During my time as a Senator at UC Berkeley, I worked on an extensive project that culminated in the creation of Cal’s Multicultural Student Development Taskforce. This taskforce was created immediately after a series of meetings with university officials, letter writing campaigns, and protests at UC Berkeley over the administration cutting multicultural education programs down to unbelievable levels.

The Multicultural Student Development Taskforce was tasked with writing a report to the Chancellor on the status of students of color at UC Berkeley. As such, the taskforce decided that it would be appropriate to first trace the historical trajectory of students of color for the last several decades till now. In addition, the taskforce was tasked with recommending a course of action to create an environment for students of color to succeed at Berkeley. The twelve key areas we identified were:

1. Safe Space, Sense of Community, and Sense of Belonging
2. Cultural and Cross-Cultural Identity Development
3. Personal and Social Support
4. Student Leadership Development
5. Mentoring and Networking
6. Academic Support
7. Respect and Intellectual Visibility
8. Student Retention
9. Increased Staff Support
10. Student Outreach
11. Intersectionality
12. Need for Ongoing Development and a Permanent Advisory Structure

Some highlights from the report include investing an additional $600,000 a year to MSD, increasing MSD’s physical space, and creating a multicultural advisory council to ensure student input in the future of these offices.

The success of the final report personally meant a lot to me. Everything from the themes we ultimately recommended to the Chancellor down to the wording of every single sentence was scrutinized. I invite you to to read the full report below.

Please click here for a PDF version of the report.

Update: Here is a searchable version of the document below (link)

In the Media

Chancellor’s Task Force on Multicultural Student Development: http://diversity.berkeley.edu/chancellors-task-force-multicultural-student-development

Big boosts for Multicultural Student Development programs: http://newscenter.berkeley.edu/2013/07/09/multicultural-student-development/

Chancellor announces new task force on multicultural student development: http://www.dailycal.org/2013/02/12/chancellor-announces-new-taskforce-on-multicultural-student-development/

Campus announces increase in resources for multicultural student development: http://www.dailycal.org/2013/07/10/campus-announces-increase-in-resources-for-multicultural-student-development/

Protesters occupy Eshleman Hall, press for multiculturalism: http://www.dailycal.org/2012/11/27/protesters-occupy-eshleman-hall-to-press-for-multiculturalism-on-campus/