#students

by Eric White

Like many university students these days, especially those also pursuing Arts degrees, I look toward the future in this constantly changing and hectic world with blank, undiscerning eyes. I often wonder to myself how the hell I am going to fit into this world.

Part of my musing includes wondering where I’ll live when I’m older. I can’t really see myself moving back to suburban New Jersey, but New York is obviously pretty cool. Living in utopian Canada has jaded my view of the U.S. though, so maybe I should consider staying here: I love Montreal, but am skeptical on whether or not I’d be able to learn enough French to completely integrate into this city.

I often wonder if my queerness will resign me to always living in large, urban areas. I knew very little about Montreal before coming to school here, but as I made the decision to come here as a closeted teenager, I hoped it would be a good place to figure my queer self out. It has far surpassed the few expectations I had.

It’s a common narrative: a queer person coming to the city from a rural area or small town, escaping close-minded communities, unaccepting family members, and small-town mentalities. Although I don’t identify with all those conditions, cities offer a solution to unprecedented numbers of people of all shapes, colours, sizes, and of course, sexual preferences.

Whether on purpose or inadvertently, cities seem to be the places where queer communities form, a fact with historical precedent. It was not until the late 19th century, following powerful forces of urbanization across Europe and North America, that same-sex relations led to the creation of a ‘homosexual identity,’ challenging the perception that these were merely sinful acts anyone was capable of.

Bert Hansen’s chapter in Framing Disease: Studies in Cultural History outlines the medicalization of homosexuality in North America in the last decades of the 19th century. Although homosexuality was stigmatized as a disease, the rise of sexologists across Europe and North America pioneered an important recognition and acknowledgement of (what was then termed) ‘the homosexual.’

In the U.S., Hansen remarks that urbanization in the 19th century brought people away from their family-farming communities and toward cities, offering greater opportunities for people – first men, and later women – to pursue sex differently. Those with same-sex desires seemed to find each other. As meeting places such as bars and parks formed, leading to clashes with doctors, reformers, and police, these communities developed a greater sense of self-awareness.

Throughout the first half of the 20th century in the U.S., which brought new waves of urbanization, cities continued to be the sites of relaxed sexual morals, offering greater opportunities for sexual experimentation and fulfillment. Since then, what is considered the ‘gay liberation movement’ of the 1960s and 1970s, marked by events such as the Stonewall riots in New York in 1969, was focused on urban areas. Similarly, AIDS activism in the 1980s and 1990s was centred in San Francisco and New York, where large populations of gay men meant many people were affected by the epidemic.

This is a cursory look at queer history, but it is nonetheless easy to focus on cities when examining the advances and changes in perception of queer people. Today, queer communities still seem to have the greatest visibility and recognition in urban centres.
Nevertheless, contemporary writers, many of them in Canada, have focused on reclaiming the notion of the rural queer, establishing themselves as more relevant to LGBTQ populations than previously recognized. Lesley Marple, an LGBTQ advocate based in Nova Scotia, writes about the privileging of urban queerness and the need for greater interaction between queer communities inRural Queers? The Loss of the Rural in Queer.

According to Marple, “Within the broader queer community, the rural queer needs space to talk about areas of struggle, without being dismissed with the familiar quote ‘why don’t you just move to the city?’ as though urban life is the solution to queer challenges.” Rural queer people need space to be respected and acknowledged, instead of disregarded and undermined.

I definitely find myself guilty of an urban-queer superiority complex, and Marple’s call for greater interaction, without urban queer people belittling the lifestyle choices of their rural counterparts, is valid and salient. With greater recognition and respect, increased solidarity between the various queer communities could result in increased visibility and acceptance of rural queer people, both by their urban counterparts and broader communities. The advancement of rural queerness, with activism focused outside cities, can only mean greater visibility, acceptance, and progress for more LGBTQ populations.

Although articles such as Marple’s have helped me gain greater respect for rural queer people, at this point in my life, I know a city is where I need to be. In part it’s my personality; I like to be around people and am extroverted in some ways. I found integrating into Montreal’s queer community difficult at first, but have since enjoyed and benefited from interacting with more queer people. If I had gone to college in New Jersey, the only other option I considered besides coming to Montreal, I can’t see myself having become the gender-fucking, sparkly nail polish-wearing, proud queer that I am today.

