The University of Missouri protests led by Black students that prompted the resignations of System President Tim Wolfe and Chancellor R. Bowen Loftin in last November had ripple effects across the nation. In solidarity with their counterparts in Missouri, Black students across the nation held protests of their own highlighting diversity and inclusion shortcomings on their respective campuses, including institutions such as Ithaca College and Yale University and, in the Pacific Northwest, the University of Oregon (UO).
On November 12, 2015, the Black Student Task Force (BSTF) held a protest on the campus of UO, expressing the view that the inclusion struggles of their counterparts at Mizzou mirror their own struggles at Oregon’s public flagship institution.
The BSTF met with new UO President Michael Schill and other campus administrators that day to highlight the marginalization and racism they said they felt on a persistent basis at UO. On November 17, the Black Student Task Force issued to UO administrators a list of 12 demands they said would redress pervasive discrimination against Black students on UO’s campus.
In response to the BSTF list of demands, OU administrators created 13 working groups to address each of the 12 student demands point by point, with an additional working group on African-American student advising and retention. BSTF Demand No. 2 pertains to the creation of an African-American Opportunities program led by Black-identifying individuals to boost Black student enrollment specifically, similar to an existing Opportunities program for the Latino student body and community.
Though Black students represented 2 percent of the student body for the 2015-16 academic year, Latinos made up 9 percent and Asian and Pacific Islander students represented 6 percent of the population, respectively.
Some point out that UO’s Black student population mirrors the low Black population across the state, as the Black population in Oregon is 2.1 percent according to 2015 census statistics. Notably, a constitutional ban against Blacks settling in Oregon was not repealed until the 1920s, according to an article posted to the City of Portland’s Bureau of Planning and Sustainability’s website.
Yet BSTF member and graduate law student Kena Gomalo says half of UO’s Black students are from California and UO could do more to recruit Black students from Oregon.
