One of the candidates for the new diversity vice chancellor position said at a forum Thursday that UCLA must ensure underrepresented students have the support necessary to succeed, whether that involves incentivizing diversity measures or creating consequences for people who resist moves toward stronger anti-discrimination policies.
Octavio Villalpando, a professor of educational leadership and policy at the University of Utah, spoke at the second in a series of open forums to introduce candidates for the vice chancellor of diversity, equity and inclusion position to the UCLA community.
Villalpando grew up in East Los Angeles, where he said he often spent late nights wondering whether his parents, who were undocumented immigrants from Mexico, would return home from work or be picked up by immigration police. He received his master’s degree and doctorate in higher education at UCLA.
He served as the associate vice president for equity and diversity at the University of Utah from 2007 until fall of last year. He said he was attracted to the associate vice president position because he thought people of color did not have enough access to the university at the time.
Villalpando said he and his family received several death threats during his tenure as vice president at Utah until a person responsible was caught and convicted.
“I know firsthand what it’s like to be subjected to threats, intimidation and an environment where I’m not allowed to thrive,” Villalpando said.
He said he thinks UCLA’s current number of black and Native American students and faculty members reflects an inability to recruit and support students from racially diverse backgrounds. Out of almost 30,000 undergraduate students, about 1,200 and 150 identified as black and Native American, respectively, in 2014, according to the UCLA admissions website.
Villalpando said he thinks the short-term priority of the new vice chancellor should be to implement the procedures suggested by the Moreno report, which found that UCLA’s policies and procedures for addressing reports of racial discrimination among faculty were inadequate. The report, released in October 2013, prompted Chancellor Gene Block’s creation of the new chancellor position that December.
A search committee for the position is hosting the open forums to make their decisions more transparent and allow the student body to ask candidates questions. About 80 students, alumni and faculty members attended the forum and asked Villalpando about his research, his tenure at the University of Utah and his definition of diversity.
At the event, Villalpando said his long-term priority would be to make sure UCLA considers success in issues of diversity, equity and inclusion as measures of its institutional and academic excellence. He added that he thinks it’s important for a campus to associate diversity with academic excellence.
He said his research on higher education has found that when students of color have private spaces to interact, such as theme housing, they not only have a better chance of graduating, but they also graduate with higher self-esteem, greater commitment to their communities and a better sense of altruism.
Villalpando said he is also interested in offering more racially themed housing. UCLA Residential Life currently offers Afrikan Diaspora Studies and Chican@/Latin@ Studies themed communities.
“This campus has to be able to point to the graduation rates of underrepresented students, and if they’re not where they should be, we’re not an excellent institution,” he said.
Several attendees asked Villalpando about his opinion on the distinction between hate speech and free speech at the forum.
In response, he said he thinks students and faculty have the constitutional right to express themselves, especially in the realm of academia, without being silenced or harassed. But when expression becomes harassment, he said he thinks there are legal avenues the community can pursue if necessary.
An open forum with the final vice chancellor candidate, Jerry Kang, will take place on Monday. Kang is The Korea Times – Hankook Ilbo Chair in Korean American Studies and Law, associate provost and professor of law and Asian American studies at UCLA.
The candidate invited to visit campus Feb. 13 has withdrawn from the search.