“As black students who pay $65,000 a year to be here, we deserve to be heard and spoken to by administration,” she said. She added that officials often have private meetings with student leaders but don’t usually engage with the broader community of students of color. Some students wanted to attend a news conference American officials held on Wednesday but were kept out of the room, Ms. “It was more just to represent the communities that aren’t getting a seat at the table,” said Ma’at Sargeant, a sophomore and president of the Black Student Alliance. He stood silently for a few minutes and watched the protest, then he took their megaphone and addressed the crowd, saying that administrators were “terribly pained” about what had happened. Dumpson didn’t attend the protest.)Īfter about an hour, as activists called for university administrators to show up, Scott A. They sat down in the road and blocked cars from driving through the tunnel and from exiting the attached parking garage. In front were about 20 students wearing red bandanas who were willing to risk arrest. Signs saying “Not here to fill your quota” and “If you’re not angry you’re not paying attention” dotted the crowd.
Many wore tape over their mouths bearing the phrase #ItsInTheAir, in reference to racism on the campus. On Friday afternoon, about a hundred students and local community organizers marched from the Katzen Arts Center to a tunnel near the basketball stadium that serves as a major thoroughfare on the campus. But some students of color were not, and they decided to plan another demonstration. Dumpson told Washington’s NBC affiliate on Wednesday that she was pleased with officials’ response to the incident. Camille Lepre, a university spokeswoman, told The Chronicle that “we’ve landed in a place where we know that everything we’ve done is still not working, and we need new tools - and maybe there’s an opportunity embedded in all of this to take a more lead role.” Kerwin, who is stepping down at the end of this month, also said this week that the university would consider changes to its policies on bias-related incidents. This image doesn’t even begin to do justice to the amount of people who have showed up to this Town Hall cc: /nmScnpdJA5 Dumpson also appeared with members of the Congressional Black Caucus on Capitol Hill and held a town hall that drew hundreds of attendees to discuss how the university could better respond to hate-motivated incidents. Dumpson, saying the noose incident was a “cowardly and despicable act” that had “created for this campus a period of great difficulty and great distress,” according to WAMU-FM, American’s radio station.
(Neil) Kerwin, the university’s president, spoke on Thursday at a news conference with Ms. Please retweet & resist /OFUMuQAG5oĬornelius M. Your silences will not protect you.” Here are a list of demands. Several students said they were frustrated with what they considered to be a sluggish response from administrators to the discovery of the nooses.Ī handful of student organizations issued a separate, longer list of demands to administrators after that protest. Dozens of students walked out of the event after about 45 minutes and marched to the financial-aid office, where they filled out forms to withdraw from the university in protest - though they didn’t sign them. University officials organized a town hall on Tuesday in response to the incident. Some had the letters “AKA” written on them - a reference to Alpha Kappa Alpha, a traditionally black sorority to which Ms. The same day, several bananas in the shape of nooses were found here. Dumpson officially assumed the role of president on Monday. students are staging an occupation after racist incident, some risking arrest. Students’ anger reached a peak on Friday, when dozens of them shut down a traffic tunnel in the middle of the campus, saying they wouldn’t leave until American officials agreed to meet their three demands.Īmerican U. American campus police were dispatched late Thursday to protect the student leader. One of them, Taylor Dumpson - the first black woman to be elected as American’s student body president - has faced online threats from a prominent white supremacist.Īndrew Anglin, founder of the Daily Stormer, a neo-Nazi website, wrote a post on social media encouraging his followers to “troll” Ms.
It’s been a difficult week here at American University for students of color, who have been taking finals and simultaneously organizing protests and risking arrest as racial tensions have swelled. shut down traffic in a campus thoroughfare on Friday to protest what they perceived as a sluggish response by administrators to a racist incident earlier in the week. Chronicle photo by Sarah Brown Students at American U.
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