Students plan to walkout Thursday, Sept. 27, to protest the alleged changes to the queer studies, gender studies and ethnic studies under the Executive Order 1100-R.
The walkout will commence in front of the fountain next to Bayramian Hall at 12:30 p.m.
On that day, students plan to march in organized protest to the Faculty Senate meeting at the Northridge Center in the University Student Union. This is when students have a platform to speak their minds and be heard.
“We’re the students, and we got power, and if you haven’t noticed … trust,” a grad student, who goes by the name Chino, said.
Wednesday is the 49th EOP Celebration, and students are urged to boycott CSUN sellers and instead buy from the Revolutionary Scholars student vendors in front of Bayramian Hall, who will be selling various snacks.
This walkout hopes to send the message to CSUN administrators that action must be taken and that this change will impact the large number of students enrolled in these courses.
So far there has been no data showing any benefits to this change. The students claim that the implemented changes in EO 1100-R made in writing and math courses have already proved to be disappointing.
One such student is Karen Loong, a senior majoring in Asian American studies.
“I feel upset about the institution trying to implement executive orders and taking away students’ ability to learn about their own culture,” Loong said. “We have a history that needs to be told. Because of institutionalized racism, we’re constantly being taken out of the story.”
Another student protester, Diego Paniagua, claims that, after these executive orders are fully implemented, CSUN will lose between 250 and 300 classes within the ethnic studies departments — including Chicano/a studies, Asian American studies, queer studies and women’s studies.
“That is a loss of faculty,” Paniagua said. “It is a loss of classes, and they’re robbing us of a quality education that we came to this university for, and they’re choosing to try to sweep this under the rug with a uniformed answer.”
