The Asian Pacific American Student Affairs hosted a meeting between student members and head administrators on Sept. 25 to discuss the transition of the University of Arizona’s consolidation of cultural resource centers and its effects.
Vice Provost Jenna Hatcher and Interim Executive Director of Campus Community Connections Thomas Harris joined APASA members and staff to address members’ concerns about shifts in cultural resource centers.
This meeting occurred the day after a similar meeting was held with the LGBTQ Student Affairs and Disability Culture Center.
On May 27, the Office of the Provost announced the consolidation of the seven cultural centers into the new Student Culture and Engagement Hub, a section of the also newly created Campus Community Connections.
It was also announced that Native American Student Affairs would be integrated into the Office of Native American Initiatives. Prior to the university’s official statement, each CRC director was suddenly dismissed at the end of the school year. Taking place at the start of the summer, CRCs struggled to properly respond or put up resistance to the upsetting decision.
This decision came in the wake of attacks on diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives in U.S. Universities and a recommendation by GOP Arizona Senate President Warren Petersen to end DEI initiatives in Arizona Universities to ensure compliance with federal law. Petersen used the commitment in UA’s mission statement, “dismantling systemic and institutional racism,” as an example of DEI, a section that the UA later rescinded.
Despite UA’s concessions to weakening DEI initiatives on campus the past year, on Oct. 1, the Trump administration demanded nine universities, including the UA, pledge to end DEI among other demands, to ensure the flow of federal funding. While UA faculty have voiced opposition to the proposal, President Suresh Garimella has yet to make a decision.
During the Sept. 25 meeting, members of APASA voiced their anger to Hatcher and Harris over the UA’s consolidation of the CRCs and its effects.
Bhavya Makkar, co-director of external outreach of the Asian Pacific American Student Council, voiced frustrations over UA’s decisions. She also expressed concerns over the future of the center.
Makkar argued that the APASA is a refuge for Asian American students on campus and a place where students who feel otherwise lost and alone can find a second home, especially as immigrants or first-generation Americans.
This second home gave stability, Makkar argued, and a place for making friends and receiving crucial resources. Thus, what she called the destruction of APASA and its members’ second home causes further destabilization in many members’ already turbulent lives on campus.
Another issue many members protested was the decline in freshman membership due to what they call Destination Arizona’s poor marketing of APASA. Speakers like Katelyn Walker of the Asian American Cultural Association claimed that APASA and clubs under the center, like AACA, were nowhere to be found in booklets and were absent on signs that could have signified or directed students towards the clubs.
Makkar demanded that the UA recognize APASA and reinstate its salaries for upper members and student programming and funding to make up for Destination Arizona losses. At the end of her speech, she reaffirmed that APASA members “will never be complacent,” Makkar said.
According to Walker, the UA’s lack of recognition and advertisement of CRCs dramatically decreased freshman attendance at APASA events, depriving students of a “critical source of community and a place they feel they belong, [and losing awareness that a] critical lifeline exists,” Walker said.
After members concluded their speeches and demands, Hatcher and Harris were given the opportunity to respond. Hatcher started by reaffirming that activism works and that she encourages it, and she even went as far as to acknowledge that there are admitted failures in communication with CRCs.
Harris defended the provided descriptions of CRCs on the UA website but recognized their new generic names, like APASA’s new SUMC 409 designation, likely failed to reach new students.
Harris also acknowledged that signage failed to market the fourth floor of the Student Union which diminished freshmen interest in APASA. According to Harris, that would never happen again. He also recognized delays in the release of funds to CRCs, which may have hurt APASA events, which he also reassured would be solved.
APASA members were then invited to ask questions. The first pressing question addressed why the administration came to its decision to consolidate the CRCs, to which Hatcher claimed that there was federal, state and administration pressure to make those changes.
“Part of these factors are external, a giant part of them external executive orders,” Hatcher said.
Hatcher acknowledged that UA’s justification for the consolidation as promoting intersectionality was not taken well by many students. Hatcher recognized that the dismissal of the six CRC directors was a decision many didn’t agree with.
According to Hatcher, the consolidation and the co-director structure were permanent decisions and the likelihood of going back to six individual directors was unlikely.
A student speaker asked Hatcher why students, who the issue concerns the most, were not consulted in the decision making process.
“I probably think that some of that input we heard is the reason why we still have individual spaces. Had we relied on a room that hadn’t had any advocacy from student voices, we may have ended up with one center that was an actual consolidation of these spaces.” Hatcher said, but acknowledged that “recommendations of the legal team were also considered.”
“We can do better,” Hatcher said.
While Hatcher expressed sympathy with student activism, she recognized the finality of the decision and many times defended the UA’s motivations for doing so.
For now, the consolidation of the CRCs into the Campus Community Connections and NASA under Native American Initiatives appears to be underway without signs of stopping. This yielding has not been ignored by students, however. New student groups like the Asian Pacific American Student Council, have pledged to resist anti-DEI measures on campus.
“Our power lies in our community,” the group wrote in a public statement. “APASC will not let recent changes diminish or erase our existence, but make our community and connections stronger […]. APASC will ensure that this community will always have a space on campus now and forevermore.”
The UA has yet to respond to the Trump administration’s compact, but for many students, their actions over the past year have reflected an attempt to placate the White House.
