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More Students Prepare to Join Strike
PUBLISHED NOVEMBER 9, 2007
Related sites
Columbia Hunger Strike! — The hunger strikers' blog.
At least four students plan to join the five hunger strikers currently protesting on South Lawn early next week, according to April Simpson, CC '11 and one of those planning to join.
The students are currently preparing physically by weaning themselves off heavy foods and consulting doctors. Yesterday, 40 students gathered around the Sundial to rally in support of the strike.
“Although I’m only a freshman here, I would hate to be one of the seniors here having to deal with this situation in three years,” Simpson said. “There is strength in numbers and I feel that if there’s a call for solidarity ... I should definitely be a part of it, because we’re fighting towards something positive.”
The strikers’ demands, released last week by a newly formed ad hoc coalition, include autonomous hiring power and increased faculty resources for the Center for the Study of Ethnicity and Race, Columbia’s revocation of its 197-c rezoning plan, and increased administrative support and communication.
Eight students negotiating on behalf of the strikers, including Sam Rennebohm, CC ’09, Desiree Carver-Thomas, CC ’09, and Ryan Fukumori, CC ’09, met with administrators Friday to arrange the format and terms of future negotiations.
“There was no mention of the demands or the general purpose of the hunger strike,” Rennebohm said. “There was a concern on their part to end the hunger strike as soon as possible.”
Administrators present at the meeting were Dean of Columbia College Austin Quigley, vice president for arts and sciences Nicholas Dirks, associate dean of student affairs Ajay Nair, provost Alan Brinkley, and executive vice president for government and community affairs Maxine Griffith.
Rennebohm said several terms were agreed upon during the meeting, including the commitment that for each meeting held regarding curricular and administrative reform, another would be held regarding the proposed Manhattanville expansion with senior executive vice president Robert Kasdin and Griffith present.
In addition, administrators agreed that faculty members on the Committee on the Core would be present in meetings regarding core reform and that a nonpartisan mediator would participate in the negotiation process.
At the rally, current strikers spoke about why they are protesting, and several campus organizations read statements to support the demonstrators. “I strike to re-imagine the University as a more democratic place,” Bryan Mercer, CC ’07 and one of the strikers, said in a prepared statement.
“This is not a struggle just between students and administrators, but between a racist corporate institution and the working people of New York,” Karina Garcia, CC ’07 and chair of Lucha, read from a statement. Garcia stressed the urgency of the strikers’ demand for the University to withdraw its 197-c rezoning plan. “If it’s not the progressive anti-racist students at Columbia who will stand up against this injustice, who will?”
Christien Tompkins, CC ’08 and co-chair of the United Students of Color Council, said that while Tuesday’s announcement of a cluster hire of three senior ethnic studies professors was encouraging, students need to maintain pressure on the administration. “All these things are but promises without the actions of students to hold the administration accountable. They can promise all they want, but we’ve got to get in their faces and hold them accountable every day.”
“We stand in solidarity with the hunger strikers because we know that their four demands will impact not simply black students, not simply students of color, but every single member of this community,” Tiffany Dockery, CC ’09 and Black Students Organization president, said in a statement. Tompkins added that, as a member of a black community in San Francisco that faced similar expansion threats, he finds the Columbia’s expansion plans personally insulting. “They might as well be talking about pushing me out of my home or pushing my family out of their home,” he said.
“For me, although it’s [the semester’s incidents are] disappointing, it’s never going to ever change my view as Columbia as a whole because it’s always been my number one,” Simpson said. “Anywhere I went, these issues would be something that had to be addressed. I mean, it’s everywhere, not just Columbia.”
Laura Schreiber can be reached at laura.schreiber@columbiaspectator.com.
CORRECTION: The original version of this story incorrectly identified one of the people planning to join the strike. He has not decided whether or not to join.
View other corrected stories
Won't they get really hungry though???
Pish posh, m' dear boy...let's not inject facts and common sense into this matter! Move along now!
Interesting how the powers that be censor comments here at Columbia. Black crime and affirmative action are taboo.
Pathetic.
TO THE CENSOR OF MY POSTS:
Don't you think Columbians deserve some transparency when it comes to the criteria you use to censor opinions and documented facts? What are you afraid of?
I, too, would like to set up a tent with a few others and complain about a few things. How long do you think it would be before security had it removed?
i wonder why the hunger strike is so (seemingly) personally offensive to many of the posters expressing themselves here. despite reading most of these postings it remains unclear to me why people have responded with such...spite, bitterness, anger. i can understand not agreeing with the demands of the students or with their approach, as i myself certainly question both. but if you disagree so much why not go to the administration and speak to them about your own wishes for this university, or make an effort to see that the things you would like to remain are not changed, or engage the strikers in a good old fashioned conversation. if you have done so i applaud you. i am wondering what is so problematic about the fact that these students are speaking out, for something they believe in (however, naive, simplistic, narrow-minded, etc...some may perceive it to be). who are these students harming? the university's ego, reputation? i should hope it would take much more than a handful of students trying to effect change in a university and community they seem to care enough about to take such drastic action for.
some of these hunger strikers are occupying spaces at columbia that could go to less fortunate students. why don't these strikers withdraw from the university on the condition that the space they vacate is given to one of these less fortunate students?
