Beginning today, five Columbia students will go on a hunger strike to protest the University’s proposed expansion into Manhattanville, administrative responses to recent bias incidents, and a lack of resources for ethnic studies.

The strikers said that the protest will begin at noon today and will continue until the University meets their demands. The list was first announced last week in a statement released by the ad hoc coalition.

“We strike because we want the administration to understand that these needs are as fundamental to students’ intellectual lives as food is to the human body,” one striker said in a statement. Organizers of the strike have also launched a blog [1] to track their efforts and demands.

The strikers, who attended weigh-in Wednesday, were identified as Bryan Mercer, CC '07, Emilie Rosenblatt, CC '08, Victoria Ruiz, CC '09, Aretha Choi, BC '10, and Sam Barron, BC '10. Earlier reports had said that six students would participate in the strike, but the number was later reduced to five.

Vice President for Arts and Sciences Nick Dirks has offered to hire of three senior professors for the Center for the Study of Ethnicity and Race in response to the strikers’ demands. He is scheduled to discuss the issue further with students this morning.

Other reforms the strikers aim for include changes to the Core Curriculum and expansion of the Office of Multicultural Affairs.

Members of the coalition said they also hoped to improve communication between students and administrators. “In the past, people have been really disenfranchised by the process of negotiations,” Kate Miles, BC ’10 and a member of the coalition, said. “One of our goals is to make the administration more accountable for this—to not have this happening behind curtains.”

Andrew Tillet–Saks, CC ’09 and a member of the coalition, said that the decision to strike came out of the exhaustion of other, less extreme attempts for change. “Other tactics have been tried for many, many years and many, many times and the change hasn’t come so we’re trying something new and a bit more severe,” he said. “Only time will tell if it’s the best option, but at the moment I think we need something at this level of escalation.”

University spokeswoman LaVerna Fountain wrote in a statement Tuesday night that Columbia’s foremost concern regarding the protest was the health of the students involved. “Columbia supports the right of public protest by students but has a concern first and foremost for their health and safety, as well as a responsibility to their families...so our health services will closely monitor the situation,” she wrote.

Columbia University Health Services has agreed to check the strikers’ vital signs each day of the strike.

On Wednesday afternoon, Barnard President Judith Shapiro released a statement [2] detailing current and past efforts by the college to address areas of concern for the strikers.

"While hunger strikes have a long and important history as a form of political action, they are not without their dangers and may not always be a necessary strategy in a particular situation," Shapiro said. "I am hoping that we can together strengthen our efforts to making the changes we need to make in our community."

“We strike because student input on these issues in meetings [with administrators], through protests, and through other avenues of vocalization has been ignored or patronized, and the response to our demands for change has been woefully insufficient,” another striker said in a statement.

The announcement follows a string of bias incidents that have occurred on campus this semester, including the hanging of a noose on the door of a black Teacher’s College professor, the spray-painting of a swastika on a Jewish TC professor’s door, and the discovery of anti-Semitic, racist, and Islamophobic graffiti in Columbia restrooms.

“I think that the fact that all of these things happened so quickly in succession is kind of shocking to the student body at large and so it’s impossible to ignore,” Desiree Carver-Thomas, CC ’09 and a member of the coalition’s negotiation team, said. “It’s kind of forced the student body to take a long hard look at the way the University allows these things to happen.”

The strikers emphasized that they do not view the recent bias incidents as isolated episodes, but see them as stemming from a pervasive climate of racism and insensitivity on campus. Members of the coalition point to several past incidents to support their claim. These include a racist cartoon published in The Fed and a bake-sale held against affirmative action by the Columbia College Conservative Club in 2004 that prompted students to wear black clothing and signs reading “I am being silenced” for a week. In 2005, two Columbia students scrawled racist, homophobic, and anti-Semitic epithets on a Ruggles suite. Students responded with the Stop Hate on Columbia Campus demonstrations in 2006.

The attitude behind such incidents, some students in the coalition argue, arises in part from a Eurocentric core curriculum that lacks academic exploration of non-Western traditions and critical analysis of the place of race in society.

Students also claim that Columbia’s proposed expansion into Manhattanville represents an attitude that places little importance on the concerns of minority communities of West Harlem.

Michelle Diamond, CC ’08 and president of the Columbia College Student Council, said that the council will not take a stance on the situation as of yet.

“The GSSC sides with those who seek a better Columbia,” Niko Cunningham, GS and president of the General Studies Student Council, said in a statement. “Today, and forever, we side with those who chase progress.”

The strike comes 11 years after students held a hunger strike and organized a takeover of Hamilton Hall in April 1996 demanding the creation of an ethnic studies program at Columbia. After 15 days, the administration announced it planned to increase the number of faculty members in Asian American and Hispanic studies. Three years later, Columbia established CSER.

Students also held a hunger strike in 1985 to protest the University’s investments in companies that supported the South Africa’s Apartheid government, after which Columbia agreed to divest from companies which did business in South Africa.

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