Incidents of Racism at UC Berkeley: Testimony of Dante Green

My name is Dante Green. I actually went to Vallejo High School, which is about 30 minutes that way. I started Xavier last year. I first went to school in Atlanta, but my mom came down with cancer. I came back home and she passed in December 22nd of last year.

The Huricane displaced me and a lot of our friends, especially my girlfriend. When we first came here, it was very good. The cameras were in here and it was open arms, and a great experience. And after the cameras were gone, we were sent to our department, where our majors were located, and we were kind of left to roam this campus and find our way through it.

Our experience on this campus has been very tough, because we don't want to get attached to people or teachers that we would usually get attached to. And we have a lot of concerns about what is in store for us in the future.

Just by reading this petition, I did not realize that there have been 396 of the faculty [laid off or placed on unpaid leave] at our school, at my school, and that was one of our concerns.

The Mayor went on television, I think Monday, and explained that the City is not going to be ready for another six months. But our universities want us to come back in January, which doesn't really make sense to a lot of the students.

All we’re kind of asking is just to go to school for this spring. Me and my girlfriend are not into taking anybody else’s spot in seeking a degree, but we do not know where we’re going to end up next semester.

And the transfer program at Cal that’s set up for us is not in our best interests, because we lose time. We’ll have to go to a junior college and meet new people again. And it’s really already been tough enough.

For some of the freshmen who have transferred over, they only spent a week in New Orleans and they had to resettle again, here. And they really are scared, and lot of our families are scared, for us to go back. My father doesn't want me to go back, and that’s kind of like the only family I really have. And a lot of the students’ families just are really, really worried.

In a conversation with the Administration yesterday, I came forth with my questions, and a lot of the questions were not answered. In the end, what I guess the message was, “This is a very complicated situation and it takes a lot of thought, and you need to put a lot of thought into it.”

And I tried to say that we are putting a lot of thought into it, but it doesn't really matter. We need your help. If anything can be done we would greatly appreciate it. And the numbers on campus were defi¬nitely surprising for me. My high school was predominantly black, and to see just so many black students here was pretty weird. I didn't really understand it.

And since I’ve been here, I’ve learned a lot of knowledge and see why, and I definitely think there's a problem. That’s about all I have to say. Thank you very much.