The Big C

Campus Climate & Equity Fee – Referendum

This fee provides support and growth as well as enables stability and growth for current comprehensive student support services and programs for the recruitment and retention of various student populations, and improves the campus climate for all students.

The original Campus Climate & Equity Fee was passed in 2017 and will expire at the end of spring semester of 2027. If this referendum passes it will start in the fall 2025 semester and will expire after the spring semester of 2035.

Since 2017 revenue from the Big Community (Big C) student fee referendum has allowed EJCE to meet the original goals. However, the needs of communities, the climate on campus for historically marginalized communities and emerging communities have grown substantially over the last seven years, and the growing needs have significantly outpaced resources that the current referendum can support. While there was an initial surplus of funds as EJCE staffed up, the significant staffing needs are projected to exhaust the surplus and rise beyond current funding resources by 2025. 

When the fee referendum was passed in 2017, the South, Southwest Asian, and North African (SSWANA) Initiative and the Pacific Islander (PI) Initiative were not yet established (2019). Today, Asian Pacific American Student Development (APASD) is composed of the Asian American Political Activation Program, the Pacific Islander (PI) Initiative, and the South, Southwest Asian, and North African (SSWANA) Initiative. 

When the Big C was passed in 2017 the university was only one year into collecting demographic data on the LGBTQ community. Each year undergraduate and graduate students are increasingly indicating their sexual orientation upon enrollment and Berkeley now has a significant and visible identified population of LGBTQ+ undergraduate and graduate students enrolled. This increase in visibility of the LGBTQ+ population has produced demand for programs and services across EJCE. 

Additionally, the establishment of several more physical community spaces (Fannie Lou Hamer Black Resource Center, the Native Community Center, the Latinx Student Resource Center, and the forthcoming Asian American/Pacific Islander/SSWANA Center) have created a greater need for programming, and student and professional staffing to run the spaces. There has also been a constant increase in funding requests for the Student Initiated Project funding established by the initial Campus Climate & Equity student fee referendum. 

In order to address ongoing student needs and demand, this fee will sustain and provide stability for the resources and programs offered by Centers for Educational Justice & Community Engagement (EJCE). EJCE is composed of African American Student Development (AASD) and the Fannie Lou Hamer Black Resource Center, Asian Pacific American Student Development (APASD houses the Asian American Political Activation Program, the Pacific Islander (PI) Initiative, and the South, Southwest Asian, and North African (SSWANA) Initiative) and the APASD Community Center, Chicanx Latinx Student Development (CLSD) and the Latinx Student Resource Center, Multicultural Community Center (MCC), Native American Student Development (NASD) and the Native Community Center, and the Gender Equity Resource Center (GenEq) which houses programs and services for the campus Women andLGBTQ+ populations, as well as offers programming that addresses Sexual Harassment and Sexual Violence issues on campus). 

The Campus Climate and Equity Fee will provide continuing funding for EJCE to: 

• Expand and retain student employment opportunities throughout EJCE. Student employees play a critical role in meeting the needs of students and delivering programs/services that EJCE offers. EJCE offices and centers employ both undergraduate and graduate students. Because the offices are student centered, maintaining the compensated involvement of students to support functionality of the EJCE cluster and to research and develop student support strategies and initiatives are essential to the further development and engagement for communities at UC Berkeley. These student employment opportunities are open to all students at UC Berkeley

• Continue to address to diverse and growing needs of our graduate and professional student populations through dedicated internships, targeted programming, and inclusive advising

• Address the needs of student communities and initiatives that have been established in the time since the original referendum was passed and require growing resources to meet growing student needs, such as the Pacific Islander Initiative and South, Southwest Asian, and North African (SSWANA) Initiative

• Provide funding for student initiated and student centered projects related to campus climate and community engagement

• Address the needs of our undergraduate and graduate student LGBTQ+ community; this community is a significant and growing segment of the campus population whose experiences and needs are cross cultural, complex and often misunderstood

• Support professional staffing across EJCE to support and advise the large populations of underserved UC Berkeley campus communities. The fee supports holistic student support and development by funding several of the positions that are critical to those services and resources.

• Provide educational workshops available for students, faculty and staff around campus climate issues.

Breakdown of the Fee 

The fee will be assessed for all undergraduate and graduate students, including students in self-supporting graduate degree programs, starting in Fall 2025 at the rate of $63 per semester. The fee will not be assessed for summer session students. In accordance with campus policy, one-third (33.33%) of the fee will be returned to financial aid to help offset the cost of this fee for students who are eligible for financial aid; and the fee will expire after ten years (spring 2035). These funds will be allocated as detailed in the table below.

Initial breakdown of the $63 fee per semester 

Oversight of the Fee 

Oversight of the fee will be conducted with feedback from three entities: 

• EJCE student advisory board with leaders from ASUC and each of the program’s student associations; 
• EJCE staff, faculty, and alumni advisory board; and 
• Consultation and regular reporting to CSF (Committee on Student Fees). 

The fee may be increased, subject to review by the Chancellor’s Advisory Committee on Student Services and Fees and the Chancellor’s approval, up to but not exceeding 3% per year to adjust for annual inflation according to the February SF Bay Area Consumer Price Index for all Urban Consumers.

Background 

The Centers for Educational Justice & Community Engagement (EJCE) at UC Berkeley is a collaboration of offices and centers that advocate for, build capacity with and dialogue among and across diverse communities. Our community engagement approach enriches the academic success of students while fostering a campus climate that honors the dignity of all people. Each partner space is steeped in rich and vibrant legacies and established community-centered praxes of educational justice: leadership development, access, activism, academic excellence and social justice. Our work reflects interconnected identities and experiences through our collective and individual commitments to support and advance future global leaders while upholding Berkeley’s mission. 

In 2017, The Campus Climate and Equity Fee was passed and provided funding to support the EJCE cluster. The original student fee was passed at $29.00/semester and is currently at $33.75/semester (annual increases linked to the San Francisco Consumer Price Index). This fee referendum would replace the original referendum (scheduled to sunset in the spring of 2027) and increase the fee to $63/semester, and reset the sunset date to the spring semester of 2035. 

The original goals for the referendum were to: 

• Increase EJCE programming budgets
• Provide funding for student-centered and student-initiated direct service projects that focus on needs of underrepresented and historically marginalized populations including educational projects & programs impacting the broader community and the climate of the Berkeley campus. 
• Expand EJCE student staffing and employment opportunities. 
• Increase EJCE professional staffing. 
• Address recent staff losses due to layoffs and retirements, particularly in the Multicultural Community Center and Cross-Cultural Student Development. 
• Address staffing inequities within the cluster. 
• Address campus climate issues across campus through increase in staffing, reach and availability of staff to do more work on internal campus climate as well as outward facing work in the public eye.