We have been discussing Black Lives Matter and other protests on campuses where students have demanded changes in everything from exam grading to tenure decisions to housing. Many of these demands raise troubling questions about the academic integrity of academic institutions as well as free speech and other countervailing concerns.
University of California Santa Cruz has yielded to four demands from protesters after they occupied Kerr Hall. The school now faces demands for three additional demands and has been given Chancellor George Blumenthal four months to comply over face “more reclamations.”
Kerr Hall was occupied by the Afrikan/Black Student Alliance, which described the action as a “reclamation” of the structure. The Hall houses many of the administrative offices, including Blumenthal’s office. The organization has declared opposition to “anti-Black racism and colorism; sexism and misogynoir; homophobia, transphobia, and queerphobia; or heterosexism and patriarchy.” Their site proclaims:
We are pushing back against the language of “occupation” in recognition of the largely white-centric and fairly recent “Occupy Movement”. We are pushing back against the language of “occupation” in recognition of the very real settler occupations that are hxstorical and ongoing, such as the European colonization and occupation of “The Americas”, as well as the current context of occupation in Palestine. We move in solidarity with Black people all over the world who are occupied by liberalism and neoliberalism’s devastating socioeconomic and political policies and materialities. This includes folks on The Continent, Palestinian people, and other Black and Brown people all over the world. While the actual actions during this Reclamation may appear the same as other “occupations” on campus and off-campus, we know that language does matter as do intentions.
For us, the language of “reclaiming” is about highlighting the fact there were things promised to ABC students that have gone broken and thrown away, like the four-year guarantee for housing in R.PAATH. We mean to reclaim those things.
After three days, Blumenthal agreed to guarantee all black and “Caribbean-identified students” four years of housing in the Rose Parks African American Themed House. He also promised to restore the building’s lounge and to paint the exterior in “Pan-Afrikan colors” of red, green and black. Finally, he agreed to require all new students to go through mandatory “diversity competency training.”
I heard a story of an engineering dean who appeared at the site of a student sit in and told them, “If you’re not out of here in five minutes you’ll be gone from here tomorrow”. They left.
These youths are properly assumed to be worthless rabble. Part of the process of demonstrating that they’re better than that is leaving quietly and of their own volition when a duly constituted authority arrives and tells them to get the f*** out of institutional property they’re not licensed and privileged to claim for their own uses.
The people who run higher education have a portfolio of mascot groups they mollycoddle and suffer a general lack of character which prevents them from formulating and enforcing nonsectarian standards of conduct. The question for the rest of us is why we have entrusted the task of sorting the labor market to weasels like this fellow Blumenthal.
While it is less stressful to live with people more like yourself, college life, and education generally are all about new experiences, learning about other people new ideas, different cultures. The pressure for neo-segregation and special favors is counter-productive. Universities are for broadening perspectives. Segregation and self-promotion narrow one’s perspectives.
I think we should defund these schools and let them flounder. I am not happy that my tax dollars support many of these children and their BS. Life in the world is going to be snowflake stew for them, and I can’t wait. So very annoying. Barring that, we should create Spanking Task Forces and give them what their wussified parents refused and failed to deliver, though we may need to change their diapers first!
“I have a serious problem with demands for the establishment of academic departments based on threats of campus unrest or occupation.”
WTF!? That’s all you have a problem with? The UC system is being taken hostage one campus at a time and you’re only concern is the academics? You DO NOT give in to ANY demands. Treat them as any criminal hostage taker. Where is Janet Napolitano on this? This has Eric Holder’s fingerprints all over it.
Any parent of a toddler understands the dangers of giving in to the child’s temper tantrums–you just breed a monster. Maybe these lessons have been lost at the campuses in California, and need to be re-learned.
Expel them all.
I thought blackmailing was illegal?
Any scholarly brains want to explain this to me?
Sounds like extortion to me. Hillary Clinton, Stalin and Al Capone are very proud.
PROSECUTE EVERY ONE OF THESE “STUDENTS” AND THEN EXPEL THEM. REJECT ALL “DEMANDS” AND SUGGEST THEY GO ELSEWHERE. FIRE THE ADMINISTRATORS WHO BEND OVER BACKWARDS FOR SUCH CLOWNS. CUT OFF ALL FUNDING FOR THE SCHOOL UNTIL EACH OF THE ABOVE STEPS ARE COMPLETED.
And we wonder why racism is alive and well.
Try pulling your crap in Alabama Throne!
I am also sure SNL will do a skit mocking these negroes….right? They won’t? Oh well.
Throne=Tyrone
It is good that they wish to team up with the Palestinians. A “Palestinian” is an arab living in Israel who used to be referred to as a Jordanian. A Palestinian belongs to a group of Nazi folks who preach the destruction of Jews and Israel.
As Curley (Three Stooges) said: “Hotsy Totsie, I smell a Nazi.”