I couldn’t wait to get out of my stuffy, conservative New Jersey town where I still don’t feel completely comfortable being the person I am. While I’ve had friends from small towns and rural areas struggle with their sexualities, many queer friends from urban areas tell stories of coming out at younger ages, sometimes with easier transitions. Of course, it’s all based on context, and everyone’s journey of sexual self discovery is different. Marple asserted that urban and rural queer people have various privileges, face different struggles, and confront diverse challenges.

I can’t help but see cities as the places where the largest queer communities will exist, be recognized, and mobilize. Cities have been centres of queer activism, and they will continue to be. However, that’s not to diminish the importance and credibility of rural queer people. The unity of various queer communities could mean stronger activism and a greater push for equality, acceptance, and respect. Above all, I hope a conglomeration of queer communities means allowing for any queer person to be who they want to be – free of judgment, violence, and discrimination.

This article was originally published by The McGill Daily. 

The decision reflects the unfair treatment pro-Palestinian campus activists face across the country

by George Joseph

This Monday, to kick off End Israeli Apartheid Week, the Barnard-Columbia chapter of Students for Justice in Palestine hung up a banner in front of Barnard Hall, featuring a map of historical Palestine. In response, students and parents from campus organizations like Lion PAC and Columbia Barnard Hillel immediately began a concerted email campaign, demanding the sign be removed because of its “anti-Semitic” content. And so, despite the fact that SJP obtained official permission to put up the banner, even explaining the message of their sign beforehand, Barnard President Debora Spar made the decision to tear down the banner the next morning.

The banner, as shown below, depicts a map of historic Palestine to affirm “the connection that Palestinians living in the diaspora, the occupied territories of the West Bank and Gaza Strip, and as citizens inside of Israel, feel for one another, despite their fragmentation across time and space,” said SJP organizer Feride Eralp. Nonetheless, Columbia Barnard Hillel President Hannah Spellman claimed that such a display was “offensive and threatening” because it did not include Israeli territorial markings. Yet, despite the obviously contestable meaning of the sign among the student body, Barnard’s administration promptly decided to rip off the banner, effectively violating their own space policies in order to favor the demands, and artistic interpretations, of pro-Israeli campus organizations. Did the banner, which had already been approved, become “anti-Semitic” and “threatening” in the eyes of administrators over night?

“It has been a long-standing tradition to allow any recognized Barnard or Columbia student group to reserve a space and hang a banner promoting their event,” acknowledged Barnard President Deborah Spar in an internal email to Lion PAC (SJP received no such personal email). But nonetheless, she declared, after thanking students for their demands, “We are removing the banner from Barnard Hall at this time and will be reexamining our policy for student banners going forward.” Such a response came as a shock to SJP activists, who were not even informed until campus media picked up on the story.

“People have suggested its not fair to have something so politically charged next to a Barnard logo, but if so, then there needs to be consistency,” said SJP activist and Barnard sophomore Shezza Dallal. “Feminism, Pro-life-these are all very politically charged topics, why were their banners kept up, but ours is brought down now?  You cannot just accord freedom of speech until it makes certain people feel uncomfortable.”

Another student, who wanted to go by Khan, complained that both the Columbia and Barnard administrations consistently privilege the needs and beliefs of some student groups over others. “Barnard’s conduct on this was extremely swift. We went to bed having put them up, and in the morning they were gone,” she said. “When we want to get something done, we are not considered a priority. For the Muslim Students Association it has taken two years for us to get a regular religious life advisor, but when one individual, former Hillel president or not, made a Facebook status, all of a sudden this blows up into immediate action.”

Many students felt that the censorship is symptomatic of larger structural disparities and institutional dominance. Columbia and Barnard’s Hillel Center for Jewish Student Life, for example, has its own enormous building on campus, from which it regularly hosts organizations and events explicitly justifying Israel’s occupation of Palestine and arranges hundreds of students’ free trips to Israel as part of the “Taglit Birthright” program. The program has received much criticism for the unapologetically propagandistic image it presents of the Israeli occupation, not too mention its clearly offensive premise that any Jewish American has a right to visit and live in Israel, while millions of dispossessed Palestinians continue to languish in refugee camps across the region. Yet Columbia and Barnard continue to actively support these programs and institutions every year. 

