Mustang News interview with President Armstrong – April 12

MN: We wanted to start off with the status of Lambda Chi, if you have any news. Has the university
decided what will happen to Lambda Chi or Kyler Watkins?

JA: Well the Lambda Chi national has really shut down Lambda Chi. We were involved in discussions
and we firmly support that so that’s been down. They’re indefinitely shut down.

MN: I’m sorry, for a minimum of a year?

JA: For a minimum but it could be indefinite. The officers all resigned, there are members [who]
resigned. I don’t know which ones, I don’t have that information, but the alumni in the national were very
upset as they should’ve been.

MN: So what about the school, are you cutting ties with Lambda Chi altogether? Are they dissolved as far
as ties with Cal Poly?

JA: We’re following right along with that action. I mean how do you shut them down twice? They’re shut
down.

KH: Our standard practice in these situations with Greek organizations is to try to let the national
organization lead us to work in collaboration with them and to arrive at decisions together with them in
the lead because it’s their national organization to really take some strong actions. We’re definitely in
support. The university took action on Monday to suspend the chapter during the review, so this will
extend the university’s separation of relationship with Lambda Chi. They have no privileges or rights of a
recognized student organization.

MN: Right. But as I understand it’s a probationary suspension until April 2019. That’s not dissolved
altogether.

KH: The national organization has not made the decision about whether or not they will dissolve them
altogether. We are still in our review.

JA: We have not made that decision either. But I think it’s a great first step. What we’re also talking
about, and we’re talking with Greek organization, that we can have rules in place that are very very clear
that if there is cultural misappropriation, racist incidents, racism, that there is zero tolerance for any Greek
organization.

MN: But that doesn’t sound like zero tolerance if it’s still a discussion. They haven’t completely cut ties
with Cal Poly.

JA: That’s not a rule that has been at place at this point. When we had the incident three or four years ago
we didn’t stand by and do nothing. What happened is, all events are registered— almost all events are
registered — Student Affairs individuals are involved so they’ve had to go through that process. What we
need to say is, “Look, there is zero tolerance going forward.” What we’re really pleased with is that
Lambda Chi national stepped up. In the past, not to get into specifics, but the nationals haven’t always
collaborated and we have eliminated chapters on campus. That’s a longer process because we have a
process. We have to gather facts and go through our tried and true process that we have on any campus.
The fact that the national stepped up; I’m pleased our alumni did that. They’re embarrassed to have to do
it, and I’m embarrassed and I’m saddened.
MN: So will there be news coming in the future about a further decision regarding their status on campus?
Do you have an expected deadline for this investigation review?

KH: No expected deadline. The national organization is going to go through what they call a membership
review. It’s a pretty intensive process where they look at and interview every person to see whether
they’re worthy of staying in the organization. Some of the commitments that the organization has made to
us is it may be that there is nobody that [they] deem worthy of remaining. That will delay them potentially
looking at recolonizing. We always have standards for organizations to recolonize on our campus.
Working through our Greek life office, those would be in place to this organization at the time that it’s
appropriate, but we do not know when that would be.

JA: Now you also ask about the individual. We are reviewing that. I can tell you that when it comes to
individuals, it’s different than an organization. Greek organizations, that’s a privilege for an organization
to exist. It’s a privilege for our student athletes, it’s a privilege for a lot of organizations. If we’re going to
continue to have fraternities in the future, we’re not going to have these incidents, period. That’s clear.
We’re going to walk through that as we do many other things. We’re not going to make knee jerk, in the
heat of the moment [decisions] even though there are many things that I would love to do. I would’ve
loved to have said Sunday, “You’re gone, you’re never coming back,” but that wouldn’t have been
appropriate for me to do as university president

MN: To the individual or to the fraternity?

JA: To the fraternity. To the individual, then, you might not like the answer, but we’re dealing with these
issues of free speech. We have had individuals in the past that have stood up on the library and spewed
awful things that if I as a person could pick them up myself and carry them off, I would’ve. We even had
someone assault a person one time, which is wrong, and we have Milo who comes on campus who I
would never invite on campus. The fact is, that we cannot have a different set of rules or interpretation of
the Constitution on campus than anywhere else in the country. That’s the problem. That review is still
going. I just want to be candid about the student or students. There’s one student with the blackface and
others.

