Desperate Times, Unfocused Measures

As the sun set over the Hudson Wednesday evening, five students—just hours into their much-publicized hunger strike—camped on Low Plaza, demonstrating against the many iniquities and injustices that they say afflict the University. Their willingness to mount such a protest, even to the point of eventual bodily harm, is impressive, and not a few of their frustrations with Columbia are eminently justifiable. But even before hunger pangs had set in, the lack of focus and pragmatism in the protesters' demands seemed sure to dilute the force of the strike. In a petition released last week, the protesters' umbrella organization addressed everything from the Core Curriculum to Manhattanville to faculty hiring practices, running the gamut from the prudent to the simply infeasible. Some of the proposals would entail a cost to the University that makes their enactment unlikely. For example, the strikers have called for two new faculty hires a year for both the Center for the Study of Ethnicity and Race and the Institute for Research in African American Studies, but with the steep cost associated with adding faculty members and Vice President Dirks' recent commitment to hire three new ethnic studies professors, this demand seems unrealistic. A drastic protest such is this is most effective when its organizers' demands are clear and narrow, but the nature of this list—broad, ambiguous, and often infeasible—seems likely to sap the strike of its potential efficacy.

While the bias incidents that occurred this semester are troubling and symptomatic of a larger problem, it is not clear that a hotly controversial hunger strike will bring the unity Columbia's campus needs. Perhaps the greatest weakness in the strikers' list of demands—one which epitomizes the failings of their approach—is the call for immediate withdrawal of the University's 197-C rezoning proposal. The Manhattanville project is a part of the long-term vision of the current administration, and the details of the plan have been endlessly vetted and revised by the University over years of development. At this point, the strikers must know that there is little students alone can do to compel the administration to depart dramatically from its stated designs. Pinning the success of a hunger strike on this demand, then, seems foolhardy.

However, the broadness and impracticality of some of the strike's demands do not give the University a free pass to ignore the issues at hand. In particular, Columbia should consider reforming the major cultures requirement by including a course in a seminar format that focuses on the issues of racialization and colonialism. Such a change ought to be accompanied by overall reforms to the Core Curriculum to make it more inclusive and representative of "non-Western" viewpoints. Likewise, the Office of Multicultural Affairs is severely understaffed—something the University should acknowledge and make moves towards addressing. Most importantly, Columbia should recognize that a decision to stop eating is a desperate act. It must work with the strikers to give students voices enough weight that future generations of Columbians don't feel they have to stop eating to be heard.

Despite the occasional violent outburst and other objectionable protest tactics, student activism has long been an engine of change and progress on Columbia's campus. The creation of the Office of Multicultural Affairs and the launch of the Center for Study of Ethnicity and Race were both the results of radical protests by students. The University ought to pay ample attention to the demands of the hunger strikers, but institutions change gradually, and the strikers need to lay out a plan that the University can follow and that allows for student input rather than unilaterally demanding all of their goals be met at once.