In her email to Lion PAC, Barnard president Deborah Spar claimed that the censorship was necessary because her administration’s approval of one hand-painted sign, depicting a map of historical Palestine, gives “the impression that the College sanctions and supports” SJP activities. What impression then do the multimillion dollar Birthright trips, officially associated with Barnard, give in comparison? While one student organization can’t even put up a map of many students’ homeland, another is encouraged to promote and expand programs, which normalize the oppression of the Palestinian people and strive to create a new generation of Zionist apologists.

The decision is part of a national crack down on Students for Justice in Palestine. Today, for example, Max Blumenthal reported in Mondoweiss that the Northeastern University administration suspended their SJP chapter for the year and is threatening two activists with expulsion and NYPD style interrogations for the high crime of leafleting mock eviction notices, drawing attention to the Israeli practice of placing demolition notices on Palestinians’ homes about to be bulldozed. Surprisingly, the Northeastern Hillel chapter railed against these flyers because they “alarmed and intimidated students,” but did not release a follow up statement condemning the state of Israel for the alarm and intimidation stemming from actual Palestinian evictions every day.

In his report on the administrative crackdown at Northeastern, Blumenthal explains, “The suspension of Northeastern SJP is the culmination of a long-running crusade against the group led by powerful pro-Israel outfits based in Boston,” including Charles Jacobs, the founder of the anti-Muslim non-profit Americans for Peace and Tolerance. In the past, Jacobs has claimed that Students for Justice in Palestine are “anti-Semites, Israel haters” attempting to “justify a second Holocaust, the mass murder of Jews” and possessed with “an irrational, seething animus against the Jew of nations, Israel.”

“I stand with the SJP students at Northeastern,” said Columbia sophomore Ferial Massoud. “This is a part of a larger agenda on the part of universities to crack down on pro-Palestinian activists, which is preposterous not only because of the unjust bias of the administration, but more importantly because the university is one of the only places today where students are supposed to have freedom of expression.”

At Barnard and Northeastern, SJP activists were disappointed by this absurd rationale for their censorship, but nonetheless refused to be silent. In the last few days alone, Northeastern SJP students have raised thousands of signatures to drop the absurd charges against the two targeted students, and at Barnard students have decided to go out onto campus everyday to share their experiences with the larger community. “As long as injustice exists we’ll continuing speaking out, because we refuse to be censored,” declared Barnard first year and SJP organizer Jannine Massoud. “It is our duty to speak out because so many Palestinians cannot still to this day.”

 Follow George on Twitter @GeorgeJoseph94!

by Shane Nelson 

In a letter delivered on Thursday, March 6, Western Washington University’s Student Labor Action Project asked President Bruce Shepard to publicly disclose all agreements Western has with any bank.

Western junior Kelly Pride is a member of SLAP and wants to know if companies are profiting from student debt in any way. 

“Students have the right to know which banks are profiting off of us, and this info should be really visible on the Western website,” Pride said. “There are banks that profit off of student debt. Wells Fargo does a lot of student loans, and they definitely make a profit off of [those loans].” 

The Western Front attempted to reach President Shepard for comment Saturday, March 8. However, Shepard was unable to meet for an interview until Wednesday, March 12.

Pride believes Western’s affiliation with banks could potentially affect choices made by the administration, in regard to the school, and students have the right to know what might be influencing Western’s decisions, she said. 

SLAP is a joint initiative of Jobs with Justice and the United States Student Association, which allows students to fight social and economic injustice and aims to improve student power and workers’ rights, on campus and in the Bellingham community.

“The letter we put together was to call on the university to publicly disclose any agreements they have with private banks or financial institutions,” said Western senior Patrick Stickney, chair of SLAP. 

On Friday, Dec. 17, 2013, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) told all national banks to publicly disclose agreements with colleges and universities to market credit, debit and prepaid cards offered to students, according to the CFPB website.

“It is critical that these agreements are disclosed, as urged by the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau,” Stickney said. “Students deserve to know if any agreements exist between the university and companies that profit from student debt.”

Before the CFPB statement, colleges and universities only had to disclose agreements with financial institutions regarding college credit cards, not debit or prepaid cards, preferred private student loans, deposit accounts, financial aid disbursement and other products for students, according to the CFPB website.

In 2008, Congress passed a law requiring schools to disclose preferred lender arrangements with student loan providers and establish a code of conduct for school financial aid officials, according to the CFPB website.

Western’s Higher One, a financial firm, holds 57 percent of national college card agreements, according to a Government Accountability Office (GAO) report.

