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Bollinger Meets with Student Leaders to Discuss Noose Incident - OCTOBER 10, 2007
Students Walk Out To Protest Jena Six, Racist Graffiti - OCTOBER 2, 2007
Students Weigh Response to Graffiti - SEPTEMBER 28, 2007
Racist Graffiti Found on Bathroom Stall in SIPA - SEPTEMBER 27, 2007
BSO Founder Returns to Campus - SEPTEMBER 21, 2007
Malcolm X Lounge Holds BSO History - JANUARY 31, 2007
Black Students' Group Unveils New Mural - FEBRUARY 23, 2007
Bollinger Meets with Student Leaders to Discuss Noose Incident
PUBLISHED OCTOBER 10, 2007
Following the discovery of a noose hanging on the office door of Madonna Constantine, a black Teachers College professor, University President Lee Bollinger held a tense meeting with two dozen student leaders this afternoon.
Bollinger faced a deeply frustrated and often angry audience, as students accused the administration of being unresponsive and disconnected. At several points, the University President found himself attempting to defend and justify his record on issues such as diversifying the faculty and taking a proactive stance on racial issues.
“My mind keeps flooding with things that we have and are trying to do because I find myself wanting to persuade you that this is a University that I believe you can trust to respond to feelings that you have expressed and ideas that you have expressed,” Bollinger said. “I want you to feel and just to acknowledge in yourselves that this is a place that cares a lot about things that you have raised. … We really have tried, but I really think we have to talk about that more and do more.”
“Students are tired of hearing what’s been done in the past,” responded Sam Rennebohm, CC ’09 and a member of Students Promoting Empowerment and Knowledge.
One student told the President that it was time for the University to stop “placating us with statements or whatever silly things like that … [and to] re-evaluate these past initiatives because they clearly have not prevented the events of this month.”
Earlier in the day, Constantine made her first public statement since yesterday morning, addressing a rally in front of the Teacher College.
“I'm upset that our community was exposed to such an unbelievably blatant act of racism," Constantine said at the rally. "Hanging a noose on my door reeks of cowardice on many many levels. ... I would like the perpetrator to know that I will not be silent."
The Bollinger meeting occurred at the same time as both a Town Hall meeting with school administrators at Teachers College and a press conference at New York Police Department headquarters downtown. At the press conference, police officials said that this was one of two occurrences regarding a noose, with the other one occurring in Queens.
Police officials said that there were no suspects in the case, and noted this was the first occurrence of a noose case in many, many years.
They released a photo of the noose, saying that it had not been on the door as late as 11:30 p.m. Monday night. The task force is speaking to all professors in Constantine's department.
Again and again, students complained about the inaccessibility of top administrators last night, and particularly Bollinger’s decision to not send out a University-wide email, which they contrasted with TC President Susan Fuhrman’s visible presence. Bollinger responded by saying he did release a public statement to news media last night and sent an e-mail to the University today, but that he did not want to step on the toes of Teachers College.
“We may be two independent institutions, but we are one community; and we stand together in our commitment to oppose the frightening sentiments that lay behind this act,” Bollinger wrote in his email to the University. “Tolerance and mutual respect are among the core values of our diverse community, and all of us must confront acts of hate whenever they occur within it.”
Students also stressed the need for proactive, instead of reactive, leadership from the top.
“My mom used to tell me that water never flows uphill and I feel like we live in a pyramid society where if something begins at the bottom, it’s grassroots, and it has a tendency to stay there, but if something comes down from the top, it has a tendency to wash over everything beneath it,” Jonathan Walton, CC ’08, said. “The futility that the grass at the bottom feels about not being able to reach the top is a deeper and deeper problem."
“People are upset, people are working together, and yet these things keep happening,” Desiree Carver-Thomas, CC ’09, said. “We are working ourselves to the bone, we are working well together, and we need administrative support.”
Several student leaders said they were questioning their decision to come to Columbia and that they had heard similar comments from first-years who have seen racist graffiti, protests over a speech by controversial Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, and an invitation to polarizing conservative writer David Horowitz in their short five weeks here. Students continually attacked the University and its President, at one point even raising the issue of Bollinger's salary.
The leaders in the room tied yesterday’s incident—which is being investigated by the New York Police Department’s Hate Crimes unit—to a broader campus environment.
