Department of Justice<\/a> investigation into UC Berkeley launched earlier this year.\u00a0<\/p>\n\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019re caught up in this antisemitism debate that\u2019s going across all university campuses,\u201d the junior intern said. \u201cBecause of the signage that was on our walls \u2014 even though we were open to let anyone put stuff on our walls \u2014 they (decided to) not have the space basically be open for any group, and label the campus as having transgender wellness initiatives, DEI-related initiatives and support for things that could be conflated with antisemitism.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n
Mogulof noted that the space has been temporarily closed to allow for \u201creview and reformulation of the MCC\u2019s policies and practices.\u201d He said the space is responding to criticism received from campus stakeholders and is not related to any \u201cexternal action or inquiry.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n
The interns have not received written explanations for the closure, so they do not know what they can and cannot do. So while the MCC, in name, has still been operational and the interns can work in the space, Gonzales noted they\u2019ve had to do more tabling to offer food pantry items, printing services and hygiene products, since the space is not currently open to the public.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cThe space inside the MCC is not open to the public, and that has been very upsetting for us as interns,\u201d Gonzales said. \u201cFor me, I remember when we were told that it would not be opening right away, it was really devastating. Honestly, there was a lot of shock and dismay about this news.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n
The MCC has been under scrutiny for alleged antisemitism. Interns mentioned that there were multiple instances of students coming into the space to confront interns regarding perceptions of antisemitism. Another MCC intern who is a campus senior \u2014 who wishes to remain anonymous for personal security reasons \u2014 alleged that some students would enter the space and make personal insults about people\u2019s appearance, taunting and intimidating them.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n
In one instance, the third-year MCC intern recalled a day from last academic year when UC Berkeley School of Law professor Steven Davidoff Solomon brought his class to the space for reasons she could not determine. During this trip, some interns reported witnessing some students in Solomon\u2019s class harassing professional staff.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n
Solomon has been an outspoken critic of campus administration\u2019s response to alleged antisemitism. In February, Solomon authored an op-ed for the Wall Street Journal titled \u201cMr. Trump, Investigate My Campus,\u201d after which a joint Department of Education and Department of Justice Taskforce to Combat Anti-Semitism announced an investigation into campus. Solomon is now on the payroll of the federal task force as an adviser on legal issues.<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cThe worst part of that experience was not even the fact that there was just this display of harassment, but how uncomfortable the students who he brought into the space were,\u201d the junior intern said. \u201cA lot of them were recording, and some of the students were visibly uncomfortable with the fact that their professor brought them into the space to talk to students their own age and harass us in this way.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u00a0As a result, the interns filed a report to the campus Office for the Prevention of Harassment and Discrimination, or OPHD. However, the senior intern believed campus could not act on these reports since they were unable to provide the names of the students who were allegedly verbally harassing them.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n
The Daily Californian reached out to Solomon multiple times for comment and did not receive a response.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Even though the space has been closed, the interns and staff have been finding ways to host events and gatherings at various other community spaces on campus. They have hosted and encouraged students to attend events at Educational Justice & Community Engagement and the Fannie Lou Hamer Black Resource Center. The junior intern noted that if the space was not open, they still wanted to be able to help other centers.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Mogulof noted that the space does not have a specific reopening date; however, they are targeting the beginning of spring for reopening. Interns, on the other hand, do not know if it will open by next semester but are scheduling just in case.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cThere\u2019s nothing finalized, and mostly we\u2019ve been doing phone campaigns and stuff like that,\u201d Gonzales said. \u201cOne of the biggest things that people can do as students is to ask, \u2018Why isn\u2019t the MCC open? Will they reopen soon?\u2019 Direct that to the administration because the more people who are requesting that we open, the more they will feel a need to see to it.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"UC Berkeley has indefinitely closed the Multicultural Community Center, a space known to students as the MCC that…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":69150,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[34],"tags":[40934,40933,7045,40930,40932,14761,143,145,144,40935,40936,40931,149,5907],"class_list":["post-69149","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-oakland","tag-2024-free-palestine-encampments","tag-dan-mogoluf","tag-department-of-justice","tag-mcc","tag-mila-gonzales","tag-multicultural-community-center","tag-oakland","tag-oakland-headlines","tag-oakland-news","tag-office-for-the-prevention-of-harassment-and-discrimination","tag-ophd","tag-student-union","tag-uc-berkeley","tag-wall-street-journal"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/69149","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=69149"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/69149\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/69150"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=69149"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=69149"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=69149"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}