This report, “College Debit Card: Actions Needed to Address ATM Access, Student Choice and Transparency” was released Thursday, Feb. 13 and showed most college cards had fees similar to comparable products provided by banks.

Higher One users average $47 in annual fees compared to the average $180 for prepaid card users, $197 for national bank users and $350 for regional bank users, according to a Higher One study. 

Stickney was unable to find any information regarding agreements between Western and Higher One, and he hopes this information will soon be on the front page of Western’s website.

“If Western isn’t willing to publish this information, they can expect students to push back until they publicly disclose agreements,” Stickney said. 

Most college debit card agreements are available to the public, but many are very difficult to find and require a formal request with the state, according to a survey submitted to the CFPB in 2012 by The National Association of College and University of Business Officers.

“Western’s Student Labor Action Project has six to seven active members, but this is an issue students across campus [and the nation] support,” Stickney said. 

This is article was originally published by The Western Front.

Students march to the SDSU president’s office. (Credit: Nadir Bouhmouch)

(This post which was edited by Youngist contributor James Cersonsky, was originally published by The Nation and is republished here with permission.)

Contact [email protected] with any questions, tips or proposals. Edited by James Cersonsky (@cersonsky).

1. As Napolitano Sits, Campus Occupations Spread

On March 5, as UCLA students died-in against deportations, #not1more continued to growand students at the largely working class Community College of San Francisco prepared further action against a potential shutdown, students at the University of California–Santa Cruz took up Berkeley’s call for escalating action against UC President and former Secretary of Homeland Security Janet Napolitano. Fresh off major wins for strike-ready UC service workers and Santa Cruz teaching assistants, students and workers rallied to make clear that these developments are part of a larger struggle to reclaim the university. After marching to McHenry Library, students entered the Hahn Student Services building and subsequently occupied it for eighteen hours. There, we called for Napolitano’s resignation and for workers’ ongoing demands—safer staffing, smaller classes and work for undocumented graduate students—to be met. Through daybreak on March 6, Hahn, normally a space of loans, fees and student-judicial affairs, became a site for students to strategize resistance to the dual challenges of racism and privatization.

—Autonomous Students

2. As Cal State Tuition Skyrockets, Students Mass Across the State

California State University’s new tactic of adding “student success” fees on a campus-by-campus basis, a fee hike by any other name, is drawing criticism from students, faculty andeditorial boards on campus and off. For a week, students at San Diego State University have been trying to meet with their president—who gained statewide notoriety in 2011 when he was awarded a 30 percent raise at the same time that a fee hike was implemented—after arubber-stamp committee recommended fees be raised in fall 2014. Students have staged multiple sit-ins, marches and rallies on campus against the hike, decrying undemocratic decision-making and demanding a meeting with the president, who has yet to even respond to letters or e-mail via intermediaries. Leading up to the CSU Board of Trustees meeting on March 26, students at SDSU, Fullerton and Dominguez Hills, all affected by the fees, will continue building pressure.

—Bo Elder

3. High Schoolers Rally Over Shutdown

In February, LA’s Roosevelt High School Academy of Environmental & Social Policy received a letter from Superintendent John Deasy directing this small and notably successful school to join a larger campus in a new neighborhood or close down. Despite four hours of protest by parents and students outside LAUSD headquarters on February 25, nine speakers who addressed the school board this week and questionable claims of fiscal unsustainability, the community has not been able to convince the district to reconsider this decision—made without any input from students, parents or staff. We are fighting for our school because it is safe, a place where we are involved and, most importantly, to assert the importance of student voice—which the district is quick to ignore.

—Gabriela Castaneda

4. Trans* Students Win—Again

On February 24, the California Secretary of State confirmed that right-wing efforts to repeal the School Success and Opportunity Act, AB 1266, failed to qualify for the ballot. The law provides important guidance for schools to ensure that all students, including transgender students, have equal access to facilities and services. Youth, LGBT, racial justice and statewide teacher and parent organizations formed the Support All Students coalition after the law’s passage last summer, working together to educate Californians on the experiences transgender youth face in schools and how districts can support all students. The law went into effect January 1; now, youth activists are focused on local implementation. Students can start an implementation campaign in their district or support other Gay-Straight Alliance activists’ campaigns through the GSA Network Unite! campaign platform, which is also available to youth outside California.

