UNIVERSITY LIBRARY COMMITTEE ON DIVERSITY
DAVIS
ANNUAL REPORT 2001

The Diversity Committee was comprised of Pat Reynoso and Buzz Haughton (Co-chairs), Charlie Clark, Linda Moser, Kieu Truong, Pauline Roddan and Dan Goldstein, with Sandy Vella as an ex-officio member.

The Diversity Committee was responsible for five events:
On December 6, 2000, Karen Roth of the UCD Office of Diversity gave a presentation entitled Respecting Religious and Cultural Diversity. She elicited comments and discussion from participants on how to honor religious traditions such as Christmas while treating other religious traditions and holidays with equal respect.

Edgar Chen and another undergraduate student, active in the Asian Student Union, spoke on March 2, 2001 about recent conflicts and tensions at UCD between students of Asian ancestry and others. Their presentation included a slide show of a recent march on Mark Hall by students demonstrating for more institutional commitment to tolerance of diversity.

On March 22, 2001 Myra Borg, Dean of Matriculation and Student Development at Sacramento City College, gave a presentation on what it is like to deal with a student population that is extremely ethnically, culturally and financially diverse. Her talk included roleplaying to demonstrate how students reach college with varying levels of advantage and competence. She concluded her presentation with a PowerPoint presentation of the kinds of
students at SCC, a student population that UCD's will increasingly resemble as time goes on.

Richenda Wilkinson and Terri Castaneda spoke on April 11, 2000 about continuing library activities at DQU. This was a followup presentation from one given by Ms. Wilkinson and also sponsored by the Diversity Committee the year before. Ms. Castaneda spoke about the Marie Potts Collection of Native Californian basketry and oral history that she is working on.

On April 30, 2001 Rafaela Castro gave a showing of the film "Poverty In a Land of Plenty", about the strike against the DiGiorgio Fruit Corporation in Arvin, California in 1947-1948. This strike was ultimately unsuc-cessful, but it provided an impetus for farm workers, most of them Mexicans or Chicanos, to organize for better wages and working conditions that would culminate in the labor movement spearheaded by Cesar Chavez twenty years later.

The Diversity Committee is well satisfied with the list of presentations we were able to sponsor this academic year. Attendance at the events was mostly excellent, and library staff took part whenever they were invited to share insights and opinions. We were unable to arrange to have ASUCD representatives talk about recent troubling instances of racism and
homophobia in ASUCD elections, but the co-chairs are hopeful that next year's co-chairs will succeed in scheduling a talk about this issue. We look forward to the new committee's continuing the informative and educational kinds of presentations we were fortunate enough to put together for '00-'01.