Latino Students React To Racism At UCLA

MEChA de UCLA recently held a demonstration on campus in a response to discrimination at the university.  Earlier in the week, racial and sexist slurs were scrawled on a door of an apartment in Westwood near the UCLA campus.

A photo of the vandalized door was posted to Latino Rebels’ Facebook page last week, showing the anti-Mexican, misogynist insults.  According to reports, though one of the three residents of the apartment is a Guatemalan-Salvadoran woman, the only Mexican-American in the apartment is a male.

As told to UCLA’s student paper, The Daily Bruin:

The hate crime is the most stark incident to happen recently, but minorities at UCLA face discrimination on a daily basis, said Luis Roman, a fifth-year Chicana and Chicano studies and women’s studies student.

“I think this incident was the last straw that we could take as a community,” said Roman, who is on a MEChA steering committee to plan future events and action against discrimination on campus for all minorities, not just the Latino community.

This isn’t surprising considering that last year another UCLA student was in the news for making racist statements.  It is disheartening given that a prestigious institution dedicated to higher learning, located in one of the most ethnically diverse cities in the world continues to have a problem with discrimination and racism.

In order to prevent future attacks against underrepresented students at UCLA,  MEChA reportedly wants to meet with other minority groups on campus to plan other protests and demonstrations and will meet with the university’s administration to “take proactive steps against a hostile campus climate.”