—GSA Network of California

5. Title IX Deck Gets Stacked

On February 19, thirty-one current and former UC-Berkeley students filed two federal complaints, under Title IX and the Clery Act, citing gross administrative inaction and conductin preventing rape, supporting survivors and punishing those who commit such acts. This follows nine months after an initial federal complaint, representing nine students, was filed. The public survivors are committed to holding the administration responsible for allowing an environment that is unsafe for survivors and fails to sanction appropriately those who commit acts of sexual violence. The movement to end sexual violence on college campuses is a nationwide issue, with several other universities, including the University of North Carolina, USC and Swarthmore, also facing potential investigations, and Northwestern studentssitting-in this week.

—Aryle Butler, Iman Stenson, Sofie Karasek, Meghan Warner, Shannon Thomas and Nicoletta Commins

6. NAFTA Returns—to Silence

On March 6, the International Relations and Pacific Studies department at the University of California–San Diego held a conference titled “Mexico Moving Forward”—a convening of economists, industrial capitalists and artists, opening with a speech by Janet Napolitano, celebrating the “benefits” of the North American Free Trade Agreement. In fact, NAFTA has decimated the lives of millions in Mexico—while also sparking the rise of the Ejército Zapatista de Liberación Nacional. In protest of the UC system for perpetuating neoliberal policies, and in solidarity with those who have resisted or lost their lives under NAFTA,students and community groups staged a silent march with ski masks and red and black bandanas to the building where the conference was held. The march was modeled after an action in December 2012, where Zapatistas marched in perfect silence to the center of San Cristóbal de las Casas to show that they are still present and resisting.

—San Diego Student and Community Groups Against NAFTA

7. #VisitFL

On March 4, the first day of Florida’s 2014 legislative session, the Dream Defenders, alongside community allies, hosted our own State of the State address, #VisitFL, to discuss the disproportionate incarceration of youth of color; privatization of the state’s juvenile prison system; and the impact of laws that encourage violence against black and brown youth like Stand Your Ground. After the address, we marched to the fourth floor of the Florida capitol outside the doors where Governor Rick Scott was supposed to deliver his own annual address. The Florida Department of Law Enforcement demanded that we leave, but we refused. As our chants were heard in both the House and Senate chambers, a recess was called, and, for the first time in history, the governor took a secret entrance into the room. Meanwhile, some legislators offered their support. On that same morning, the Florida Senate Judiciary Committee quietly and swiftly passed CS/HB89, a so-called “warning shot” bill that would expand the Stand Your Ground defense by allowing individuals to fire warning shots when they perceive a threat, without the obligation to retreat. HB89 passed overwhelmingly less than one week after a jury in Jacksonville chose not to convict Michael Dunn for the murder of unarmed 17-year-old Jordan Davis.

—Dream Defenders

8. #Fight4aFuture

Over the weekend of February 21 to 23, Generation Progress brought together young people from across the country for a first-of-its-kind #Fight4AFuture National Gun Violence Prevention Summit. Summit attendees had a range of backgrounds, from a former gang member, to a 16-year-old man who has had twenty-eight friends and family die as a result of gun violence, to the brother of a victim from Sandy Hook Elementary, to the editor-in-chief ofGlobal Grind and representatives from the White House. Participants included Million Hoodies Movement for Justice, Jr. Newtown Action Alliance and the Georgia Gun Sense Coalition. Attendees engaged in small group discussions to develop local plans of action—and hatched plans as well for a national activist network to be announced soon.

—Sarah Clements

9. When Will Obama Get It?

On March 2, 398 students, among a group of more than 1,000 protesters, were arrested in front of the White House following a two-mile march from Georgetown University. Amid chants of “We love you” and “Arrest my friends,” the students, 250 of whom were zip-tied to the White House fence, awaited arrest under freezing rain and wind—a process that lasted more than six hours. Our reason for this act of civil disobedience was simple: to make it clear to President Obama that we did not vote him into office to have environmental disaster exacerbated by the Keystone XL Pipeline, and to stress the environmental, climatic, economic, political and social consequences that would arise if the pipeline were to be approved. As we await President Obama’s decision over the coming months, activists across the country will be delivering comment cards and petitions to Washington, pressuring elected officials and ramping up direct action.

