Anti-Racist Struggle on Campus
After Yuri Kochiyama´s talk a number of posters were found throughout Billings Center calling on people to "commit a hate crime" and to send people back to a "third world hell-hole." This is a poster put up after a year of student protest and demands by students for an anti-racist agenda. This is what students have been demanding to be addressed: this climate on campus where hate speech and hate crimes are acceptable enough for people within the university community to commit them. In response to past hate crimes the university had a "speak-out," where dignitaries resolved to speak out against crimes of hate; however at this ceremony students put out their claim that the only way to sop these crimes before they happen is with an anti-racist agenda. Not only have administrators failed to make a commitment to this agenda one year after the ´91 takeover and years after students have been calling for an anti-racist agenda, but this month UVM´s Legal Council is protecting hate posters under free speech.
Those involved in this anti-racist struggle on campus have learned that there are definite power relations within the university that make an anti-racist commitment difficult to harness. For example, after the ´88 takeover, students of color continuously met with the president and voiced their concerns and needs, offering plans and strategies of what an anti-racist agenda on campus would look like. In response to these, even with the ´88 signing of the Waterman Agreements, the then president Davis was in a position to break off talks with the students because there were no structures of accountability within the university that makes the president accountable to students. Students have no recourse but to be told that they can only sit back and watch a developing anti-racist agenda be trashed and thrown away as hate crimes continue on campus.
Again the power relation surfaced when students peacefully protested in the fall of ´91 at the convocation, and in the president´s wing with precedents of similar actions being tolerated, where rules were changed by administrators to legitimize the use of police force and their threats of arrest. Another power relation is how the administrators can draft policy with in the campus community and define "free speech" at will. So not only is the administration in a position where they are the sole dispensers of resources they also have access to policy making.
Another example, on September 23 a student was arrested for trespassing while taking part in a peaceful sit-in in the president´s wing. A trial occurred downtown, in which the first case opened against a student protester. (In this case the student was found to be within their legal rights to be present at that sit-in, and was found not guilty.) But a key witness testified that the change in policy, making the president´s wing closed to protest activity, was not made known to the campus community. It is not known if this acquittal happened; protecting student protest on campus or if it was only a matter of the administration´s failure to let the students know they had no first amendment rights within the "president´s wing." An so the restriction still remains and the issue still stands that administrators have policy making power concerning free speech, and that this ability to define free speech without student input, or rather without students even defining "free speech," illustrates the difference between an oligarchy and a democracy. Here at UVM it is clear that democratic structure for policy making is blatantly absent.
This is why students must organize themselves for change. There must be change within the campus community for students to dictate policy and make policy. Historically the only time students´ concerns have been turned into policy has been through student activism and demands. The situation is clear that administrators must be forced to allocate resources to problems that students recognize, otherwise we have no access to policy making.
This year after the takeover there has been no movement on behalf of resource allocation or clear plans to confront this environment where hate crimes are protected under free speech. These two systems after the takeover have been marked by arrests and backlash: by policy makers upon students calling for change, using police to tie up activists in court battles and internal hearings all of which have resulted in verdicts of "not guilty" and "not responsible" for so-called crimes. The money remains closed to constructing an environment that is free of hate crimes, combating not only racist but sexist and heterosexist ideology, because we see the writings on bathroom wall and desks that are in the minds of fellow students and campus community members. We hear their words and see their actions.
We know the administration complies with this environment by giving safe haven to hate speech under the title of free speech, and when it hands out golden parachutes when the plan needs fixing.
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