Izzy Perez ran to be vice president of Cal Poly’s Black Student Union last spring on a platform of bringing back the club’s political activism. He hoped to help BSU move beyond its prior political stagnation, and that message that got him the seat as vice president.
At their roots, Black Student Unions are traditionally politically active, Perez said. But that is not the case here at Cal Poly.
The Afrikan Black Coalition (ABC) Conference inspired this year’s shift toward action, where the lack of Black visibility and representation at Cal Poly became very clear to Perez. While BSU was surrounded by Black peers and scholars at the conference, here at Cal Poly, they became the minority again.
“We are trying to get Black voices heard,” said Perez.
Now the BSU is striving towards a new era full of protests and demanding their voices be heard. This decision was cemented after a conference.
Political inactivity to political activism
Despite attempting to shift towards more political activism, Perez admitted that the BSU has not recently followed the traditional path of political activism.
“BSU has become really like a hangout social thing,” Perez said. “Which is great, which is amazing, and it needs to be that as well, but it also still has to hold its roots of political activism and community engagement.”
Perez, who had been a BSU member since his freshman year, had been inspired to run for a position in the group because he felt he needed to be the voice for “all the Black people when something regarding Blackness was brought into the conversation.”
In 2025, the percentage of Black students at Cal Poly was 0.8%, according to Cal Poly’s Office of Institutional Research. This fact leads to their lower number of individuals within the organization and its lack of traditional political activism.
Before Cal Poly, Perez was doing volunteer and activist work in Paso Robles, where he admits there were fewer Black people than at Cal Poly.
“I would always be the only Black person there,” he explained. “And I got so upset about it. And I remember being really, really vocal about this during my speech to run. And I literally told them I was like, my main goal is to get us politically active.”
Now the BSU is shifting away from its political inactivity and moving toward more political activism within the community.
“How can we help out with, like, what’s going on with ICE currently, and especially in Minnesota, where Black people are being targeted?” said Perez.
Cal Poly’s BSU participated in organizing events for Proposition 50 and had students go out to the food bank. Now they are attempting to do a homeless dinner.
Kyleigh Spight, BSU secretary, explained how they had also had a conversation with the Latinx/e Center for Academic Success and Achievement (La CASA) about ways they could help out during this time. She spoke about the incident where U.S. Customs and Border Protection was supposed to come to campus for a career fair.
“Is there anything you need from us that you aren’t doing already?” Spight had said. “Or can we boost what you’re already doing?”
But activism isn’t the only legacy and tradition the BSU is carrying on. It’s also assisting the community within San Luis Obispo in a more cultural sense, a principle inspired by the ABC Conference.
“We know it’s not a physical bubble, but it’s very like, I guess, culturally and socially we know that what happens at Cal Poly is very different than what’s happening in SLO,” said Perez. “That was one of our main goals. And the main approach we’re taking is just showing up in the community.”
Statewide inspiration
While last year the ABC Conference was held at Cal Poly, this year it was held at CSU Northridge. The ABC Conference runs annually at different locations throughout the state of California. This year, the trip was from Jan. 16-18.
The event invites university BSU’s from both UC and CSU schools, serving over 800 Black students. During the time it runs, there are keynote speakers and social activities for attendees.
Perez explained how the conference holds gender round tables, which have, for example, men’s, women’s, queer men’s, or queer women’s, where they hold conversations about their differences.
Within one of these conversations, Perez noted one common denominator between them all—Black people didn’t show up in spaces that aren’t clearly labeled as Black or aren’t labeled as majority Black.
Perez emphasized how “impactful” the ABC Conference is to him, finding a place where he feels less isolated from both his Latino and Black identities and instead is offered an entirely “Black perspective.”
Spight even remarked on how the conference felt like more than its academic confines.
“I see other people who are doing what I’m doing, who are going through some of the struggles that I’m going through,” Spight explained. “And I’m not alone. I don’t want to say it’s like coming home, but it feels like rejoining a community.”
This sense of belonging was soon followed by loss.
“Everyone felt kind of sad to come back to Cal Poly,” Perez explained. “Coming back to Cal Poly, people felt they needed to resort to being less open about their identities and expressions.”
Protesting on campus comes with a catch
Despite this sentiment, Perez claims that being politically active has grown to be more difficult to do at Cal Poly.
“I just recently found out that you have to apply to be able to have a protest on campus,” said Perez. “And I was like, that kind of defeats the whole purpose of a protest. The protest is supposed to disrupt daily life.”
This process stems from the CSU’s time, place, and manner policy, which prohibits free speech on certain occasions to keep public safety and “legitimate government interests.”
This contributed to growing tension between the union and the school in the last year, when, according to Kyleigh Spight, the BSU secretary, there were certain inequalities in who got to protest and who didn’t.
“There was a gentleman who used to ride around on a bicycle on campus and have hate speech on a flag or wear stereotypical Black regalia,” said Spight. “And he would, like, shout obscenities at students.”
Spight later found out that this unknown individual had been doing this for the last 15 years at Cal Poly. This issue became more of a worry when Cal Poly hosted the ABC Conference, and the visiting BSU students from other universities would become potential victims of the hate speech.
“We kind of had to warn them, like, ‘Hey guys, there might be this guy who rides around campus,'” said Spight. “Luckily, he didn’t show up that weekend.”
Despite the hurdles they have to jump in order to have their voices heard, the BSU continues to plan and strive toward helping the community. On one of their recent protests, the BSU came together for a protest outside the sheriff’s office after posting that people should come over social media.
“So we showed up to that,” Perez said. “I know it’s inherently defeating the system, but like, we found each other, and that’s where usually the youth were and all the other Cal Poly students and the other organizations that came and showed up. Which is great.”
Angel Corzo contributed reporting to this story.