“For me this event is not just a single isolated event, it is about a context, and it is about a culture, and it is about what is this institution, under your leadership, sir, really going to like step forward and to about changing that context,” Bryan Mercer, CC ’07 and a member of SPEaK and the Black Students Organization, said.
This meeting was markedly different from a similar one that Bollinger held with student leaders three weeks ago after Ahmadinejad was invited to speak on campus. At today's meeting, students were much more palpably angry at and less supportive of the way the University was conducting itself.
The array of students assembled was also substantially narrower, with the presidents of the Columbia College Student Council, Barnard’s Student Government Association, the Columbia University College Democrats and Republicans, the Columbia/Barnard Hillel, and the club funding boards absent.
Student leaders learned of the meeting less than 90 minutes before it began.
At the end of the meeting, Bollinger said that there should be further conversations and invited students to compile a specific list of concerns to be addressed in future meetings with administrators, a task which they set about immediately as he left to teach his class on Freedom of Speech and Press.
Tom Faure contributed to this article.
Students Walk Out To Protest Jena Six, Racist Graffiti
BY MARY KOHLMANN AND LAURA SCHREIBER
PUBLISHED OCTOBER 2, 2007
Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.’s declaration that “Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere” served as the catchphrase of yesterday’s campus walkout protesting incidents of racial injustice, both nationally and at Columbia.
More than 120 students gathered on Low Steps before marching up Broadway and around the Morningside campus as part of a national student walkout to protest the prosecution of the Jena Six. Organizers tied Columbia’s demonstration to the racist graffiti discovered in an International Affairs Building bathroom last week.
Members from student organizations including the Muslim Student Association, Black Students Organization, and the Columbia Coalition Against the War united to express solidarity with the groups targeted by the graffiti and the six black Louisiana teenagers—who are charged with assaulting a white student—who some feel have been the victims of racial bias.
“The Jena Six is a more extreme example of what’s going on on campus,” Adil Ahmed, CC ’09 and president of the Muslim Student Association, said at the protest.
While the number of participants in the walkout was smaller than some expected, the energy swelled as the group marched across 116th Street, up Broadway, and back to Low Steps, chanting, “From Jena to SIPA, racism has got to go.”
“One of the most beautiful things is as we were walking up Broadway, we saw a whole bunch of people just join the crowd,” Destin Jenkins, CC ’10 and political chair of BSO, said. “People who were not students ... join the crowd and give up five minutes of their time, and that’s what it’s all about.”
As the protesters passed, many drivers honked their horns and raised their fists, while others stared with incredulity.
“This moment is a continuation of a struggle at Columbia that has yet to fulfill its mission,” Bryan Mercer, CC ’07, said. Mercer, who has been involved in activist efforts at Columbia, said he was pleased by the large number of first-year students who participated.
“Their [the class of 2011’s] involvement and work ethic as a class has really been unmatched,” Tiffany Dockery, CC ’09 and BSO president, said.
“To do something to fight against it [racial bias], well, it was more important than a Spanish class,” Phillip Dupree, SEAS ’11 and one of the protesters, said.
“It’s gone past the point where you can call one group a name and expect only that group to be affected by it,” Ali Shafei, CC ’10 and president of Turath, a North African and Middle Eastern club, said, adding that the number of non-Muslim protestors was inspiring. But he noted that the majority of the students who planned and participated in the event were neither Muslims nor of Middle Eastern descent, the graffiti’s primary targets. “Arabs and Muslims ... they’re in a current situation where they are maybe not able to take as vocal role as they should have,” Shafei said. “It really does demonstrate some underlying fears and intimidation among Arabs and Muslims, especially at Columbia,” he said, referring to Ahmadinejad’s appearance.
While Shafei said that he was impressed by how quickly the protest was organized, he added that the haste may have contributed to a more disorganized event. “For the common bystander it may be a little confusing about what we were protesting and whom it was done against,” Shafei said. “A lot of organization was compromised ... a lot of the precision you see in a lot of other protest, we didn’t see that same kind of precision.”
Some protesters also tied the SIPA incident to University President Lee Bollinger’s condemnation of Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad last Monday. “What happened last week on this campus was that an unsafe community was created,” Ahmed said.
Lawrence Morris, SEAS ’11 and a cousin of one of the Jena Six, said the walkout was very personally significant. “It [the walkout] kind of forces the issue,” Morris said. “It’s a catalyst to change. Little things like this lead to big things later, and it has to start somewhere.”
