Area high school students inaugurate Oscar Grant Memorial Hall at SF State

By Alex Emslie and Tania Cervantes
The Guardsman

Students from several San Francisco high schools unofficially renamed SF State’s Business Building the Oscar Grant Memorial Hall on March 4.

Activists climbed to the third floor and draped a banner with a picture of Oscar Grant as the crowd below erupted in applause. Grant was shot and killed on Jan. 1, 2009 by then BART police officer Johannes Mehserle.

“Communities of color lack access to education, and there is a high rate of violence in those communities,” SF State student Natalia Sanchez said. “The issues interlink — Oscar Grant, racism, police brutality and budget cuts.”

Sanchez helped organize the impromptu inauguration of the Oscar Grant Memorial Hall. She said the renaming was meant to signify that the university belongs to the people, including generations to come.

“This is an attack on public access to education for people in middle, working and economically poor classes of any color,” SF State Dean of ethnic studies Kenneth Monteiro said about the state of California public education. “But, because of how America is, it’s still disproportionate to people of color.”

After an unidentified high school student finalized the inauguration by cutting a ribbon stretched across the entrance to the building, Sanchez told the group, “Take your seat because the university is yours.”