Jessup meets with students seeking sanctuary campus designation for UNLV

Two weeks after the request for a meeting came across his desk, UNLV President Len Jessup met Thursday afternoon with students who are asking for the campus to be declared a “sanctuary,” while conservative students opposed to the idea are still waiting to hear if they will have a chance at a meeting, too.

“I’m always willing to meet with students,” Jessup said. “I’m not opposed to meeting with any of the students to talk about whatever’s on their minds. We haven’t gotten that far yet with them.”

Jessup said the meeting Thursday was “terrific” and “very productive” but said no definitive resolution came from the discussion, which was brought on after a contingent of about 50 students sent a letter to Jessup listing four demands.

Topping the list was the request for Jessup to declare UNLV a sanctuary — one that ensures protections for undocumented immigrant students who might fear deportation.

Jessup, who is one of more than 550 college and university presidents who signed the Pomona College letter in support of the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals Program, said, however, that the discussion did not center on those demands or on the request for the campus to be named a sanctuary.

“It was more focused generally on what can be done to help our undocumented students and, really, all students to be successful and to feel safe on campus,” Jessup said. “We’re certainly going to do everything within our power to continue to help our undocumented students to be successful.”

Jessup said he made sure to alert students at the meeting concerning the DACA information session that will be held from 4 to 6 p.m. Monday at the Boyd School of Law in Room 104. He added that the university is working to open an academic multicultural center in the student union, possibly in the spring.

“It will be a key place for students from underrepresented groups to get help with scholarships, advising — whatever they need,” he said.

Thursday’s meeting, Jessup said, was part of a series of ongoing meetings that university administrators have had over the past few weeks.

“I’ve been talking to students one-on-one for several weeks,” he said. “This was kind of our first chance to sit down with a handful of students that are leaders of different groups on campus.”

Several students who attended Thursday’s meeting were not willing to comment to a Review-Journal reporter.

Jordan Escoto, co-founder of the UNLV Campus Conservatives — a newly founded group that began circulating a petition asking Jessup not to declare the campus a sanctuary — is planning to call Jessup on Friday morning to request a meeting with him.

Escoto said his group previously requested a meeting but was told the administration did not want to schedule anything yet.

“I interpreted that as a good sign, since it wouldn’t look too good on the school’s part if they met with the other group and not us, and then decided to declare sanctuary campus,” he said.

The petition has garnered 300 signatures to date, but Escoto is hoping to get at least 1,000.

“It feels good,” he said. “It gets harder and harder to ignore when we have more signatures. Even the progress we’ve made in a week, I’m pretty proud of. We want UNLV to do the right thing. We want to show them that there’s a lot of people in the community who care about it, and it’s not just the pro-sanctuary people.”

Contact Natalie Bruzda at nbruzda@reviewjournal.com or 702-477-3897. Follow @NatalieBruzda on Twitter.