TBob – you have to remember who is in charge of the whole UC system, Janet Napiletano (sp). First Governor to come out for Obama and former head of lots of things we would like to forget. Remember how the Obama administration never gave in to terrorist threats, except they did? Now you are seeing a repeat. Student terrorists are making demands and the university is folding like a cheap suit.
Reblogged this on 1EarthUnited and commented:
LOL, can’t make this stuff up! I’m curious how far school administrators will bend over before it gets painful. XD
Until Tennessee Tucks Her/Him. They are liberal themselves and will have no place to go if they lose their jobs. California is the Canary in the Coal Mine. Just a matter of time before there are major race riots in America.
That will make Obama happy.
After decades of Liberal Negro Worship, is it any wonder it has come to this???
Squeeky Fromm
Girl Reporter
See Allan Bloom’s account of the goings-on at Cornell University in 1969. It came to this about 50 years ago.
The students are demanding segregation and calling this progress? What are they ‘reclaiming’ exactly –their sense of victimhood by forcibly demanding the university to make it right? I don’t understand why the chancellor would give in to these demands without making some ‘demands’ of his own that might include some negotiation and discussion that sought to understand some of the deeper issues behind these demands. It’s like a PG13 movie rating….parental guidance is needed to help understand the subject matter. Same thing here with these students — make it a learning opportunity….teach them how to negotiate….they need some guidance, instruction and understanding of how to handle a negotiation –not capitulation by the university.
and the demands are for changes will be accessed not just by US blacks, but African students and black Caribbean. There is a site collegereform.org that is quite the eye opener.
From what I see the Chancellor has entered a downward spiral of agreeing to what will be increasing demands.
The Chancellor is afraid for his LIFE and his JOB, that’s why.
Since around here all such matters are resolved without much office occupying, I don’t have much to suggest.
It would be interesting to see how many of them are there tuition free because of their minority status. Does this school require passing entrance exams or are entrance exams anti racial? I wonder how many could pass a legitimate entrance exam and maintain grades?
It’s a State School, with State Funding and State Responsibilities and Education is a State Responsbility as federal interference is a right not granted under law.
The funding for FY this year is already been passed into law. That is th elast administrations budget spill over and ceases Sep 30th.
Obviously the answer is turn education back over to the States and State Department of Education and limit funding to bona fide research type projects and ROTC/JROTC.
With one small exception that of national standards under the commerce clause .(each state has a right to know the standards of and definition of certain degree levels for example. Those items that are akin to width of and number of lanes requjired for any Interstate Highway system
Then cut out using some of the first year savings as a block grant to the states to setup their new Department of Education and provide no more funding for that subject on a federal level other than the federal schools such as service academies.
Along with that cut student loans as they are sexist and unequal in application OR make the existing sss.gov draft laws equal to all OR get rid of the SSS entirely.
What need of ROTC even when Officer Candidate School is a six month course of instruction?
I have problems iwth demands for racially segregated housing. AND the administration giving in to it. Period. About 5 years ago I read that cal Berkeley, of all places, had established a blacks only dorm or floor (forget which). I actually did not believe it, til I found the LA Times reporting on it. SJ State has now established, per demand, blacks only housing as well and uses a couple of tricks ot make it seem not racially segregated.
It is just wrong on so many levels. And this is spreading thru out the UC system and at other colleges.
Plessy vs. Ferguson is once again the law of the land! lol
Those students who allegedly entered and remained unlawfully in the building should have been arrested for criminal trespass. If convicted, expelled from the university if found liable during a hearing. There also could be made a case for extortion on behalf of the group’s leadership.
The fact that they demanded more after the university caved in is exactly what will happen whenever deals are made with these types of demands.
Whenever you allow groups of individuals to flaunt the law, it ALWAYS is the case where more subsequent unlawful behavior occurs and less respect for following society’s civil expectations becomes manifest.
Looks like we’re seeing a repeat of the campus disorders of the 1960’s all over again!
I’m not too worried. These Black students LOVE VIOLENCE. They are not in School for an Education. Only a matter of time (probably sooner than later) that a few white students will be murdered and the campus set on fire. Just like Ferguson and just like Baltimore.
You understand that the self-image of men like Blumenthal would be sorely injured if they did something that straightforward (and that reliant on the work of the campus security officers and the local police, people they thoughtlessly despise). Part of the progtrash self-understanding is that that they, unlike ‘deplorables’ are not ‘simplistic’. Ergo, you get time consuming and manipulative (and ineffectual) shuck and jive.
One project I’d like to get down to is to build a bibliography on the sociological academy’s assessment of the Giuliani-Bratton program in New York, conjoined to a bibliography on articles in the magazine press on the subject (in loci like Harper’s, The New York Review of Books, The Chronicle of Higher Education, &c.).