KH: I think another layer to that is any university process related to student discipline is not something
we are able to confirm or report on based the federal privacy rights that all of our students have on our
campus. I know that will be frustrating for many folks that we’re not able to comment but we ask folks to
trust that we always follow our process when we receive information that’s worthy of a review.

JA: For me, it pained me and it was really difficult to hear all the students and the pain because of this
event. I don’t know the motives of the students but it was totally unacceptable in today’s day, and why
did everybody else let it go on? I don’t understand that. Clearly that one event and how it was handled,
very badly by the fraternity. They basically misrepresented the facts as best as we can tell yet, that’s my
opinion. That narrative is defining Cal Poly for some of its students. I read the pain in the piece that you
read. I heard the pain from students and a lot of the students that were speaking at the events, I get that. I
don’t want that and I’m going to work hard to not let that event define Cal Poly. It’s also really had a
spillover effect and there’s a tremendous amount of pain and anger going on that wish we could rollback,
we can’t. I believe we have to use this as a moment to move forward. We can rule and regulate ourselves
forward into a more inclusive and diverse campus, or we can change the hearts and minds. Quite frankly
we’re going to have to do both. We’re not going to do it simply through rules and regulations. I don’t
know why students don’t choose to embrace inclusivity and choose to have a party like that and choose to
dress like that. I don’t know why. Do they not understand or they don’t care? But we’re a university and
our job first and foremost is to educate and help people open their eyes. When I was your age, if someone
had asked me about my white privilege, I wouldn’t have known what you were talking about for two
reasons: one is I grew up in an area that was very non-diverse. Second, I was poor and I didn’t get
manifestations of my privilege until later in life. Education has opened doors for me and helped. I want us
to think about that and use this as a call. One of the clips from your website, when the students gathered
out in front of Lambda Chi: awful. They were there calling them out as they should. It was peaceful. Later
on there were some other things that happened, but that was peaceful. There [were] a lot of white students
there. Someone said, “Hey let all the white students get up front,” and they did. We’ve got to have
students that, maybe they haven’t before or they do today, understand their privilege. We’ve got to really
get at the hearts and minds of our students. Realizing that we’re not going, just like in the world around
us, we’re not going to be 100 percent. I can’t say to prospective students that there will never be an
incident at Cal Poly again. I can’t say that.

MN: [With the] campus climate surrounding race issues at Cal Poly, could you have seen this coming?
This isn’t the first time this has happened. Alpha Gamma Rho had Trump-supporting and cultural
appropriation, hateful fliers, Milo has come to campus and now he’s coming again. You said that you
weren’t educated on white privilege as a child but these are students we’re talking about and educated
faculty. What campus climate have we created for this to happen time and time again?

JA: It has happened. There will continue to be free speech events on our campus. We’re not going to
censor. You just said “Trump-supporters” I’m not going to say “You’re a Trump supporter you can’t
speak on this campus.” I’m not going to say to the College Republicans, you cannot invite a certain
speaker. I’m not going to say to the Mustang News, “You can’t write a certain thing.” I’m not going to do
that. I do believe we have made a lot of progress. We’ve made progress in diversity, we are a lot less
white than what we used to be, we had a whole quarter of discussion about the Cal Poly Opportunity
Grant. Last quarter I believe we’ve elevated the dialogue.. We’ve got Jozi, the Collective Impact going on
and then this event happens. That event has defined the climate on campus for our minority students and
students of color and many other students and that’s very very sad. But it’s my role as president to move
forward, let’s keep pushing. Our vision 2022 is a more diverse and residential campus and we’re not
going to give up. It’s a journey. There’s not a destination to this. It’s a journey.

MN: We totally understand free speech, we’re a newspaper. There is nothing the university can do to
censor free speech on campus. However, you’re also a human being, you’re also a person, you have never
outright said “I do not agree with the rhetoric Milo has spewed about sexism and racism and homophobia.

