Let’s Stop Pretending We're Friends and Allies

I am at the breaking point. The events of this semester and student, staff, faculty, and administrative response have convinced me that most of my efforts as a “student leader” and/or “student activist” have been an absurd charade, and I must not be the only person on this campus that feels this way.

As a “student leader” in the Black Students Organization and the United Students of Color Council, and a “student activist” in Students Promoting Empowerment and Knowledge and Stop Hate on Columbia’s Campus, I’ve sat through many negotiations with upper-level administrators. Rather than genuine dialogue, these meetings have served to throw students bread crumbs and contain our dissent. Yet, we continue this inane cycle of meeting with them, detracting from time we could use to build with each other and imagine alternatives. And we do it with smiles on our faces, at least some of the time, like these were meetings between friends. We should dispel these illusions if we’re really going to do anything meaningful.

For example, Lee Bollinger is not my friend and not my ally, and certainly not a hero. He is only the most visible example of a wider problem, totally disconnected from student needs and incapable of any kind of dialogue that doesn’t fit his own agenda. He talks to students with the same disinterest and pathetic platitudes that he offers to local Harlem residents at community forums on the expansion. His introduction to Ahmadinejad was a self-aggrandizing, racist, and warmongering testament to his lack of commitment to an honest, just, and intellectually vibrant university community (read Hamid Dabashi’s recent article for a more academic breakdown).

Lee and friends, let’s stop pretending like we have any love for each other. You and your associates wait for the day that dissenting students will graduate. Sometimes I think that we all just blend together with the ghosts of protest past for you. But the terrifying thing about this University is that “marginalized students” aren’t the only ones who feel so alienated.

The administration itself is not a robotic monolith. I do believe in the sincerity and dedication of many of the people in the administration, although they’re generally more prevalent on the lower end of the totem pole. They must be frustrated too, because despite their dedication, they don’t really have the power to do anything to change this University either. They’re not only subject to the psychological traumas that marginalized students face, but if they don’t toe the line and play ball, they can lose their jobs—no small matter.

Grad students must feel it too. Columbia grad students can’t even get a union to meet their material needs and must suffer through a disciplining process which often does more to stunt their creativity and intellectual vitality than promote it. A quick look into the Spectator archives shows that Columbia has a terrible labor history with its staff. Do they have any effective power in this institution to address their working conditions?

Untenured faculty members live in perpetual insecurity and have little power to address their concerns or stand in open solidarity with students. But, even the tenured faculty must be upset too. Spectator reported that Eric Foner has stood up to say that this University lacks “intelligent, principled, and courageous leadership,” and I know the faculty in MEALAC must be angry that the University won’t stand up for their rights of academic freedom. Looking at meeting notes from arts and sciences meetings of years past, Bollinger seems just as unresponsive to their charges as he has been to mine.

We inhabit a corporate husk of what could be a vibrant intellectual community. You may be able to point to the many positive aspects of this University, and small victories are important, but if we take a moment to really examine how power works at this University and look at who is empowered and who is alienated, I posit that we are surviving on merely table scraps.

I’m not drawing a Manichean line in the sand here. I’m asking us to realize how alienation, hierarchy, and disempowerment permeate the entire University, from students to staff to faculty, and yes, even administrators themselves. My hope is that as we move forward, we break out of our mental chains and call everything that we do at this University into question. We need to dispel our illusions and create a process of emancipation that is as liberating as the University community and the world that we envision.

Christien Tompkins is a Columbia College senior majoring in African-American studies. Freedom Dreams runs alternate Thursdays.
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