Torn Over Tactics: Activists Refine Their Demands as Protests Over Racism Spread

When confrontational protests and threatened hunger strikes prompted the dean of students at Claremont McKenna College to resign two weeks ago, not everyone was cheering.

Behind the scenes, some minority students cringed at the most strident expressions of activism that were roiling their campuses and the backlash they had unleashed. Many, however, were reluctant to speak out, either because they shared the protesters’ broad goals or because they feared being seen, as one student put it, as “race traitors.”

But as the protests that started with the forced ouster of the president and chancellor of the University of Missouri on November 9 have extended to hundreds of colleges nationwide, more students have been willing to join the conversation.

Miles H. Robinson is a sophomore at Pomona College, which, like Claremont McKenna, is part of the consortium in California known as the Claremont Colleges. He said he was dismayed by the angry turn that demonstrations at nearby Claremont McKenna took, as well as one at Dartmouth College.

“When you see people swearing at professors or at the president of the college, or storming into the library and yelling at other students, that doesn’t seem like the best way to make progress,” he said. “I can’t agree with the increasing polarization or demonization of students just because they happen to be white.”

Experts on race relations and social movements say it’s hardly surprising that minority students who agree on the need for a more welcoming, inclusive campus environment might disagree about the best way to get there. In some cases, those divisions have brought about a more-nuanced approach toward protesting, where some students of color have toned down their demonstrations and revisited their demands.

Capitalizing on Momentum

Nationwide, the black student population is “not a monolithic group,” said Shaun R. Harper, executive director of the Center for the Study of Race and Equity in Education at the University of Pennsylvania. “Some people think it’s absolutely time to take it to the streets, and others feel a more behind-the-scenes approach to negotiating is the way to go,” Mr. Harper said.

But at a time when social-media networks like Twitter and Facebook are turning grass-roots organizing into minute-by-minute activism, there is little time to build consensus.

“Students are worried that if they don’t act right now, while this is hot, that things are going to go back to business as usual on their campuses,” Mr. Harper said. “Given the pace at which they’re pulling together their strategies, there isn’t enough time to vet them with a large segment of the student body.” Students, he said, are motivated today by “a unique blend of inspiration and desperation.”

June Beshea, a senior at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and a member of a coalition of student organizers called the Real Silent Sam, said her group aimed to capitalize on the heightened attention during a protest last week. The group interrupted a forum on race that was organized by Carol L. Folt, the university’s chancellor, and read off a list of 50 demands, which included “the elimination of tuition and fees for all students” and “divestment from policing” altogether.

“We wanted to take up a lot of space and make people feel a little uncomfortable and really think about these issues,” Ms. Beshea said.

Those methods, however, have provoked the ire of some students. Both the demonstration and the demands at Chapel Hill drew widespread criticism on social media. And a similar interruption at a forum at the University of Kansas prompted its Black Student Union to issue a statement last week clarifying that the group was not affiliated with the protesters.

Such disrespectful behavior, said Brylan Donaldson, a junior at Kansas, “represents us as minority students, even though we’re not participating.” When people ask Mr. Donaldson how he feels about the recent protests, he tells them: “Don’t even put me close to that.”

Mr. Robinson, of Pomona, participated in a sit-in on his campus last week that ended with the college’s president agreeing to some of the students’ demands. The protest, he said, was largely a success, drawing attention to what he considers isolated instances of racism on the campus. Still, he felt uncomfortable afterward.

Watching the president apologize for systemic racism at the college seemed “absurd,” said Mr. Robinson, who lived in Shanghai for nine years — an upbringing that he realizes gives him somewhat of an outsider’s perspective on the injustices his black classmates are describing. “It felt like during the Cultural Revolution in China, where teachers were forced to confess when their views weren’t in line with the party’s.”

More-Attainable Demands

Hastily-drawn-up demands that seem rigid and uncompromising and easy fodder for critics have given way to more-realistic compromises on some campuses.

During a sit-in that lasted more than eight hours last week, the interim president of Towson University, Timothy Chandler, went through protesters’ list of demands line by line, and he and the students forged a compromise agreement. Similarly, during an overnight sit-in at Princeton University, protesters spent nearly six hours in a meeting with President Christopher L. Eisgruber and made some of their requests more attainable.

Even though some students of color at Princeton have criticized the methods of the protesters — who are part of a group called the Black Justice League — Destiny Crockett, a Princeton junior, stressed the importance of intense displays of activism. She said she and other members of the organization had met regularly with administrators for months about their demands.

“We got tired of sitting in meetings and nothing happening and no processes even beginning,” Ms. Crockett said. For now, she is pleased, but not yet satisfied, with the administration’s commitment to their cause.

At Missouri, activists faced an intense national backlash for barring the news media from their encampment the day the president and chancellor resigned. The following day they posted signs and handed out fliers welcoming media coverage.

“We’ve had to become flexible,” said Reuben Faloughi, a third-year doctoral student in psychology and one of the original 11 members of the group that calls itself Concerned Student 1950.

After meetings in which hundreds of students showed up to vent their feelings, “We’ve met super-late into the night, adjusting as we went along,” Mr. Faloughi said. “The movement doesn’t stop, and all the time, you know you’re being watched.”

Behind-the-scenes discussions also prompted a change in strategy at Amherst College, in Massachusetts. Activists who had faced criticism over their initial list of demands later stated that their goals “would be best met by collaboration with administrators, faculty, and staff over an extended period of time.” They ended a sit-in after the college’s president, Carolyn A. (Biddy) Martin, issued a statement that they said “offered clarification and hope.”

“The tactics and strategies are changing so quickly,” said Angus Johnston, a historian of student activism at the City University of New York’s Hostos Community College. “Students are learning as they go.”

Students have been reluctant to describe the debates that led to the compromises at Missouri and Amherst. “In most cases, the activists aren’t eager to air their disagreements in public,” Mr. Johnston said. “They’re going to want to have those conversations behind closed doors so they can present a unified face to the world.”

Overarching Goals

Still, the disagreement among black students about strategies should not delegitimize the overarching goals they share, said Clarence E. Lang, an associate professor and chair of the department of African-American studies at Kansas. In conversations with Kansas students, he said he didn’t think there was much contention about the need to foster a more-inclusive campus culture.

“I think oftentimes in these moments, there’s an impulse to want to dismiss or deflect the issues by pointing to the fact that, Oh, there seems to be disagreement among folks who are raising salient points,” said Mr. Lang, whose recent book, Black America in the Shadow of the Sixties, relates the civil-rights era to contemporary black culture. “I think it is important that we stay focused on the concerns and grievances that have been expressed.”

Mr. Donaldson has formed a new group at Kansas with three other students in hopes of doing just that. Its purpose, he said, is to identify questions the campus community has and then to use an entrepreneurial method known as design thinking to engage students, faculty, and staff in finding solutions.

The group — dubbed TEAMJayhawks — planned to tackle race and inclusion first, he said. He hoped to work with the Black Student Union and other campus organizations. “We want to create an environment,” he said, “where people feel safe collaborating on issues like these.”

Katherine Mangan writes about community colleges, completion efforts, and job training, as well as other topics in daily news. Follow her on Twitter @KatherineMangan, or email her at katherine.mangan@chronicle.com.