JA: You’ve never heard me say that?

MN: Well you’ve-

JA: I have said that. Chris can show you in print, I challenge you as Mustang News reporters to really be
accurate because I have said that. If you have advice for me today I’m very open as to what I can do.
Within my power, I will do that. I’m going to continue to push for more financial aid for low-income
students. I appreciate what you wrote. I don’t agree with everything you wrote. I thought it was over the
edge in a few places, but I totally support what you wrote and I’m going to keep pushing for that. I cannot
predict when a student is going to do something totally stupid. We are going to double down and do even
more to try to impact what’s going on. If you look at Week of Welcome, for example, since Keith has
been here, that has dramatically changed. Every search committee for faculty members - today they go
through implicit bias training. I tell you compared to four years ago when we had the last really
thoughtless racially related type event which really hurt our Native American community, the rhetoric
around that was very difficult, but I’m seeing even more of our white students say, “No More.” I’m not
intending to be defensive at all, this was an awful event. We’re looking to see if students have ideas on
how we can keep things from happening like that and yet not getting in the business of censoring, I’m all
for it. Including, in the future, Greeks are not guaranteed to be on campus. I’m not going to say after one
event “Oh we’re not going to have Greeks,” that’s not what I’m saying at all. What I am saying is that we
are going to hold them to a very high standard. We will push the line on free speech. We will hold them
accountable for their events as organizations. We can do that a lot more than we can the individual. This
whole environment that our country is in — you mentioned Trump, what happened on our campus after
the election — Keith and I were there we were listening, watching and hearing what our students were
saying. That is going to creep into our campus. Every year we get a whole new group of freshmen and
transfers and they’re coming from so many different directions. I believe the vast majority of them, even
though some may not show the type of understanding of inclusivity and diversity, I believe when they
leave we hope that their minds are open and they’re doing much better.

MN: Do you think [racist] events like this happen more often here at Cal Poly than at other universities?

JA: That’s something that I would only be speculating. I can tell you I talk with all of our other campus
presidents, I talk with university presidents, and it’s really clear that incidents happen on a lot of
campuses. I don’t know. To me, happening once is too many times. Like I said, if I could keep Milo from
coming, I would keep Milo from coming, but I can’t break the law.

MN: Right, you can’t keep Milo from coming but one thing that a lot of people are bringing up is the
university spent money to protect Milo and lots and lots of security. Why not make Cal Poly Republicans
foot that bill instead of students?

JA: Let me politely correct one thing that you said. We didn’t spend money to protect Milo. We spent
money to protect our students.

MN: But the gate and the guards were surrounding Spanos theatre where he was.

JA: Well we have clear time, place and manner policies that’s being discussed again right now and you’re
welcome to participate in that. But if you basically don’t take care of safety at a higher level, then you
basically censored it. And that’s just a different form of censoring something that’s really clear. You’re
asking me to do something that I can’t do.

KH: What we did with Milo was very similar to an actual set up that I did at my former university when
President Obama came to speak. We had an equal amount of protesters on the other side. The university’s
obligation with that is to make sure that everyone who has the opportunity to express their opinion gets
the opportunity to do so in a safe non-disruptive way.

MN: Are there any concrete steps that the university is taking right now to show the campus community
that this will never happen again?

