UC Berkeley students, staff left in limbo after Lupe Gallegos-Diaz suspension | Campus

To Ph.D. student Alexis Meza, Lupe Gallegos-Diaz — who directed the Chicanx Latinx Student Development office — was a “pillar” of the UC Berkeley Latine community.

But since she was abruptly placed on administrative leave in August, Meza, alongside CLSD staff and the ethnic studies department, have been scrambling to pick up the pieces.

The Chicanx Latinx Leadership Seminar, a DeCal course Gallegos-Diaz taught alongside students, was canceled last week, according to Emma Enríquez, an administrative assistant for the CLSD office and an ASUC senator endorsed by the Latine community. Enríquez said it’s the biggest and one of the oldest seminars that CLSD runs.

“This is a course where students had no idea that it was going to be canceled at all,” Enríquez said. She says many students found out it was canceled when they showed up for class. “It just kind of has put us at a halt, because now we have to completely reimagine what that programming looks like, and how we’re going to be able to push that out.”

Enríquez says students were “devastated” and many had to scramble to find new units to take just days before the deadline to add classes without a fee.

She’s also been working with the seminar’s instruction team to turn the course’s content into a series of workshops, the first of which will begin Sept. 16.

Lorena Oropeza, chair of the department of ethnic studies, said the class was canceled because she could not find another available instructor whose qualifications matched those of Gallegos-Diaz.

Gallegos-Diaz also taught a first-year seminar for students in the Casa Magdalena Mora Theme Program, a housing theme program for Latine students. Though this course wasn’t canceled, Meza, a graduate student fellow for the Casa Program, says he’s struggling without Gallegos-Diaz.

“Lupe really is the person that we would go to for advice on the curriculum, for advice on how we should navigate the week’s seminar, the conversations that we should have,” Meza said. “Now that Lupe is gone, it’s kind of like, who do we lean to?”

Without Gallegos-Diaz, Meza says the CLSD office’s small staff is “overwhelmed” by her responsibilities. According to Enríquez, Lupe was the faculty sponsor for the CLSD-run DeCals and managed the collection of most of the center’s funding.

Meza added that CLSD has also had to pause its annual Sharing Wisdoms Across Generations event — a weekend career event connecting Casa Program students to Latine-identifying alumni — because Gallegos-Diaz was so vital to running the event.

Faculty, community members and students such as Meza and Garcia have organized against Gallegos-Diaz’s suspension, demanding transparency from campus.

More than 2,300 people signed a “Thrive 4 Lupe” petition calling for transparency about her suspension from campus.

Enríquez also worked with the ASUC to pass a resolution condemning campus’s decision to place Gallegos-Diaz on administrative leave.

“I just feel that the university has to be much more transparent when they do something like this, because Lupe is an invaluable part of the campus community,” said Harvey Dong, a continuing UC Berkeley lecturer in Asian American studies. “We all want to know what’s going on and what’s happening. I talk to other professors, and they all say that they feel that she’s being unjustly mistreated.”

According to Adrian Garcia, Co-Executive Lead of Brown Issues at UC Berkeley, CLSD has not been able to get in touch with Gallegos-Diaz since her suspension.

Last week, the California Latino Legislative Caucus wrote a letter to Chancellor Rich Lyons demanding Gallegos-Diaz’s reinstatement. When asked questions pertaining to the letter, campus spokespeople referred The Daily Californian to a previous statement that states they cannot comment on personnel matters.

“We are doing the best we can, but we really need Lupe back because Lupe is the corazón, the beating heart of all of these initiatives,” Meza said. “It’s like, well, what’s our North Star now? … It honestly feels like we’ve been backstabbed by a division that has told us they want to be a Latinx thriving institution.”