Following a racist incident on campus which targeted the black student community, CAMERA-supported group Mustangs United for Israel condemned the bigoted action and pulled out of a cultural fair in solidarity with the Black Students Union at Cal Poly SLO.
During a time where minority student groups were banding together in solidarity against racism, it was shocking to see that the list of demands made to the university in response to the incident, released by a cohort of organizations called the Drylongso Collective, included discrimination of its own, targeting Zionist students. “We want an increase in funding for ALL cultural clubs, with the exception of those aligned with the Zionist ideology,” was stated.
Following objections from the Jewish and Zionist community, a subsequent statement was released further defending the discrimination by the Dryslongo Collective. Not only was it defended, the collective also included a condescending lecture on what they view constitutes anti-semitism.
Each community has the right to identify discrimination against themselves. Zionist and Jewish students on campus have the right to decide what constitutes discrimination without being accused of taking away from another group. As a Zionist organization, CAMERA believes in standing up for tolerance and diversity. We urge students at Cal Poly SLO to engage in dialogue with each other in a defiant stand for unity and increased understanding of the complexities of identities in light of recent events on campus.
Last week, MUFI spoke to the Multicultural Center secretary who acknowledged that excluding Zionist clubs from the list of demands is illegal, and therefore the demand will be removed.
Further, the Multicultural Center, the same center that has confirmed in private that this demand is illegal, has shared a one-sided statement in support of the Drylongso Collective’s discriminatory stance, written by faculty from the Women & Gender Studies Department at Cal Poly SLO. It is reprehensible for professors to promote anti-semitism against their own students.
We demand that the center publicly declare their intentions of removing the illegal language.
Whether it be nationality, gender, sexual orientation, ethnicity or otherwise, discrimination of any form is absolutely unacceptable.
Aviva Slomich Hali Haber
International Campus Director Director of Campus Programs