JA: There’s a whole list of things that we are doing, that we will continue to do. Think about the question
you just asked me. I’ve been talking on the phone with prospective students and parents. I talked with a
mother, father and a student I assume of color, I didn’t ask. They were asking questions, it didn’t matter. I
said, “I want you to come to Cal Poly. This is a safe campus. We are going to make sure that you’re safe.”
This incident is awful and our students had every right to be upset and protest, but we’re working hard.
We’re working through the realm of Prop 209, to get more African-American students on this campus.
We’re pushing for the Cal Poly Opportunity Grant to get more Hispanic, Latino and Asian students on
this campus. Jozi De Leon has only been on campus less than a year, is doing things with the Collective
Impact. There’s a lot of things going on. So no, I cannot promise that this will never occur again on our
campus. If any campus president said they were going to promise, that an event like this happened, they
might say that at a private university. I don’t think if he or she said it from a public university that they
could ever back it up. I can’t control what people are going to do. Now, we’re going to work really hard
and we’ve got an amazing Vice President for Student Affairs and we’ve expanded our multicultural
programs, we’ve expanded what we’re doing in orientation, in many, many things. It pains me that we
still had that happen. The fact that he painted his face black is stupid, and then everybody else let it go. I
wish I had a way to tell you that this would never happen on this campus again, I would love to tell you
that. But I also can’t say something that is not true.

KH: I think it goes back to our roles as educators, we need to continue to work with our entire student
body, but particularly our students who hold privilege to understand what that privilege means, the
choices that they make, what their intents [are] vs. the impact that it has on our community, so that
students, when they get into situations like that, they know better. So we need to continue so they have all
of the tools and all of the education to make sure that when someone gets into that situation they can say,
“That’s not the right thing to do, that’s not going to be welcoming and inclusive to others on this
campus.”

MN: But this wasn’t one person, this was a whole group that had a gangster-themed party.

JA: I know, it makes it even worse. I agree with you. We’re going to continue to push and we’re going to
continue to do things at orientation. We are extremely blunt about racism, cultural, racial slurs, sexual
assault, the perils of drinking, in orientation. We cannot let up and we’ve got to do even more, but we also
have to think about how we’re going to have to keep that going. But again back to my point. Are we
gonna regulate and rule ourselves into a more inclusive campus? Or are we going to really affect the
hearts and minds of our students? And it’s both. It’s both because people are coming here to continue to
grow as an adult. So they come here. And we want to be a more residential campus. In the future if
students say ‘Well it’s not the same party atmosphere.’ That’s okay you can go somewhere else. If in the
future all the Greeks are on campus — five years from now, if all the Greeks are on campus — I hope
that’s where they are. And there is even more opportunities for education and also regulation. So it’s gotta
be education and regulation. Now, from an individual, you know people come in from many different
walks of life. So, one of the biggest things that we’re doing - you look at the Collective Impact model.
What she’s [de Leon] doing there is there’s three groups. And the really cool thing about the Collective
Impact, and one of the reasons we hired Jozi, is when you see an event like this happen and when we see
or hear anecdotal comments of how a student is treated in a class, or a faculty member is treated, or a
faculty member says something to a student. It’s not getting down to the ground level enough. And she’s
got three committees: campus climate, curriculum, recruitment and retention. So, one of the first things
she came in and said ‘Wow, you’ve done a lot as a campus.’ She came in as a new person, and said
‘You’ve done a lot.’ You should probably just sit down and ask her that sometime. You’ve done a lot —
and now she’s taken it to another level because this collective impact model — it’s not some simple thing
that’s gonna make it work. We have got to get people of my color — white males in particular — to own
this and really step up. We have got to get more students of color and more low-income students on this
campus. We have got to find donors that are gonna provide scholarships to get more minority students on
this campus. We are — as we move forward and continue discussion of the Cal Poly Opportunity Fee. If
we’re able to move that forward, one of the things that I think we need to highlight is: “Let’s hire more
faculty, and more diverse faculty.” And we’ve got examples of the College of Liberal Arts, the College of
Engineering, and others, where we’re making progress. And then this thing happens. It’s devastating. It’s
devastating. And it’s not that it’s devastating to our progress, it's that it hurt so many of our students,
faculty and staff.

MN: What is your plan for addressing prospective students and parents at Open House, in all these recent
events?
JA: I’m going to be work[ing] on that — work on that later today. But I’m going to be transparent about
it. Right up front, I’m going to say something to the effect, “I know you’ve heard in the media that we had
an incident on campus. It was horrific. It caused a lot of pain for our students, our faculty and staff. And
it’s causing many of you to question Cal Poly. But I want you to know, that we are committed, this
campus is safe, we care about you, and we want you. Every class has been the most diverse [at Cal Poly]
and the highest performance indicators, than the one before it. And we need you to still believe in Cal
Poly. I cannot guarantee you that something like this won’t happen again because this is the world we live
in. But I can tell you we are taking steps to do our very best to make sure it doesn’t happen again. And
when it does happen, we’ll hold people accountable appropriate to our process.” So, I’m going to be very
transparent about it. I hope you would agree with that.

