Will UC Merced stand up to right-wing racism or not?

On March 6, the UC Merced College Republicans staged an event on campus in which they carried signs, including one reading “ICE ICE Baby” along with the phone number for reporting hotline and another that read “I Love Undocumented Firearms.” Both were threatening to undocumented immigrants.

I won’t attempt to speak for UCM’s undocumented community, which has its own voices. I can speak as a concerned member of the faculty who has taught at UCM since we opened our doors in 2005 and who is deeply invested in creating an environment that supports and protects students from threats of violence.

I am disgusted that some of our students would advocate for the government-sponsored ethnic cleansing of their fellow students and community members. My greatest disappointment, however, is not with the UCM College Republicans, but with the administration of UC Merced.

Racism, hate and violence directed against the most vulnerable members of our society are not new, pre-dating the administration of Donald Trump. The question facing us as a university, and as a nation, is what people of good faith are willing to do to combat these forces.

Echoing UC President Janet Napolitano, the administration at UCM has been rhetorically supportive of undocumented students. Chancellor Dorothy Leland traveled to Washington D.C. to lobby for the extension of DACA and in the wake of the most recent incident declared, “UC Merced remains committed to doing everything in its power to enable our undocumented students to pursue their education.”

But as professors are frequently reminded, talk is cheap. The real test of UCM’s commitment to undocumented students is whether we are willing to put our institutional credibility on the line outside of staged photo ops by supporting our campus codes of conduct and our professed principles of community.

The public answer to that question is apparently “no.”

In the wake of efforts by the UCM College Republicans to terrorize undocumented students, Chancellor Leland cited the First Amendment, declaring it “protects the rights of these students to express their political views, even if others would consider them offensive or harmful.”

Simply, that’s using the First Amendment as a dodge.

Though people are generally free to say what they like on a street corner, forming a club at UCM is a privilege not a right, and that privilege comes responsibilities outlined in the various codes of conduct for students and student organizations.

The First Amendment does not protect speech intended to threaten groups or individuals with violence.

Were the university to take action against the students and organization involved, it would undoubtedly be controversial and the ultimate result impossible to predict. Despite the confidence with which it is so frequently invoked, the First Amendment is rife with legal gray areas, particularly about the line between protected speech and that intended to threaten.

Institutions – and individuals – should not be judged on their actions in cases where they know victory is certain. It is only when the results are uncertain that we show our true character.

Failure to act emboldens and encourages those who would commit violence against vulnerable student populations in the future.

UCM’s leaders will undoubtedly respond by reciting all they have done for undocumented students. But I agree with historian Mark Bray, who noted that institutional commitments to providing resources for various groups “are entirely hollow if the very same institutions also provide space for individuals and groups that not only deny the humanity of these populations, but are actively organizing movements to physically deprive them of their existence.”

This story was originally published March 19, 2018 at 3:15 PM with the headline "Will UC Merced stand up to right-wing racism or not?."