UC Berkeley Chancellor Rich Lyons canceled all semesterly and yearly meetings with student and community groups, sparking a mix of hesitation, frustration and approval. 

Instead, members of the chancellor’s cabinet, rather than Lyons himself, will meet with groups. While some organizations believe it’s beneficial to meet with campus leaders who are focused on their specific causes, others believe the chancellor is abdicating his responsibility to meet with student groups.

All student groups that held recurring meetings with the chancellor, except for the ASUC and Graduate Assembly leadership, had their meetings canceled July 25. 

“I was very surprised, to be honest,” said Madison Zaragoza, the external director of the Queer Alliance Resource Center, or QARC. “When you think of Berkeley, you think of progressiveness and open-mindedness, especially with policy and politically related things. This felt like a giant step back from what we do as a precedent of liberalism, that he’s so unwilling to hear what his shortcomings are, or what we could need more support in.” 

According to Zaragoza, the meetings with the chancellor were not always helpful — sometimes he would defer to members of his senior leadership who were more familiar with policies QARC was interested in, such as those related to gender-inclusive bathrooms.

In meetings with the cabinet, Zaragoza said the chancellor’s senior leadership members were “more well-versed” than she expected and had a “genuine willingness” to answer questions, help and follow up. 

“I feel like (the meetings will) be just as productive as they have been in the past  — (the chancellor) himself isn’t fully versed on everything happening,” Zaragoza said. “His cabinet is more involved. However, it’s more about what it represents, more than anything. Him being unwilling to meet with these organizations in such a trying political time … it’s almost like he’s turning a blind eye.”

Four student groups received the email informing them of the meeting cancellations — bridges Multicultural Resource Center, or bridges MRC, Latiné Caucus, QARC and the Triad. The Triad consists of the Black Student Union, the Black Recruitment and Retention Center and African American Student Development. 

Campus also canceled meetings with six campus advisory committees that primarily hold administrative and faculty membership — Disability and Accessibility Planning, LGBTQ+ Communities at Cal, Campus Joint Oversight Committee on Parking, Police Accountability and Community Safety, Status of Women and Sustainability. Meetings were also canceled with one community advisory group, the Asian American and Pacific Islander Standing Committee. 

“While we acknowledge this shift affects all student organizations across campus, it carries particular weight for BIPOC-led and cultural community spaces whose very existence emerged from protest, advocacy, and the demand for institutional recognition,” bridges MRC, which focuses on the recruitment and retention of underrepresented students, wrote in an Instagram statement. bridges MRC declined to comment for this story. 

Access to the chancellor varies across different groups — bridges MRC said in its statement that, in lieu of chancellor meetings, they were offered the option of instead inviting the chancellor to its events and meeting with members of the chancellor’s cabinet.

Jonathan Simon, a law professor and a part of the Campus Independent Advisory Board on Police Accountability and Community Safety, said in an email that while the advisory board reports directly to Marc Fisher, the vice chancellor for administration, he still had the chance to meet with the chancellor just a week ago and they “expect to have continuing access.” 

According to campus spokesperson Dan Mogulof, meetings were canceled because Lyons and his team believed the groups’ needs were best addressed by senior campus leaders who had more direct engagement with the issues they faced. 

“These changes were designed to increase and improve accountability, responsiveness, and communication around the needs and interests of these student groups and the communities they represent,” Mogulof said in an email.

Similar to bridges MRC, QARC was told in an email that they would instead meet with members of the chancellor’s cabinet, Interim Vice Chancellor for Equity and Inclusion Fabrizio Mejia and Vice Chancellor for Student Affairs Steve Sutton.

This comes at a time when President Donald Trump has taken a sledgehammer to DEI efforts in public and private institutions. Federal cuts to grants for language classes, the recruitment of students from disadvantaged backgrounds and DEI have placed financial strain on campus. UC has also made its own decisions to cut fellowships for women and minority postdoctoral researchers and eliminate diversity statements in hiring, seemingly in response to federal pressures. 

In its statement, bridges MRC said these stressors mean that the chancellor has an obligation to cultivate a meaningful relationship with them, especially as an organization focused on serving underrepresented minorities. However, Julia Schaletzky, campus professor and co-chair of the Campus Advisory Committee on the Status of Women, suggested that it means the chancellor has even less time to meet with student groups, and that it makes more sense to delegate the work to his cabinet, where they can more effectively make change.

“Despite people having questions about it on our committee, it ended up being really positive for us,” Schaletzky said. “I think the question is, what do students want to achieve? If they want to make change, it helps to figure out who the question should be addressed to, because sometimes it’s better not to go all the way to the top, but to those who have the power.” 

Within the span of a week, she said Vice Chancellor Fabrizio Mejia was able to connect them directly with campus decision makers, which led them to apply for a grant application for safety improvements across campus. She also feels that Mejia is more accessible because the committee no longer has the anxiety of preparing a letter to the chancellor, which felt very “high stakes.” 

Last week, the ASUC hosted a Q&A meeting with Lyons and his cabinet, which drew a packed house to the senate chambers. According to ASUC Executive Vice President Isha Chander, more than 200 people wanted to attend, many of whom had previously scheduled meetings with the chancellor that were canceled. 

“The chancellor coming into spaces that have been historically hypermarginalized is important,” Chander said. “So many students want to be seen and heard by the chancellor … the fact that our room reached capacity and people had to watch the livestream should be evidence of the necessity and desire to be heard by the chancellor.”