Time to Concede

Wednesday night may have marked the peak of the ongoing hunger strike. The candlelight vigil and protest held outside Hamilton Hall and the rumors circulating around campus that the administration intended to shut down negotiations and forcibly remove the strikers’ encampment on Butler lawn pushed the drama and tension to new heights. On that same evening, the administration announced more funding for the Office of Multicultural Affairs and a $50 million overhaul of the Core Curriculum’s Major Cultures requirement. These actions came on the heels of a campus-wide e-mail sent by Vice President Nicholas Dirks that addressed changes already in place relating to the strikers’ demands. Now that the strikers and their supporters have gained the administration’s ear, they ought to cease their confrontational course that risks alienating their fellow students and pursue avenues of negotiation that adequately represent the opinions of all students.

Some of the strikers’ demands, most notably the proposed changes to Major Cultures and the soon-to-be-required anti-oppression training, affect the entire student body, not just the coalition of strike supporters—and in making them the strikers have in effect presented themselves as a legitimate voice of the student body. Yet in truth this is far from the case: many students disagree with the strikers’ demands, and many others are put off by their extreme methods. Moreover, many students are offended that the strikers are essentially speaking on their behalf without their consent. Regardless of the innate legitimacy of the demands—in some cases unquestionable, while in others, highly suspect—it is unproductive for the strikers to raise their voices above those of the student body in order to push through their agenda. It is equally disheartening that the administration has treated the strikers as though they represent the student voice.

On the other hand, the administration is far from blameless. Many of the “concessions” the administration has made in fact are extensions of projects already in place. Additional faculty for ethnic studies were promised several years ago, and the University already has considered altering the major cultures requirement to be more like Contemporary Civilization and Literature Humanities. These programs have stagnated in Columbia’s bureaucracy rather than moving forward to completion, and this is a legitimate cause for outrage on the part of strikers and non-strikers alike. Yet while the newfound openness the administration has displayed of late is heartening, it does not indicate a shift from systematic oppression to lack of prejudice—rather, it represents a temporary overcoming of the bureaucratic inertia and indifference that plague the administration as a whole. The University is appallingly apathetic toward its students regardless of their race, culture, or sexual orientation.

The hunger strike has wrought tremendous ideological polarization on campus. Last night, a group of students protested the protesters, while Facebook groups for and against continue to gain members. If any positive change is to come to the Columbia community then the fissure which have been created must be mended and negotiations must be opened with student representatives that reflect the opinions of the entire student body. There exist legitimate fora for students to seek institutional change at Columbia, among them CCSC and the University Senate, that can claim a democratic mandate and broad canvass of student opinion—now is the time for them to be employed, and for the administration, for once, to listen: not to what a group of strikers with dubious popular support demands, but to what the student body as a whole thinks best.