—Erin Fagan

10. Who Speaks for Mass Incarceration?

This winter in West Philadelphia, FAAN Mail, a collective of young women of color, organized a screening and discussion of Orange Is the New Black, the Netflix series set in a women’s prison. Community members concerned about—and personally affected by—mass incarceration shared dialogue about the portrayal and realities of prison. Activists talked about local organizing efforts after exploring the following questions: What value, if any, doesOITNB offer in the movement to end mass incarceration? What aspects of the show are realistic or fantasy? What do OITNB audiences need to know about mass incarceration?

—FAAN Mail

rowanspostgradadventures:

I want to try and reblog more posts especially original content that have less than 500 notes

PLEASE reblog if you’re a small studyblr or your original content doesn’t get the exposure you want it to, and tag this post with your OC tag

I’ll try and follow as many as I can! Following me back would be nice but not compulsory! 

Reblog

The Asian and Pacific Islander American Vote (APIAVote) is a national nonpartisan, nonprofit organization that encourages and promotes civic participation of Asian American Pacific Islanders (AAPIs) in the electoral and public policy processes at the national, state and local levels. APIAVote envisions a society in which all AAPIs fully participate in and have access to the democratic process.
The APIAVote Internship Program strives to encourage and cultivate young AAPI student leaders to explore a career in the public sector or the political arena. This internship program will also provide hands on experience and training on how to organize and implement voter activities to increase the participation of AAPIs in the electoral process. For the Summer of 2015, we are offering paid and unpaid internships.  
INTERNSHIPS AVAILABLE
The internship program is tailored per organizational needs and intern skills.  Interns may work on any of the following areas: Communications/Technology (new media and traditional), Graphic Design, Field (working with APIAVote partners to mobilize for elections), Research and Policy (research and advocate for policy recommendations), Training (Norman Y. Mineta Leadership Training Institute), or Youth (engaging and organizing our youth coalitions).
In addition, applicants selected for these internships will collectively work on the implementation of APIAVote’s Young Voters campaign. This will include identifying, recruiting, and training student organizers to implement voter engagement activities and developing campaign materials for 2016. General Internship: This internship is opened to any student looking to support APIAVote’s various programs.  
Requirements for all Internship Applicants:
College or graduate student
Leadership abilities
Oral and written communication skills
Dedicated to promoting civic participation of AAPIs in the electoral and public policy processes
Applications must include:
Application form
Resume including Education, Work Experience, Political Experience, Extracurricular Activities, Awards/Honors
Copy of most current academic transcript
One page typed essay on your interest in the internship program and describe “What does civic engagement mean to you and how do we increase it among AAPI young voters?”
Two letters of references

check it out here!!!

Occurring during the summer, the Nikkei Community Internship is a paid, 8-week, full-time internship experience designed to help you make your mark in the community.

Design and implement impactful projects, meet community leaders and build your legacy by helping to shape our community’s future in the NCI program.

Program Start: June 15, 2015
Program Finish: August 7, 2015

*NCI is an 8-week program. Requires two overnight commitments on June 15-16 and August 6-7.

Each intern will receive a $2,000 incentive upon completion of the program.

*There is no cost or application fee to participate in NCI.

Interns are placed at a variety of locations across the Greater Los Angeles area. Placement varies based on organizational placement.
March 14 Deadline

http://www.kizuna-la.org/programs/nikkei-community-internship-2/

dukeenrage:

Not yet halfway through the academic year, Duke University has — yet again — reminded us of the violence foundational to this institution. On October 18, a group of male students shouted racist hate speech and slurs outside the dorm room of an Asian-American woman. On October 23, a poster advertising #BlackLivesMatter event featuring Patrisse Cullors was vandalized with an anti-black racial slur. On November 5, a homophobic death threat was written on a wall in a dorm targeting a first year student. In response, Larry Moneta, the Vice President of Student Affairs, had the audacity to refer to this violence as nothing more than a series of acts of “copycat hatred.” Hate crimes are consistently labeled as mere “incidents” by the administration and little to no action is taken. These acts of terror are emblematic of the larger landscape and culture of Duke University that actively reproduce practices and expressions of violence against its marginalized students — the everyday realities many of us know too well.

