal Building will serve as a backdrop to why we are students, bringing everything into the bigger picture: why are we students, what are we fighting for and how is everything connected.”
Roberts emphasized the importance of the four main topics of the conference: education, empowerment, organization and activism.
“We want change not only in areas that affect UC students of color but our communities as well, such as socioeconomic to health care, homelessness, high incarceration rates, environmental injustices and more,” Roberts said. “We believe that by having over a thousand students of color and allies from all the UCs that the Student of Color Conference is a powerful space that will produce opportunities for us to build coalitions and mobilize for change.”
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