Dispatches From an Activist’s Notebook

April 26, 2006, a personal essay:
Wednesday had that eerie, out-of-this world feeling that can only be the stuff of protests. The morning’s snow had bizarrely dissolved into a clear, warm sky, and as each member of Stop Hate on Columbia’s Campus (SHOCC) gathered one by one on Low Steps at Columbia, [I] was filled with a sense that the insane weather was merely part of a larger range of possibilities...
Six hate incidents, steeped in racist, homophobic, and anti-Semitic sentiments, had been committed on Columbia University’s campus largely in silence ... far from being isolated and scattered, [they] were spurred out of a larger structural, institutional problems.

September 26, 2007, on the wall of an International Public Affairs bathroom stall:
“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.”

Right Now, 2007:
And isn’t this the ever-repeating refrain? My freshman year spring is my junior year fall and one stupid prank is part of a lot of stupid pranks rolled into something bigger. Every four years, we rotate new bodies in and out of the University; we decapitate the ugly head that rears up and leave the many-headed monster intact. That hate incidents keep happening isn’t why we should relinquish the struggle to prevent them. The repetition is indication to me that a bigger illness lies behind the symptoms. The diagnosis—not our urge to medicate—is flawed. We keep proposing band-aids for our smallpox legions.

April 26, 2006:
Low Steps gave rise to circles that closed and opened throughout the day, expanding and contracting as faculty members, students, and curious onlookers stepped in or out to engage in dialogue. But for all its creativity and newness, the SHOCC protest was something, at its heart, very old.

Rewind to 2004: Columbia University Concerned Students of Color Protest.
The Office of Multicultural Affairs established. Rewind further to 1996: Hunger strike and takeover of Low Library and Hamilton Hall. The Center of Ethnicity and Race established. Rewind even further to 1987: Student protest and building takeovers. The Intercultural Resource Center established. Keep Rewinding Until The Tape Unravels: The unspoken legacy of Columbia University is that the initiatives, resources, and traditions we hold to be sacred and vital to the Columbia University experience has been the result of pushing and prodding by students who have insisted upon change.

April 26, 2006:
Intolerance assumes many shapes and forms and that, far from being as stark as the “redneck United States” hurling racial epithets (or, three nooses on an all-white tree), it may have all the subtlety of a Homer-toting student parodying Black History Month in a school newspaper (or racist graffiti on a bathroom wall).

BWOG/Bored at Butler (Spring 2006):
“Everyone should counter-protest ... SHOCC for making [the hate crimes] such a big deal” “SHOCC ... just stirs up conflict where there really isn’t any.” “Columbia is not intolerant. Stop hyping that trope and deal with shit holes like Alabama where there are actual hate crimes.” –Anonymous posters

November 3, 2006, Spec Submission Op/Ed:
Why must we demand substantial investigations and administrative changes every time someone imagines misconduct? ...this campus needs to take a chill pill.” –Gilad Landon
September 28, 2007, Spec Editorial Comment:
Magnifying trifling and sophomoric boorishness into a major crisis does more damage to a community than the original misdeed.”—Anonymous poster

Right Now, 2007:
Monday’s protest was not just about the racist graffiti on the bathroom walls of SIPA or justice for the Jena 6—although it could have very well been. Rather, it was a boiling over of feelings of isolation and marginalization on Columbia’s campus, stirred by a whole slew of infrastructural failings, curricular oversights and dismissals, and a campus culture that fails to support, include, and empower the most vulnerable members of the Columbia community. We cannot trivialize incidents like last week’s graffiti as an aberration from, rather than a symptom of, the Columbia University culture. If we continue to assume the stance that this University is beyond critique and reassessment, if we continue to conjecture about injustices abroad while remaining glib about what happens in our backyards, we will daily compromise the safety and intellectual promise of our University and leave ourselves wholly unprepared to deal with the more glaring Jena 6’s of our time. As a student of color on this campus, I particularly know that “trifling and sophomoric boorishness”—the Minutemen, the blind spots of the Core, the University’s insensitive expansion efforts, the Bollinger-style attacks on world leaders, the police harassment of Asian-American students, the graffiti—have very real-world and chilling consequences on learning and living. We all, not just activists, student groups, and students of color, are responsible for crafting a vision for what our University will be.
Most haunting is the response of superintendent Roy Breithaupt to the three nooses that hung from an all-white tree in a small town that was once No-Where, U.S.: “Adolescents play pranks ... I don’t think it was a threat against anybody.”
Sounds a helluva lot like what I’ve heard for my past three years here at Columbia. And even if PrezBo continues to stay silent about the graffiti on SIPA’s bathroom, this “pinko Commie motherfucker” will take heed.

Join me at the United Students of Color’s Town Hall, “Where Do We Go From Here: Chaos or Community?” on Friday, Oct. 5 at 6 p.m. in the Broadway Sky Lounge.

Candace Mitchell is a Columbia College junior majoring in English and Comparative Literature.
Under the Radar runs alternate Thursdays.
Specopinion@columbia.edu