When this erasure and oppression comes to a rupture, manifested in an act of phenomenal violence, the university pretends that it is an unexpected aberration, as if the university itself has not created, maintained, and continued to actively build the space that allows these antagonisms to exist. Each time a rupture of violence occurs, the people who are targeted are expected to come up with solutions to their oppression, a process that demands extraordinary emotional, physical, mental, and spiritual uncompensated labor. We denounce the exploitation of students, faculty, and staff who are called upon to perpetually reiterate and seek public validation of their experiences in the name of “discussion” — as if their pain has ever been taken into consideration by the administration. Duke has made it clear that it has no regard for the lives of marginalized peoples.

The administration’s passive, delayed reactions to these hate crimes epitomize its continuous silencing and dismissal of students’ concerns about their safety and welfare. If closed-door boardroom meetings, campus conversations, forums, and the like were effective, as the administrators wants us to believe, students would not be forced to confront racial slurs, vandalized posters, or homophobic death threats on campus — all of which happened this semester. Duke fully knows the actions it needs to take, because we, those who came before us, and those who came before them, have told them what to do, time and time again. But the university continues to ignore these demands and attempts to placate and distract us with “community conversations” and empty promises.

We are not interested in another “conversation.” We know that Duke has ignored all conventional avenues of action for change. We recognize that the creation of various institutional entities (whether task forces or diversity committees) with the sole purpose of “making recommendations” is a pacifying tactic that the administration has utilized, over and over again, to shelve the actual demands made by students over decades of student organizing. We do not have faith in the institution that has been unrelenting in its refusal to honor and fulfill our demands, while masquerading under the guise of “dialogue” that was never meant to include us.

We see through you. Administrators exploit ideals of “diversity,” “inclusivity,” and “collective responsibility” to absolve themselves of the violence that they both produce and maintain. By doing so, they try to sell us an illusion thatallof us are conversing on equal terms, when truth is that they maintain a monopoly on access and resources necessary to enact transformative institutional changes. We understand that at the end of the day, Duke’s priority will always be its control of power and reputation over the well-being of non-normative members of our communities.

We carry, within us, the institutional knowledge and memory that you seek to obliterate. We know that you would love nothing more than for student coalitions to fall prey to intimidation, exhaustion, or compliance. When that fails, you wait for us to graduate and disappear. You can no longer pretend that you hold the interests of the marginalized at heart while continuing to foster an environment that only functions on the concept of temporary appeasement. These are the tactics that you have used to erase our labor, to suppress our dissent, but this time, we know better.

We know our history of resistance and your history of oppression. We remember that Duke was built on the stolen land of indigenous peoples acquired through genocide and settler colonial violence. We remember that the resources that built this institution were plundered from the backs of black and brown labor. Duke University was built with money generated by slave labor. This place was never meant to be for us, nor to serve us.  

We dwell in a long tradition of resistance; we are descendants of those who refuse to be silenced. We celebrate all those who struggled and all those those who dreamed of being free. We stand on the shoulders of those who have come before us, and we commit to honoring and continuing their work, for the sake of those who will come after us.

We are direct descendants of the People of Color Caucus, and we refuse to let their hard labor and truth-telling voices disappear into a quiet silence. We recognize not only the People of Color Caucus, but the countless students that led the struggle before them. We honor, lift up the forgotten names, and invoke the strength of all those who came before us: the first five Black students who in 1963 courageously stepped on this campus, still rotting with its white supremacist anti-Blackness; those who occupied the Chapel Quad en masse in 1968; Black students who fearlessly took over the Allen Building in 1969; those who protested U.S. imperialism and the cruelties of the Vietnam War in the 70’s, those who demanded the university divest from apartheid South Africa in the 80’s; those who led the demands for the hiring of Black faculty in 1988, and many countless others. Full of indignation, unwavering in our commitment to get free together, we rise up as Duke Enrage.

As we build upon the history of student movements, we recognize that we are at a momentous threshold. At this time when protests are occurring all over college campuses in the country and abroad, we embrace our collective power and our duty to fight. University leaders and administrators have lost their jobs, and we know that you fear for yours. You expect us to yield and to accept a semblance of your “efforts” as a resolution to our outrage. We will not back down. Remember,  we hold the power in this movement and we are here to use it. Expect us.

Finals purgatory

\ˈfī-nəls pər-gə-ˌtȯr-ē\

noun 

1. The expanse of time before and between university final examinations consisting of no real-world commitments other than studying. Time and space cease to have meaning, and pants are optional.

2. Several straight weeks of video games, drinking, sleeping, and other assorted debaucheries with no regard for future consequences.