The reporters of this article can be reached at news@columbiaspectator.com.
Students Weigh Response to Graffiti
BY LAURA SCHREIBER AND MARY KOHLMANN
PUBLISHED SEPTEMBER 28, 2007
More than 100 students representing a wide range of campus groups held an emergency meeting last night in Lerner Hall to respond to the graffiti found Wednesday in an International Affairs Building restroom stall and to discuss how to prevent similar incidents.
Members of more than a dozen student groups, including the Black Student Organization, Muslim Student Association, Asian American Alliance, and the Student Organization of Latinos expressed outrage at the graffiti, which called people of Middle-Eastern origin “towelheads” and referred to Africans as “savages.”
“The graffiti incident—it was like salt in an open wound,” Christien Tompkins, CC ’08 and co-chair of the United Students of Color Council, said after the meeting.
“This is a cowardly act that threatens the core principles of our community,” said Chris Columbo, dean of Student Affairs for Columbia College and the School of Engineering and Applied Science, in a statement. “In these moments we need to support those groups most targeted by this very hateful message. ... We are deeply committed to working with our students to constructively address this incident in a manner which benefits our academic community.”
Columbo and other administrators met with student representatives from the groups targeted in the graffiti before last night’s meeting. The students present wanted to hear from a more general body of students, and then bring their thoughts back to the administration.
“There’s clearly a simmering and now boiling outrage about pervasive oppression and how it clearly affects people every day,” Tompkins said. “There’s been a silence and a fear and people are ready to organize and ready for change.”
Wednesday’s incident is the latest in a series of incidents of racial bias that have occurred on campus in recent years. In 2004, the Fed published a racist cartoon that sparked a student demonstration on Low Steps. In 2005, two Columbia students scrawled racist, homophobic, and anti-Semitic slurs on the door of a suite in Ruggles, leading to the creation of the ad-hoc coalition Stop Hate on Columbia’s Campus.
Students said they were heartened and impressed by the large showing of groups from so many different cultural backgrounds.
“It’s a testament to people’s empathy for other people’s plight that students who aren’t of color were present,” said Mark Attiah, CC ’09 and vice president of the BSO, after the meeting. “Their presence is just as important as everyone else’s.”
Calvin Sun, CC ’08 and president of the AAA said he was encouraged by the number of groups present, particularly those, such as AAA, that were not the targets of the graffiti.
“I was very happy to see so many different student organizations coming together to discuss what happened and what needs to happen,” said Michelle Diamond, CC ’08 and Columbia College Student Council president, after the meeting. “I sincerely hope to see a lot more students involved as we move forward because this really is an event that effects our entire community.”
Sun agreed that the presence of a variety of groups and student government leaders was key to a successful response. “We want to hit this on all fronts,” he said. “Not just the usual suspects.”
The reporters can be reached at news@columbiaspectator.com
Racist Graffiti Found on Bathroom Stall in SIPA
BY LAURA SCHREIBER
PUBLISHED SEPTEMBER 27, 2007
An inflammatory message with racist sentiments toward people of Middle Eastern and African descent was discovered scrawled in a bathroom stall in the International Affairs Building yesterday.
The graffiti read, “Attention you pinko Commie motherfuckers and Arab Towelheads: America will wake up one day and nuke Mecca, Medina, Tehran, Baghdad, Jakarta, and all the savages in Africa. You will all be fucked! America is for White Europeans!”
Adil Ahmed, CC ’09 and president of the Muslim Student Association, said he was shocked by the ignorance and hatred of the graffiti’s perpetrator.
“It [the graffiti] was written in a dirty place and they’re dirty words and that’s where they belong, if anything, in the trash,” Ahmed said.
Ahmed, who indicated that he thought the comments may have been linked with Monday’s on-campus speech by Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, said he was disappointed that the perpetrator would equate Ahmadinejad’s views with Islam and the entire Muslim community.
“It’s upsetting and I really hope the person who wrote it would really try to learn about Islam and what it really is,” he said. “I look at this statement and say that a lot of people I know on campus would be shocked by this too, whether they’re Muslim or not Muslim. It would be very offensive to any group on campus.”
Members of the Black Student Organization also said they were offended by the graffiti.
