At Cabrillo College near Santa Cruz, Nikia Chaney stands out. You can spot her bright pink hair from a distance. She’s also the only Black professor out of the community college’s 165 tenured or tenure-track faculty.
Cabrillo College has 1 full-time Black faculty member out of 165 Why campuses struggle with diversity kazu.org - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from kazu.org Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.
“Progress remains slow,” according to a recent report on faculty diversity at California’s community colleges. For Nikia Chaney, the sole full-time Black faculty member at Cabrillo College, the experience is personal.
"If it's this divisive, it's not worth going forward unless we have some good consensus, I think was where the board landed," said Cabrillo Superintendent/President Matt Wetstein, paraphrasing the board's thinking. "We should not be dividing the community over the college; the college should be uniting the community and let's turn to things that we think can get people behind and united on."
Despite a recommendation by an ad hoc panel against censuring Trustee Steve Trujillo over profane posts on his personal Facebook page, the Cabrillo College Governing Board of Trustees at its Monday meeting voted 7-1 to censure Trujillo.