I support the reasons behind the hunger strike (except the deal with core curriculum) and I think its very brave what the students are trying to do. However, I do not support the method or way they are going about doing this. There seems very little thought to this and I don't believe they are doing an adequate job of including the remainder of the university and therefore this seems like a very specific group of Columbia activists who are talking about this cause. If they want to make change, they need to start being more inclusive instead of trying to speak for a university population that doesn't necessarily agree with them.
these so-called protesters are trying to destroy the meriticracy--they are puerile Marxists that are the product of academic welfare.
I don't give a damn what they have to say. They should not have been admitted to Columbia in the 1st place.
All this because of a noose and a swastika. Makes you wonder what these hunger-strikers will do when sharia law takes foot in this country. After all, Columbia looks to be pro-Iran and their beliefs/leaders. Seems like fear of racists symbols is way stronger than fear of terrorists coming to a college/city near you. Wake up, Columbia!
Has law enforcement started force-feeding procedures yet? It's coming! Open wiiiiiiiide!
Columbia is the laughing-stock of the country.
It is easy to see from the vehemence and negativity of many of the commentators that there is an ugly atmosphere here - whether they are Columbians or not.
That is evidence to me that the students going on the hunger strike have good reasons for their actions.
You're an idiot. Just because someone does something they have 'good reasons'? Come on... since Hitler went through so much trouble to kill millions of Jews, he MUST have had good reasons, right?
grow up. your attitude is exactly like the pretentious one shown by the strikers--if you don't agree with us and show "negativity" towards our cause, you must be racist and our demands are justified. granted, there are racist people on this board whose views are clearly wrong, but there are also MANY people at columbia who have thought about the demands and strategies of the strikers and simply don't agree. i hope you realize how ignorant and close-minded your comment makes you sound.
-columbia college asian female who does not support the strike
Threating injury to yourself or to other people is not going to get you a bottle of crack in a psych ward.
these kids have way too much time on their hands. are any of them doing a real major? i doubt there any physics majors in the lot, since they would be too busy with homework to play self-absorbed attention whore.
Please alert us at the earliest opportunity if the latest nitwit makes a decision.
As a Columbia alum, I am constantly disappointed in the dismissive and patronizing attitude many Columbia students have towards their classmates who take proactive steps to make the university a better place. These students have been part of ongoing conversations with the administration and legitimately feel that direct action is the only effective path at this point in time. I wish that Columbia students (and administrators, and faculty, for that matter) would step back and evaluate the hunger strike and the demands with a sense of humility and an understanding that real power imbalances exist within the university and within our country and world that these students are revealing through their inevitably controversial actions.
"make the university a better place"
get out of town--these "students" want to dumb down the curriculum so that it's palatable to the tastes of our affirmative action populations
exactly
If hunger striking is what ethnic studies teaches and promotes, then I'm wondering why you need more ethnic studies profs. For more classes on protesting and victimization indoctrination? Are there not enough professors for these pathetic victims?
Can I hunger strike against the hunger strikers?
When I walked down college walk on Thursday morning, and saw the tents on the grass, all I thought was "What a great idea for a commuter student! You don't have to pay rent, and you don't have to commute! Just camp on the lawn!" I was grateful to Columbia University for opening up this opportunity to students of low income.
Then I heard about the real reasons, and was disappointed.
At least now the strikers aren't 40% second semester seniors.
I doubt that anything like a majority of students agrees with these hunger strikers' tactics or demands. It's highly self-centered and undemocratic for them to be trying to foist their beliefs on the university and by implication on the rest of the university community. The university would be better off talking to 5 students chosen at random to hear their concerns as opposed to this self-selected minority view.
p.s. spectator should post a link to their full set of demands when writing articles about them. Otherwise it's hard to evaluate exactly what's at issue.
This is so god damn stupid I can't believe it. There are legitimate grievances here, but going off half-cocked and calling Columbia a "racist institution" is absurd. Hunger striking when one's demands are a) hopelessly scattershot and b) piddling is just petulant and juvenile, and no, it is not much different from a child holding his breath until he gets what he wants.
Furthermore, comparing yourselves to Civil Rights protesters is self-aggrandizing and delusional. You are not marching in the streets of Selma. When King said "the purpose of our direct-action program is to...open the door to negotiation," it was because there was no other door. Here, the avenue of negotation is very clearly lit, and the administration, whom the protestors seem to be bent on representing as fascist ogres, is not nearly as unreceptive to dialogue as they make it out to be. And if you want to talk about being unreceptive to dialogue, look no further than yourselves; hunger-striking utterly shortcircuits discourse, and closes the door to negotation entirely. This enterprise is shameful and puerile.
This is all to say nothing of the sheer glee the jackass(es) painting the swastikas etc. must be feeling right now. The tempest they have managed to whoop up must be terrifically empowering. Good job, everyone.
Looks to me like these students are the useful idiots of the embedded activist class at Columbia and the Spectator that covers them -- activists here, activists there, activists everywhere. More activists Monday I'm sure. It's all so 60s, so old. Hey Spectator, maybe you should be profiling Karina Garcia '07. She was one of the activists who brought us the Minuteman fiasco. Sheeeeee's back?!
What puzzles me is why students don't demand practical pre-professional majors like business, finance, or journalism with the same vehemence that accompanies calls for more ethnic studies. If we're talking about the academic rigour and merit of a university, students should be just as concerned about the lack of the practical subjects.
Columbia is not a trade school. Go to the University of Phoenix Online or some state-funded institution for that garbage.
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