MN: And, I know you mentioned the Cal Poly Opportunity Grant and Fee — a lot of students are saying
‘Why are we charging students this money? Why not make the campus a more welcoming place for
people of color? Why not provide more resources for them: more groups, more events? Why does it come
down to adding yet another fee on students?’

JA: The essence of that is we have out-of-state students that are getting quite a reasonable deal to come to
Cal Poly. And, when push comes to shove, we have very limited resources. And, the very thing that
you’re talking about doing, we’ll be able to do with this fee. Out-of-state students have a choice. We froze
our out-of-state students at 15 percent for several reasons. One is, we wanted to maintain the majority
California: 85 percent. And students said “Well, we’re gonna lose diversity from out-of-state students.”
We may lose geographic diversity but our out-of-state students are 74 percent white. And they have
choices. And when the cost of attendance for Cal Poly out of state is lower than the cost of attendance for
another state, and we have low-income students that we know - not speculating - will come here if we
provide more financial aid. You can ask the over 240 Cal Poly scholars because they are here. We know
that that works. So it’s not just as simple as charging a fee. It’s charging a market rate for out-of-state
students to support low-income California students. And I think as we have more time in the future to talk
about it you’ll see hopefully I can roll out - it’s too early today - but I can roll out some changes we’re
gonna make that dealt with the issues. The students didn’t like the 15 percent - some didn’t like the fee at
all. Let’s charge everyone - which is not possible. Let’s get donors to do it - which is not possible to that
magnitude. And then why the 25 percent to Cal Poly? And what the students did their homework on any
campus fee in the past - they hadn’t left campus - so why the 15 percent to the chancellor? We can talk
about that later. And they also ask, “Well we normally define what we’re going to do with the money.”
And so I think those are all things we can talk about. But that’s just with all professional respect, at one
point I disagreed in your piece, because I think it - the data - is very clear, that the majority reason why
our low income and majority diverse students [shows] that financial is a barrier. It’s a barrier. Because of
our fees. And our fees are what make Cal Poly Learn By Doing. And really why all of students get great
jobs and placement is so high.

MN: So why do you — all of these great things are being implemented to try to attract students of color,
yet we have students standing up at town hall meetings saying “I can’t wait to get out of Cal Poly because
I get to leave because I don’t feel accepted and respected on that campus.” All this is great planning with
Jozi and the impact plan, but at the end of the day, there is still that climate that students don’t feel safe
and they don’t feel expected - accepted, excuse me. So, what would you say to that, of students standing
up and saying “Great at the admin level all this is happening but day-to-day I am not feeling like I belong
on this campus.”

JA: And it’s not just at the admin level, there’s a lot happening at the ground level. But, yeah you’re right
and I’ve - that’s not a shock to me. I’ve heard it since I’ve been on campus. And, at times it’s gone down
in frequency and at times its gone up. And like I said this event defined Cal Poly and it caused a lot of
pain for students, and I have certainly acknowledged that. That doesn’t mean our efforts are not for not.
That doesn’t mean that we don’t keep working. And it doesn’t mean that we stop. And I’m not going to
give up on the areas where I believe and know that they will have an impact. And I’m also not going to
say - I mean what would I, I mean what would the reaction be - if I said as president, “We’re not going to
really recruit any - and we’re not going to welcome any more students of color until we get our climate
right.” We’ve made progress and we’ve moved forward with our climate. I believe our campus is safe. I
believe and really understand that there are students that are anxious and say “I can’t wait to get out of
here.” I attend Black commencement every year. And I hear - and I attend - I at least go by and say hello.
I think I’ve attended the whole thing many years. And I hear the students comment there, and some years
there’s more and some years there’s less. And we also know, just in our students at large, as we know and
we did some surveys a few years ago, about 20 percent of our students regardless of color didn’t feel good
about their experience at Cal Poly, they didn’t feel good about their graduation experience. And we’ve
done things about it. So to me I wanna know: what are the causes and let’s get at it and work at it and let’s
affect it. But I have to be candid with you about what I can affect and what I can’t affect and what I can
do and what I can’t do. We will hold fraternities and sororities accountable. We will hold Cal Poly
Organizations accountable. We may not be able to do it as fast as you want, but we will hold them
accountable, or they will not exist on the campus, because that is a privilege. And that is over time. But I
can - I’m not going to - and I, you’ll just have to criticize me - I can't keep a Milo away. I can’t expel a
student because he’s expressed himself. That’s not the law by which public university operates.

