A newly formed ad hoc coalition of students released a list of demands of the administration at a teach-in in Hamilton Hall Tuesday night.

The demands focus on four areas in which students involved in the group have previously expressed concern, including administrative support for diversity issues, ethnic studies, the Core Curriculum, and Columbia’s proposed Manhattanville expansion.

“The administration has yet to fulfill its avowed goals of making the long-term, institutional changes necessary in stemming the rising tide of hate incidents aimed at students of color, students of faith, LGBTQ students, and other oppressed groups,” the as-yet unnamed coalition said in its statement.

The demands include the expansion of the Office of Multicultural Affairs, the appointment of a Vice Provost for Multicultural Affairs, the announcement of future hate crimes by Columbia Public Safety, and mandatory anti-oppression training for all incoming faculty and public safety.

“The OMA is grossly understaffed and housed in a space that is simply inadequate considering the scope of its responsibilities,” the statement read.

Several of the demands mirrored recommendations made in the ethnic studies report released last spring by students in the field. The group demanded that Columbia give hiring power to the Center for the Study for Ethnicity and Race and up the number of CSER faculty members.

“This program has been denied the crucial resources that it needs to sustain itself,” the statement read. “The risk of even further decline will become an even bigger threat unless the power to hire faculty and offer a full curriculum in the University is granted to the Center.”

“At all these town halls, [called in light of the recent bias incidents] people vented their frustrations and said they wanted to do something,” Christien Tompkins, CC ’08 and co-chair of the United Students of Color Council, said. “This platform is articulating in a framework that is an entry point for people to imagine a Columbia that deals with marginalization.”

The coalition also demanded that Columbia withdraw its 197-c proposal to rezone Manhattanville and submit its proposal for revision by Community Board 9. “The most basic problem with Columbia’s [expansion] plan ... is its wanton disregard for the basic principle of local democracy, something that the University’s humanistic ideals should hold as sacrosanct,” the statement read.

The group also made demands regarding the revision of the Core Curriculum, which the statement criticized as Eurocentric and a “marginalization of nonwhite peoples within the West.”

The coalition demanded the inclusion of a seminar dealing with issues of racialization and colonialism and more student voices and seats in the Committee on the Core. Students emphasized that while many of the demands were similar to those made by ad hoc coalitions Columbia Concerned Students of Color in 2004 and Stop Hate on Columbia Campus in 2006, they remain relevant since only small steps have been made in addressing them.

Bryan Mercer, CC ’07 and a member of the Student Coalition on Expansion and Gentrification, said that the coalition would focus its energies on educating the general student body about their concerns. “These demands come out of students putting their ear to the student community,” he said. “We’d like them to start a discussion with students who identify with them.”

Laura Schreiber can be reached at laura.schreiber@columbiaspectator.com.