Cerritos College Faculty Federation President and Philosophy instructor Ted Stozle addressed members of the Board of Trustees last Wednesday to ask them to practice diversity and equity at Cerritos.

The letter partly read:

Board policy describes Cerritos College as “a community-orientated institution that embraces diversity.”

The institution strives for “high academic and ethical standards, ” and affirms “the worth and dignity of our learners, regardless of age, gender, ethnicity or disability.”

We ask the board to demonstrate that its commitment to diversity is genuine. The faculty wants to teach without fear of discrimination or reprisal and have asked for contractual protection. The college has refused.

We are Cerritos College students and faculty. We are also voters. We call up the board to uphold in practice the worth and dignity of each one of us and carry out your public mission in good faith.

There was support from faculty and staff. Among those who supported the issue of diversity and equity was English and economics major Waleed Nueirat.

Afterward, Stozle and Nueirat said it was important to bring the issue up because it mattered.

“It was the first meeting I had gone to,” Nueirat said, “and I wanted to say that we as students do have an opinion on important issues.”

He added that with regard to not just diversity and equity but on any issue of importance those students and not just those who are serving in the ASCC can be invited to attend board of trustees meetings.

As long as he has attended Cerritos, Nueirat said that one way that board members can invite students to meeting is by creating flyers or to publicize about the meetings.

“I have never seen that.”

For Stozle it was about not only CCFF having been concerned not only with improving wages, benefits, and working conditions for faculty, but with helping to establish a campus climate based on inclusion, fairness, and respect.

“We (the CCFF) are distressed that although the Board of Trustees professes to value cultural diversity,” he explained, “so far they have been unwilling to have their bargaining team agree to include a non-discrimination article in our contract that would be subject to binding arbitration.

But Stozle said that in seeing that students such as ASCC President-Elect Jason Macias and ASCC Vice President Michael Barrita, as well as philosophy major Gredma Casasola, with the addition to economic instructor Solomon Namala and Project HOPE coordinator Manuel Candelario have concern.

“I am happy to see that student leaders also recognize that student success requires a campus climate,” he said, “and is based on inclusion, fairness and respect.”