A Thin Line Divides Engaging With Activists and Alienating Them

Patrick Sims, vice provost for diversity and climate at the University of Wisconsin at Madison, decided last week that he had had enough.

When he received a picture of a racial slur, scrawled on notebook paper, that had reportedly been slipped under a freshman’s dorm-room door, Mr. Sims did something unusual for a campus administrator. He recorded a video.

In emotional language, he voiced frustration about racially charged incidents on the campus. He called for an end of the “cowardly acts.” He said they were on a par with the Jim Crow era.

“I set up my iPad, I took a breath, I hit record, and I said what I needed to say,” Mr. Sims said in an interview on Tuesday.

The nine-minute video, which now has been seen more than 13,000 times, raises the question of how administrators can embrace new ways of communicating with student activists without alienating the very students with whom they are trying to engage.

Angus Johnston, a historian of American student activism, said it’s a balancing act that many administrators grapple with.

“It’s a very fine line. On the one hand, the university doesn’t want to be appearing to be ignoring what is going on with the students’ anger and frustration,” said Mr. Johnston, a professor at the City University of New York’s Hostos Community College. “On the other hand, it can appear you are trying to co-opt the message around the hashtag or broader organizing event.”

A Mixed Reaction

At Madison, responses to Mr. Sims’s video have been mixed. The vice provost said he had received positive feedback from both students and faculty members, who have talked about the video as a tool to start difficult conversations. But some students were quick to characterize his response as one more administrative move that was all talk and no action.

Walter P. Parrish III, a Ph.D. student at the university who serves as adviser to the Black Student Union, said parts of Mr. Sims’s video were “disturbing,” like when he used the phrase “punk ass.” Mr. Parrish did not think the language was appropriate for a public video from an administrator. Mr. Sims himself acknowledged in the video that it is not the kind of language usually employed by vice provosts.

Mr. Parrish, who previously worked in higher education, believes the university wants to improve the campus climate, but he said he would like to see more action.

Rodney Lambright II, a student at the university, said he was not convinced the video had done much to advance dialogue.

“I think it was good for him, in terms of how he’s feeling, and it might be nice for some students to hear,” Mr. Lambright said. “In terms of me personally, I don’t know if it did anything. I don’t know if anything comes from that now.”

Mr. Lambright, a junior studying art, said he had experienced microaggressions during his time in Madison. An editorial cartoon he drew for the student newspaper, The Daily Cardinal, has become an icon of the students’ efforts. It depicts the university mascot, Bucky Badger, trying to keep acts of activism under wraps.

“I was trying to convey all these stories and individual moments that people of color have experienced on campus,” Mr. Lambright said of the cartoon. “The university sees it, and they understand it’s happening, but I don’t know if it’s adequately handled.”

In mid-March students began using the hashtag #TheRealUW to share stories of racism and discrimination. The hashtag was created after a student was called a racial slur and spat on in a campus residence hall.

Since the day the hashtag emerged, official university accounts have used it to communicate with students. However, some activists have seen that as the university’s attempt to reappropriate the hashtag for its own use.

A student activist, Kenneth Cole, discussed in a post on Medium the confusion surrounding who started the hashtag. Mr. Cole wrote that he wavered on whether to call attention to the roots, stating, “so long as students have an outlet to uplift our stories,” it doesn’t matter who people think started it. But ultimately he wrote the post to clear it up. “It is a completely different narrative to say that the University of Wisconsin-Madison enacted a campaign to bring awareness to the issues that marginalized students face on campus.”

“If you were one of the people who presumed that the university was behind the effort, it is likely because of the slew of responses from the university and university administration stating, ‘We are listening’ and encouraging students to use #TheRealUW to communicate with them,” he continued. “As if they would be ‘listening’ if we hadn’t started viral programming that exposed their establishment.”

Before the incidents that inspired Mr. Sims’s video and the students’ hashtag, there were other problems at the flagship campus. In January, for example, swastikas were taped to a Jewish student’s dorm-room door, and in March hecklers shouted “war-cry sounds” at a ceremony recognizing Native American victims of sexual assault.

Mr. Johnston said there’s nothing inappropriate about universities’ responding to student activists with social media, and he encourages administrators to do so across a variety of platforms, including YouTube.

Mr. Sims said he understands students’ desire for action, and he acknowledged that in a follow-up video posted the day after the first one.

But, Mr. Sims said in the interview, he is working toward long-term solutions and asks for students’ patience.

“We at Madison are in the trenches, we are committed to this,” Mr. Sims said. “We don’t have it all figured out … but we are still working toward the solution that puts us in a better place to make Madison a more welcoming, engaging campus to everyone.”