MN: Right, but on the greek side of things you have a student come out in Blackface at a university - like
you said being in greek life is a privilege having fraternities and sororities here is a privilege - why not
just nip that in the bud? If that’s something that you can control and it’s something that expresses your
zero tolerance attitude towards racism and discrimination.

JA: We thought we had it - we thought after the incident in 2013/14, we’ve had controls and Keith could
tell you that there have been, you know, dumb ideas proposed and caught and did not happen and this one
got by us. And so what I am suggesting is that let’s tighten up even more. And what’s even better is for
the students themselves to say: “no.” But, again, you’ve got to separate the individual from the group. I
can’t - I have to state that.

MN: But what would be the benefit of keeping Lambda Chi Alpha on campus?

JA: That -

MN: Like I understand you are abiding by nationals and how they operate and you’re following their suit.
But, why can’t Cal Poly just take their stance now?

JA: We don’t ever just - we preliminate, as Keith answered earlier - I’m gonna give you the same answer:
We suspended all activity of Lambda Chi. And we normally, what we like, is for the national fraternity to
take the lead. Because they sometimes will be even tougher than what we have been in the past. And so
the national has taken that forward and we’re moving forward. And Lambda Chi has been shut down for
all activity, for a minimum of a year. And we will continue to address that over the coming weeks and see
what happens, especially as we learn more.

MN: Have you met with the leaders of Lambda Chi?

JA: I have not. I just got back on campus midnight last night but I had a phone call with one of the key
alumni leaders and I was very pleased early on when he said “I apologize, I’m embarrassed, I can’t
believe this happened and we care about Cal Poly and we care about the students who were hurt and
Lambda Chi is second.” That’s a quote from an alumnus who’s been involved with national Lambda Chi.
What I need your help in is understanding and helping people understand that I hate this event. I wish it
had not happened and I will do everything I can to keep it from happening again. We’re working
feverishly to work with climate. This collective impact model is one of the best things where I think we
can finally start getting down to the hearts and minds of people at the ground level, but it takes time. But I
also need you as reporters and professionals to help people understand that free speech is real and we
cannot censor, because where do you stop? Where do you stop? If I censor Milo, well then do I censor
someone over here. Where do you stop? It’s like admissions of our university. I don’t get involved with
admissions of our university. Where would I stop? If I did get involved with admissions of the university
I’d probably get arrested for breaking Prop 209 because I would want to admit more students of color and
more low-income students. In fact, if you look at our admissions process that’s covered in here, we do
everything possible within the law to provide admission support for low-income and first generation
students. We also have students on this campus today... there are 21 freshman in our meritorious 12
underrepresented minorities... nine McCoy scholars. I desperately want to reach out to them, I just haven’t
had time. But they’re here on Prop 209-compliant scholars because two individuals gave a million dollars
each, and 12 of those 21 students are African Americans. I’m pretty sure 11 of the 12 wouldn’t have come
to this campus without that scholarship. I think we all know the number of African American students on
this campus is low, embarrassingly low, and we’d like to see an increase. Twelve is a big number, so I
feel so for them and everybody else on campus that’s a student of color that’s been hurt by this. At the
same time, I want us to recognize, let’s use this and move forward. Let’s find a silver lining in a cloud and
move forward. I hope this can be a time when not the president says, “This isn’t going to happen here
again,” but the students say “This isn’t going to happen here again” as well - and the students that maybe
haven’t paid a lot of attention. With all the discussion we had last quarter, we only had 2,100 students, a
little under 10 percent of our students, comment. We had a lot of our students that had their head down
doing their thing. Do they not care about inclusion? I think a majority of them are just busy and maybe
haven’t had time to think about it. How do we get them to think about it? And how do we get them to
participate? And how do we get more bystander intervention so that we can nip things in the bud earlier? I
would much rather the social media have been a video of a Lambda Chi or two disrupting that event and
saying, “Not here. Not in my house. You’re not going to dress up like gangsters.” I think that’s why you
saw the leadership and officers of Lambda Chi all resign and some of the brothers have resigned from
Lambda Chi. That’s a heck of a step in the right direction in a situation that we all wish had not happened.
But, as I say during orientation every year to all the students and parents, some things we are better off
not learning by doing. I go on to say, “You really don’t need to get sick to the point of death to
understand and learn alcohol poisoning.” And this young man, I wish he had learned the problems and the
pain he caused by painting his face black, or the group of them dressing up like gangsters and having so
many students who have had their lives impacted and just impacted students as a result of that. I wish
they had not done that.