“As a black student, and just as a human being, I’m really shocked and disgusted by it,” Tiffany Dockery, CC ’09, and president of BSO, said.
“This is a noose on a tree,” Dockery added, comparing the incident to the intimidation tactics used against black students in the Jena Six controversy when nooses were hung from what was considered to be a tree traditionally for whites after black students sat under it. “It’s letting me know that this place is not as safe as I want it to be. It’s not as safe as I thought it was.”
Dockery added that the message should trouble everyone at Columbia. “This doesn’t just affect minority students, it really affects us all,” she said. “We all live in this community. It’s just a reminder that, in terms of creating community, we’re not there yet.”
Michelle Diamond, CC ’08 and president of the Columbia College Student Council, said that she intended to work with the University to get the graffiti removed today.
BSO Founder Returns to Campus
BY MARY KOHLMANN
PUBLISHED SEPTEMBER 21, 2007
Racism and how to fight it were the topics for discussion in the Malcolm X Lounge in Hartley Hall last night, as over 100 students from Columbia and other area schools met to consider ways of mobilizing on the Jena Six controversy and other issues of racial injustice.
Dr. Rufus Sadler, CC ’77 and one of the BSO’s original founders from 1976, was invited to speak about the group’s history and the current controversy regarding six imprisoned Louisiana students whom many say are the victims of a racist criminal justice system.
“Jena is a gross injustice that was put upon some children as a result of a fight, a regular fight, like most of us have probably been in in high school,” Sadler said.
The meeting coincided with a national day of protest for the Jena Six. Americans across the nation, including many in attendance at the meeting, dressed in black yesterday to demonstrate their support for the alleged victims.
The meeting quickly moved into a discussion on how to deal with and react to the situation, with suggestions that included creating a non-profit group to collect bail money and fostering greater communication and solidarity among cultural groups at Columbia.
“You don’t fight racism with racism,” Tiffany Dockery, CC ’09 and BSO president, said. “You fight racism with solidarity.”
Many in attendance emphasized the need to expand the discussion beyond the confines of the BSO. “What I want to know is what the white people on this campus are going to do,” Maasha Kah, BC ’11, said. “I don’t know why we’re here in Malcolm X Lounge instead of on the steps of Butler.”
“How can we think of the Jena Six as not just the Jena Six but as something that’s happening to our people nationally and globally?” Bryan Mercer, CC ’07, asked.
Students said they felt frustrated with the environment of neglect for social justice issues that they say is common at Columbia as well as on other college campuses.
“We’re so comfortable with where we’re at, [and] we’re so disengaged from our community that we don’t have two hours to go protest,” Alexandria Linn, Sarah Lawrence ’10, said. “This is not the older folks—this is us. This is our generation.”
Sadler urged students to remain committed to fighting racism in today’s society. “One day will we overcome? I hope so but I don’t think it will be soon, and I just don’t want anyone to sit back and say, ‘I don’t have to think about these issues anymore.’”
Mary Kohlmann can be reached at news@columbiaspectator.com.
Malcolm X Lounge Holds BSO History
BY DAVID XIA
PUBLISHED JANUARY 31, 2007
Tucked away in a corner on the first floor of Hartley Hall, the Malcolm X Lounge might not be as crowded as Milstein Library or as grandiose as Low Rotunda, but, replete with its own rich history, it is the heart of and the safe space for many student organizations.
The story of the Malcolm X Lounge extends back in history to a time when it was an office for the Navy Reserve Officers Training Corps. According to the Columbia archives, the University decided to end its NROTC program in 1968, and the room soon sank into abandonment. On April 20, 1970, six months after the Student Afro-American Society called for the creation of a black students' space, several students occupied the empty NROTC office and renamed it the Malcolm X Liberation Center, according to Christien Tompkins, CC '08, historian for the Black Students Organization.
The motivation for this move stemmed from the general attitude during the time period. "In a very broad sense, the whole country had a lot of racial tension," Tompkins said, adding that the students wanted the lounge to be an on-campus community center for black students. The Hartley management body voted to give them the lounge. In the face of the controversy of the students' actions, "A lot of black faculty and staff signed a statement saying not only should they be given a lounge, but they shouldn't be punished," Tompkins said.
