Civil rights complaint filed against UCSB on behalf of student government president Thursday
ISLA VISTA, Calif. – On Thursday, the Louis D. Brandeis Center for Human Rights Under Law filed a federal civil rights complaint against the University of California Santa Barbara on behalf of student government president Tessa Veksler.
The national legal advocacy group, established to advance the civil and human rights of the Jewish people, filed the complaint on behalf of Veksler due to "severe and persistent anti-Semitic bullying and harassment on campus by her peers, based on her Jewish shared ancestry and ethnicity", stated the complaint filed Thursday with the U.S. Department of Education's Office for Civil Rights.
Specifically, the Brandeis Center alleges that the University violated the Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 which prohibits discrimination on the basis of race, color, and national origin at educational institutions that receive federal funding.
Your News Channel covered when UC Santa Barbara's Multi-Cultural Center and its affiliated Instagram profile became the site of acute protest in February of this year.
Some messages directly targeted Veksler and resulted in the temporary closure of the building and shut down of the Center's Instagram profile.
Below is the post from the University's Multi-Cultural Center's Instagram before it was taken down.
Images of posters and social media messages were included in the Brandeis Center's civil rights complaint, two of which are featured below.
According to the complaint, Veksler reported the harassment and her concerns to University administrators around Dec. 10, 2023, and the University's Office of Equal Opportunity and Discrimination Prevention failed to respond to her report directly for over three months.
In response to the signs posted in February in and on the Multi-Cultural Center, the University issued a public statement that read in part, "The campus was distressed to learn of incidents over the weekend that included offensive social media messages and signage on one of our buildings. The signage has been removed and campus is conducting a bias incident review based on potential discrimination related to protected categories that include religion, citizenship, and national or ethnic origin. The posting of such messages is a violation of our principles of community and inclusion."
However, the civil rights complaint noted, that response did not specify anti-Semitic hostility, the exclusion of Jews from the Multi-Cultural Center, nor the targeting of Veksler.
Veksler did not file any allegations through the University's internal grievance procedures the civil rights complaint acknowledged.
In April, a student government poster featuring Veksler was vandalized detailed the complaint.
The Brandeis Center shared that Veksler was also doxxed, the act of publishing personal information by an unauthorized person, when her personal phone number was posted on Instagram on Mar. 5, 2024.
According to the complaint, Veksler feared for her safety, suffered from panic attacks, and took her final exams for the fall semester online to stay off campus and avoid harassment.
The civil rights complaint seeks a series of remedies including a full investigation of discriminatory and harassing conduct directed at Veksler, outreach to the broader Jewish community at UC Santa Barbara, updating the University's policies and training, and requests that the University issue a statement condemning anti-Semitic harassment.
In response to the civil rights complaint, the University of California Santa Barbara issued the following response, "The university is committed to supporting our students and to investigating and addressing all reports made to it. We look forward to working with the Department of Education."