MN: When you have a zero tolerance policy towards discrimination at this school but there is a
disconnect with what can actually happen because you’re hands are tied. There is a zero tolerance policy
with sexual assault yet a serial rapist walks our campus. How do you communicate that to the students
that you can’t do anything yet we have this policy that says this will never happen?

JA: When I say “zero tolerance” in this is that it’s just like sexual assault. I don’t want it to happen at all
but it will happen and it’s going to continue to happen but we have to have the policies and procedures in
place. From a greek perspective the zero tolerance comes in, they need to understand as an organization,
if they’re going to exist in the future this is not gonna be tolerated. And Lambda Chi is not around right
now. They’re not functioning as a chapter. We have a Title IX process that has come under scrutiny, but
is a very good process. We have really solid professionals that work hard and we’ve invested more in that
office. We’ve invested in Safer, we’ve invested in Student Affairs. But we can’t bring everybody in from
the world and expect the problems of the world to stop at Cal Poly borders and never happen here. I
would love to have that. I can’t tell you that’s going to happen. I can’t tell prospective students that’s
going to happen. But I can tell you what, we’re going to work extremely hard and I’m very excited about
the Collective Impact model because I think that is a really good way to get down to the ground level, to
the hearts, and souls, minds of the people. To say “not anymore.” Keith can’t have a person at every
party. If Keith had a person at the Lambda Chi party I can promise you they would have walked right up
to [the student] and said “What are you thinking?” Now [the student] could have said, if they’re savvy,
“This is my free speech I’m going to do this.” They could’ve intervened in that way but we can’t be
everywhere. We’ve got to have that mix of regulation and education and want and desire. Let’s realize
we’re not going to get 100 percent of people to buy into what our definition of diversity and inclusion
should be. If we spent time and picked it apart, we could come the a conclusion and we would have an
agreement on what diversity and inclusion means and what it looks like. We’ve tried to put that forward
in Vision 2022 and we’re working toward it, but not everybody on campus is going to agree with that.
Not every one of our faculty members, not every one of our staff, they don’t all agree the same. If they
did agree the same we probably wouldn’t have a controversial speaker coming to campus. I just want you
to know that I deeply feel for our students. Watching those videos and talking with some students on
Sunday before I had to leave early Monday, it’s very difficult.

MN: Will we see you walking around Open House talking to people?

JA: Absolutely. And I hope people decide to participate in Open House. I’m going to go out there. I’m
gonna shouted down but I’m going to go out there. I’m very likely going to have a forum tonight where I
can listen. I hope we think about the students and the parents and many students of color that are coming
to campus. Do we want to disrupt their experience? I hope people think about that.

This interview has been edited for clarity and brevity.