Why I Write Against the Hunger Strike

In the twilight hours of Nov. 15, I was one of five Columbia students who helped organize that night’s rally against the hunger strike. Contrary to faulty Spectator coverage, over 80 concerned students, who were opposed to the strike but also interested in dialogue, gathered around the outstretched arms of Alma Mater and discussed their various reasons for enduring the cold. Some opposed the strikers’ demands, some rejected the radical method, but, in general, most of us stood there because we felt we had been silenced and marginalized, not by the administration, but by the tenants of Butler lawn.

But now with tents removed and bellies filled, why not just forgive and forget? Why write if the primary concern had been the hunger strike’s strangling of discourse? Of course, the strike supporters have vowed to continue their struggle, but so what? They, like all other students here, have the right and duty to support their own beliefs.

The cause, the impetus, the obligation to write is the possibility of a sequel. What if there is a repeat of this week of self-starvation? Will it be undermined by the mistakes made by strike organizers this time around? In the interlude, I write.

I write because, for the majority of the hunger strike’s duration, its organizers, either foolishly or strategically, avoided incorporating and confronting student dissent. Students were expected to individually approach the tents and express their concerns to anyone who happened to be there at the time. On the second-to-last day of the hunger strike, a leading strike organizer openly acknowledged the first problem with this approach: it immediately turned away many detractors who, understandably, felt intimidated amongst the tents. Secondly, private, off-the-record conversation neither guaranteed that strike supporters would be held accountable for their statements, nor ensured that strike organizers would include critics’ opinions in discussions with the administration. Thirdly, even if the strike organizers did take into account the concerns of individuals who approached the tents, those specific dissenters could not possibly represent the greater student body. Lastly, and most importantly, it was impossible to disseminate the content of those private discussions accurately into the public sphere.

While I appreciate a strike organizer’s invitation for dialogue, as well as the editorial written by professor Dennis Dalton (“Continuing the Columbia Idealist Tradition,” Nov. 20), where were such explanations when the strike began? I often heard that the strike organizers were overextended and didn’t have time to, for example, publicly respond to a list of questions regarding their legitimacy and the precedent they were setting. Was the hunger strike initiated so haphazardly that such responses were not already drafted and organized? Only now, in the denouement, have tardy responses by strikers like Bryan Mercer, CC ’07, trickled in through various club Listservs and blog posts.

I write because when groups did organize to publicly protest the strike, they were immediately condemned as either racist or ignorant by strike organizers and supporters. A strike organizer angrily wrote to over 30 influential campus-organization Listservs that the greatest blow to her faith in her peers was the emergence of rallies and online groups that opposed the strike, such as Aga Sablinska’s “We DO NOT Support the Hunger Strikers” Facebook group that had 750 Columbia-affiliated members. While understandably responding to obnoxious taunts of food and words against the strikers, this organizer nevertheless failed to acknowledge intelligent, respectful dissent. She instead quoted striker Bryan Mercer: “We cannot confuse those who are simply weak-willed and prejudiced with those who we can potentially reach and educate about our demands.” The argument was thus between the racist irrational and the uneducated ignorant. Through the strikers’ program of “outreach,” concerned students were proselytized to, not heard. Similar language demonizing all forms of dissent peppered editorials like that of Aries Dela Cruz (“A Truly Multicultural Affair,” Nov. 14) as well as the wall posts by prominent campus leaders on the strikers’ Facebook group.

I write because the strikers were purposefully and exploitatively ambiguous throughout their week of residence in front of Butler Library. Did they mean to identify consistently as representatives of the campus’ majority opinion, or as leaders of an oppressed, righteous minority movement defending not only universal ideals but also responding directly to mob rule? The answer was never clear, and the language used to defend the strike adeptly vacillated between the two when the need arose. And now, disappointed by the depth of the administration’s concessions, some strikers and organizers speciously and contemptuously claim that the visceral and public nature of the hunger strike was in fact primarily intended to foster greater engagement and dialogue amongst students.

Now that dialogue has become a stated goal, contact your student representative and ask that the Columbia College and Engineering Student Councils organize and sponsor a town hall to discuss the hunger strike, its methods, its demands, and its consequences. Work to ensure that a public forum exists, apart from a crowd of tents, in which every individual can air his or her grievances with transparency and accountability.

I write to re-imagine the University as a more democratic place.