A recent wave of student-led protests on campuses is playing out like a series of Ping-Pong matches: Student activists, upset by what they see as their administration’s lackluster performance on diversity-related issues, present demands and stage demonstrations to gain attention.
Administrators respond by proposing other solutions, such as establishing working groups on key issues or offering more money for certain causes. But some students complain that those actions fall short, and the ball bounces back across the net.
As protests spread across campuses, the lists of demands — and administrators’ responses — have emerged as key elements of the negotiations. Students have often threatened to take more drastic action if their demands are not met by a certain deadline.
An early example of that back-and-forth dynamic was seen last year at the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor. On Martin Luther King Day the Black Student Union made seven demands to improve the black experience on the campus. This year President Mark S. Schlissel announced a detailed diversity initiative to help the campus’s minority groups. As demonstrations have spread elsewhere, many student groups have taken inspiration from their peers.
What do the activists want? The Chronicle collected 10 lists of demands from student-activist groups at various colleges. Here’s a look at some of the common threads in the activists’ demands, and how administrators have responded.
Recruiting More Underrepresented Students and Faculty Members
Nine of the ten lists asked colleges to admit more minority students, hire more minority faculty members, or both. Students at Washington University in St. Louis, for example, demanded that enrollment of black and Latino students reach 10 percent of the student body. For years, the institution has drawn criticism as a wealthy college with an especially poor record of enrolling low-income students.
In response to those grievances, university leaders have promised money to tackle them and to try to shed the institution’s distinction as the nation’s least economically diverse top college. But some students involved in negotiations with the administration have been unimpressed with the response, the St. Louis Post-Dispatch reported last week.
At the University of Minnesota-Twin Cities, a group called Whose Diversity? wanted the administration to expand what it called an understaffed department of Chicano and Latino studies. That was one of eight demands presented last month at a sit-in at President Eric W. Kaler’s office, said Jesús Estrada-Pérez, a graduate student and member of the group.
Seven hours into the sit-in, 13 demonstrators were arrested for trespassing, including Mr. Estrada-Pérez. He said the administration had threatened to keep those charges on their records if they trespassed again (the university said it had not made any decisions about the charges).
Since then, the administration has announced plans to make “cluster” hires—four new tenured and tenure-track faculty members engaged in interdisciplinary research areas. One position will be a tenured post in the department of Chicano and Latino studies, according to a university statement. But Mr. Estrada-Pérez said the group wanted to see a longer-term investment.
Mr. Estrada-Pérez said activists like him had been disappointed with the university’s other responses as well. Last month the university said it would reduce the use of race descriptions in its crime alerts “when there is insufficient detail to reasonably aid in individual identification.” The university said it would continue to include such descriptions “where there is sufficient information to aid our community in identifying a suspect who presents risk.”
But members of Whose Diversity? thought the language was too fluid.
“I still feel like we’re getting crumbs at this stage,” said Mr. Estrada-Pérez.
Creating a ‘Safe Space’ for Marginalized Groups
A significant share of the lists wanted their institutions to improve or build a center for members of underrepresented groups to meet.
At Syracuse University, students lost a “safe space” last summer, when the administration eliminated a stand-alone resource center for sexual-assault victims by merging it with the counseling center. Student activists last fall formed a coalition known as THE General Body, said Laura G. Cohen, a senior and member of the coalition. On November 3, the group presented the administration with a list of demands and began an 18-day sit-in in the admissions building.
Ms. Cohen said discussions between the two sides had since slowed down.
Bea C. González, dean of Syracuse’s University College, has worked closely with THE General Body. She said staff members had continued working on the group’s grievances.
Unheard, a group at the University of Oklahoma that calls itself “an alliance of black students organized for change within campus administration and atmosphere,” presented a list of demands that focused on winning more support for minority students, said Chelsea A. Davis, a junior and member of the group. After learning that Oklahoma’s engineering school had a program to help such students, activists wanted one in every college on the campus.
She said the group had met with President David L. Boren and was happy with his response. In a statement to The Chronicle, Mr. Boren said he was working with various offices to prepare action plans.
“We opened that door and made that platform for other minority groups to stand on,” Ms. Davis said. As for the campus culture, she said, “that’s something that can’t change overnight — the way people think can’t change overnight.”
Providing More Diversity Training
At Humboldt State University, in California, students are fighting what some of them say is the institution’s longtime mistreatment of nearby indigenous communities. Driven by what some described as the unfair termination of a Native American program director, the Unified Students of Humboldt held discussions with the administration last fall that were not satisfying, said Andrew Perera, a junior. (Humboldt confirmed to The Chronicle that the program director had “separated” from the university, but the university wouldn’t comment further.)
In response, the group began a 35-day sit-in at an academic building in mid-January.
Members of the group requested that indigenous history and culture be incorporated into the curriculum of any professor who asked, as well as into the Humboldt Orientation Program.
On February 25 the sit-in ended, and last week administrators met with students, said Mr. Perera. The result was productive collaboration, he added.
Diversity training was also significant for students at Colgate University, where the word “training” appeared in five items of a 21-point list. Just a few days after Colgate’s Association of Critical Collegians released its demands, the administration responded with a “Colgate for All” website that listed its progress on each demand. As of December 23 its admissions staffers had attended two sessions of “multicultural competency” workshops, which included learning how to communicate in a multicultural workplace, said Rachel L. Reuben, vice president for communications. The “Colgate for All” website will be updated again this month, she added.
Requiring a Race or Diversity Course
Student groups at several institutions wanted to create courses or orientations about the cultures of marginalized groups.
Educating the campus about the history of such groups was A.D. Carson’s goal as a leader of See the Stripes, a campaign at Clemson University. Through a presentation by a Clemson professor, Mr. Carson learned that some of his classrooms had been built by primarily black convicts in the late 19th century. One such building, Tillman Hall, is named for the white supremacist Benjamin Tillman, a fact that has sparked controversy on the campus. Mr. Carson said the university needed to better engage with its history.
To increase support for the minority community, See the Stripes presented its demands in January, said Mr. Carson. A month later Almeda R. Jacks, interim vice president for student affairs, sent a campuswide email about the administration’s commitments. In an interview with The Chronicle she said she was pleased with the near-daily meetings with students.
But for Mr. Carson, promises are not enough, so he’ll continue spreading his message. The more they talk, the more opportunities there are to build support, he said. And maybe with more support, administrators will help make their goals a reality.
Corrections (3/12/2015, 1:17 a.m.): This article initially misstated when Colgate University’s administration responded to students demands’ by publishing a website called “Colgate for All.” The administration responded days afterward, not a few weeks afterward. The article also originally misspelled the last name of a graduate student at the University of Minnesota-Twin Cities. He is Jesús Estrada-Pérez, not Estrada-Péruz. And the article misidentified the Humboldt State University employee whose dismissal prompted protests. She was a program director, not a faculty member.