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Students to Protest Racism in Walkout
By Mary Kohlmann and
PUBLISHED OCTOBER 1, 2007
Organizers expect at least 200 students to participate in a walkout and rally at noon today to support the Jena Six and to protest what they call an atmosphere of intolerance at Columbia reflected by an incident including the racist graffiti found last week in an International Affairs Building restroom.
The event coincides with a national student walkout for the Jena Six, a group of Louisiana teenagers who some claim have been imprisoned due to a racist criminal justice system.
“The events that took place in Jena came out of a larger climate of racism and intolerance, a climate that exists at this University as well,” a statement released by the event’s planners said. “That this graffiti is not an isolated incident is indicated by the extensive history of similar events at Columbia, met with utterly inadequate initiative on the part of the University and little willingness to make lasting systemic change.”
Organizers say they expect students from a wide range of campus groups, including the Black Students Association, Muslim Students Association, and the United Students of Color Council to assemble on Low steps. They will march to various campus locations that they say have been touched by incidents of racial bias including Barnard, Teachers College, and the School of International and Public Affairs.
The organizers’ statement also associated University President Lee Bollinger’s negative rhetoric during his introduction of Iran’s President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad with the graffiti. “President Bollinger’s speech also created a problematic atmosphere at Columbia and it was within this atmosphere that the hate crime in SIPA took place,” the organizers said.
“We are working with student leaders to develop programming that will facilitate dialogue to address the concerns of our community,” the Division of Student Affairs said in a statement. The Division of Student Affairs declined to comment on the student-released statement, referring to a previous statement made by Chris Colombo, dean of Student Affairs for Columbia College and SEAS, in which he said, “We are deeply committed to working with our students to constructively address this incident in a manner which benefits our academic community.”
Student representatives from the groups targeted by the graffiti have also met with administrators to discuss a response.
Participants in the rally will read a list of demands regarding justice for the Jena Six, a group of six black students who are facing prison time for assaulting a white student, an act that they committed after nooses were hung from a tree—one that had traditionally been considered reserved for white students—under which they had sat. The demonstrators will also protest against issues at Columbia that they claim relate to bias incidents, including a lack of diversity in the Core Curriculum and insufficient resources for ethnic studies.
The reporters of this article can be reached at news@columbiaspectator.com.
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And while people of all colors contribute millions of private funds for YOUR educations, you can't seem to see anything but an opportunity to draw the media.
Spoiled, rotten kids.
Go to class and grow up!
You need to be thinking about the world's problems - rise above the petty.
Get to work!
I notice that comments in another forum on this website have been disabled, presumably because moronic anonymous writers made racist allusions to the author's Jewish identity. Here, though, there are more than one deeply offensive qua racist anonymous comments published, and the forum is still open. I think the entire convention of anonymous posting needs to be rethought -- limit responses to those with a CUID (students and alumni). The Spec needs to be a responsible, thoughtful forum for civil discourse - anonymity does not promote such a goal. There are plenty of blogs elsewhere for the morons and racists to post upon.
Which forum are you talking about?
all of these comments are so poisonous and hateful. take a good long look at yourselves. shame.
Invite a murderere who hopes to committ genocide and that is free speech at Columbia. Some juvenile mind scribbles graffitti and the campus is in an uproar and a walkout is in order. If only the jerk offs who walk out would be fined 25 bucks which they had to pay out of their own pockets (not mommy and daddies) there would be no walk out. Ciolumbia land of the spoiled liberal brats and their more radical then thou philosophy.
"I guess it is easy to have a walk out when you pay no tuition."
If anyone considers this comment appropriate for the Spectator Web Site, then it is clear that an atmosphere of intolerance exists at Columbia. Race continues to define our society; it is essential that we make an effort to understand how it shapes life on our campus. If we dismiss the question of race, refusing to consider why a significant number of Columbia students thought a walk out was necessary, we admit our own intolerance.
I guess it's easy to have a walk-out when you pay no tuition.
>> "an atmosphere of intolerance at Columbia reflected by an incident including the racist graffiti found last week in an International Affairs Building restroom."
wow! Some intolerance. In fact it is so severe, that I would invite brother Jesse and brother Al. Get a life you spoiled brats.
Walkout? Walk out and keep going.
PLEASE EVERYONE SHUT THE HELL UP YOU SPOILED BRATS
The speach which most needs protection is that which is most objectionable to the majority.
Democracy is the oppression of the minority by the majority.
In a Republic the voice of the minority is protected from the tyrany of the majority.
The above statements are paraphrased from the writings of our founding fathers.
As far as the bathroom wall goes, why does anyone care what some idiot wrote while he was taking a crap??? Clean it off and IGNORE IT.
As far as we know, the garbage on the wal was written specifically to orchestrate the very protests and outrage it has generated. And the publicity.
In otherwords stop feeding the troll.
Yes - of course Columbia is responsible for Jena. Columbia students typically hang nooses on trees as part of their "free speech/academic freedom" rights. Columbia students also clearly have "whites only" trees as well. And Columbia students are often prone to committing felony assaults when others exercise their rights of "free speech/academic freedom" against them. However, I think that rather than boycott the classroom, these students should boycott the bathroom - which is really at fault here - and refuse to use the facilities for a few weeks. Also, as a preemtive prophylactic, Columbia should prohibit all forms of writing instruments - pens, pencils, spray cans, jello - after all, such items are relics of a pre-technological age and are not necessary in the age of the laptop. We need a strong dose of paternalism to combat infantilism.
To walk out of class because of the graffiti is ridiculous. I simply do not understand what people expect the university to do to prevent someone from going into a bathroom and writing on a wall what they've been thinking, but perhaps not saying. We cannot pre-screen the thoughts of everyone that sets foot on the campus.
We also have no idea who is responsible for this, be it faculty, staff, student, or perhaps someone with no affiliation whatsoever that just wandered in. Unless you want us to have a closed campus, with keycard access on every door (including bathroom stalls), so that we can all be tracked, I don't know how the school can ensure that future incidents do not occur.
Note that I am not saying no one should be punished; indeed, if you could identify the writer, I'd be all for throwing the book at him. I just don't know how you think you can rid the campus of this. It's a "War on Hate", which would be about as successful as the War on Drugs and the War on Terrorism.
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