When not being used, the lounge is locked, and it is not open to unregistered events. Its white walls are decorated with paintings and ornaments, such as a copy of Sherman Edward's painting My Child, My Child, in which a mother in a purple shawl clutches her unclothed baby close to her chest. A decorative pole for mashing Fufu-a West African dish commonly made from yams-resides in a corner.
On the opposite wall are two pictures of Malcolm X. One shows the black leader, his lips tightly pursed, raising his right index finger with conviction with a quotation reading, "We declare our right on this Earth ... to be a human being, to be respected as a human being, to be given the rights of a human being in this society, on this earth, in this day, which we intend to bring into existence by any means necessary."
Over the years, the lounge has become the meeting place of BSO, the successor of SAAS, which shares the space with student groups such as the African Students Association and Caribbean Students Association.
Today, the ideals that sparked the renaming of the old ROTC office nearly 40 years ago in order to maintain a safe space live on. "We wanted to create a space and opportunity for students to feel safe to express themselves," Tanya Lindsay, CC '07 and president of the BSO, said.
Although the lounge is named after a controversial figure, Mark Attiah, CC '09 and secretary of BSO, said that the name shouldn't be associated with negative values. "If you think this name means hatred," he said, "you need to come to a G-body [General Body] meeting."
Black Students' Group Unveils New Mural
BY MELISSA REPKO
PUBLISHED FEBRUARY 23, 2007
Correction appended.
About 35 members of the Black Student Organization met in the Malcolm X Lounge last night to unveil a new mural and converse about what it means to be black at Columbia University today.
The mural, which replaces the old one that was destroyed by water damage in the fall of 2005, features images of numerous black leaders and depicts two young, black people supporting a third as they walk up a stairway to the sky. It features red, orange, and yellow hues, blending together to form an inspirational scene.
Dytonia Reed, CC '07 and publication chair of BSO, explained that she hoped the mural would portray that "we are on the same path to progression." Another member of BSO commented that it depicted the message, "He's not heavy-he's my brother."
The path to finding the right artist to capture the essence of the club's message was not as straightforward as planned. Reed was disappointed with the first muralist hired and said the result "did not convey the message we wanted."
The second time around they found artist Chris Soria on Craigslist. Reed said that she collaborated with Soria and he based the mural off of her mocked-up sketch.
"When I was with Chris, I was trying to get him to see the vision," Reed said. "I hope that when you come to the lounge and see the mural ... you see we're not in it for ourselves. We are a community."
The gathering featured the founder and former president of BSO, Rufus Saddler, CC '77.
After BSO members explained the organization's history and the mural, Saddler spoke of the BSO's beginnings, telling anecdotes about his college days.
As he passed around a photo of the first BSO meeting, where students donned shades and sported afros, Saddler told about how they advertised for the gathering with flyers that read "Mandatory Meeting of All Blacks." Eighty-three students came.
"It actually meant something to be black," he said. "We actually felt like it depended on us. ... Today, if you had a mandatory meeting for blacks, who would come?"
In addition to facing racial discrimination, Saddler said that many black students at Columbia in the '60s and '70s struggled with economic challenges as well. He recalled calling his mother to tell her about the many luxuries of college life.
"Up here they had macaroni in different shapes and I didn't know if she knew that," he said.
When a member of the audience asked how he viewed the predominately white Core Curriculum, Saddler expressed mixed feelings. He said he was especially disappointed that Music Humanities did not cover jazz and dropped out of the class, though he eventually re-enrolled so he could graduate.
"You can fight it, but you're not going to change it," he said. "Even though I kind of protested it, I was glad about it [the Core], especially when I was in medical school."
Despite the struggles he sometimes faced on campus, Reed said that coming back made him nostalgic.
"Still, after 35 years, when I go through the gates it's like an intellectual wonderland," he said. "I still stand at the sundial and I always look under Alma Mater's skirt."
He stressed that students should continue to fight for what they believe in, whether by voting or protesting. "Apathy is something that can kill you slowly," Reed said.
Ultimately, Saddler and other executive board members expressed satisfaction with BSO's accomplishments since its founding in 1975.
"We have to look at this [the mural] and be thankful for this space," Jason Bello, CC '08 and BSO historian said. "We're part of this story. We're living it today."
CORRECTION: This article failed to mention that this program was co-sponsored by the Black Students Organization and Alpha Phi Alpha. Rufus Sadler, CC '77, is a member of Alpha Phi Alpha.
