Approximately 100 University of Arizona faculty, students and staff hand-delivered a DEIA petition Thursday to the Old Main building, which houses the offices of UA’s senior leaders including President Suresh Garimella and Interim Provost Ron Marx.
The petition, signed by 3,317 faculty, students, staff and alumni as of Thursday morning, was first sent to Garimella Feb. 25, with 1,951 signatures at that time, to urge him to reinstate diversity, equity, inclusion, and access (DEIA) statements and resources in the face of Trump administration pressure. This took place right after the UA deleted the words “committed to diversity and inclusion” from its widely used land-acknowledgement statement and took down its website for the Office of Diversity and Inclusion.
University of Arizona students, staff, and faculty drop off their signed petitions supporting diversity, equity, inclusion, and access (DEIA) initiatives into a container at Old Main on Thursday. The event was organized by UA Resist, which gathered people at the Administration Building and then walked in a single file to Old Main.
The UA administration was responding to a letter from the U.S. Department of Education to universities deeming race-conscious programming, admissions, financial aid, and more to be illegal discrimination, and pledging to withhold federal funding if universities don’t end such programs.
Thursday’s rally, which started at noon at the administration building near the UA Mall and included a march to Old Main, was focused on saving the university’s Cultural and Resource Centers or CRCs including African American Student Affairs, Native American Student Affairs, LGBTQ Affairs, the Women and Gender Resource Center and the Adalberto and Ana Guerrero Student Center.
“Many of the cultural and resource centers were developed from student activism,” said Jamaica DelMar, UA director of African American Student Affairs, at the rally. “We know the research behind the importance of these centers — they help students be retained and graduate. We’re hoping that the president (and) administration here will see the importance and respond and validate that these spaces are really important to our students.”
DelMar said people at the CRCs hadn’t heard from Garimella on his perspective on the centers and the work they do. Safe spaces on campus for different communities, they employ more than 80 people, the majority of them students, she said. “Every space on this campus is safe for white folks, and Black folks haven’t felt that since the university was established,” she said, adding that the centers were open to everyone.
“How do you go to class and focus on your studies if you don’t have food to eat, if you don’t feel safe walking down the (UA) mall, if you don’t have a place to go and talk to a counselor who looks like you and understands some of the things you have been through?” DelMar said, as students in the background gathered with posters and chanted slogans.
The rally crowd climbed up the stairs of Old Main, where each participant submitted a signed DEIA petition into a box left at the building’s locked door. When asked if the door, which is typically kept open for the public, was locked because of the DEIA rally, UA spokesperson Mitch Zak said Garimella was out attending an Arizona Board of Regents meeting and that the administration appreciates input from the community.
“The U of A receives over $330 million in state funding as well as hundreds of millions in federal research grants and other essential resources,” Zak said. “Additionally, 13,000 students, representing 22% of the student body, received federal Pell Grant funding. As we work to comply with the laws that govern us, we will continue to be guided by the compassion and respect we have for all members of our university community.”
