About 60 people rallied in front of Johnson Hall Tuesday to decry what they called a “hostile and unsafe” campus environment for minority students and to present the University administration with four demands aimed at bettering the campus climate.
UO Action, a coalition of community members and students from groups such as the Multicultural Center and various ethnic student unions, organized the protest. Coalition members support passage of the University’s recently revised diversity plan but presented their demands to address specific deficiencies in the plan, according to event organizers.
Their demands include enhancing the staff and power of the Bias Response Team; transforming the ethnic studies and women and gender studies programs into departments and creating new minors; creating a coordinator position to build community among students with disabilities; and creating a staff position to advocate for students living in residence halls.
“These cannot wait,” UO Action member and event organizer John Joo said of the demands. “These cannot wait for the five-year diversity plan to be institutionalized.”
Kit Myers, another UO Action member and event organizer, told the crowd that one of the protest’s purposes was to reveal how bias on campus is a major problem.
“The goal of the demonstration is to publicize the much-hidden fact that the University is a hostile and unsafe environment for students of color and other underrepresented students,” he said.
University President Dave Frohnmayer said he traveled to Bend Tuesday morning and had not witnessed the rally. Although he had received an e-mail from UO Action dated May 11, he said, he was not sure when his office received it and had not read it as of Tuesday evening.
Frohnmayer said the University receives many complaints and that regular decision-making channels exist to address grievances. He added that the University has made a big effort to include students in formulating the diversity plan and that it “behooves us all” to listen carefully to student concerns.
Supporters took turns reading a list of prepared narratives about “racist and other biased incidences on campus” that circulated among the crowd:
“I have been called a faggot repeatedly on campus.”
“I am a student of color who is policed for my absences in class where white students are not.”
“I am a student of color aware of several of my cohort members privately meeting with professors and discussing the tensions between white students without any students of color present.”
After each person read a passage, the list and microphone were passed, and the speaker sat down.
Some protesters held signs saying “We are sick and tired of being sick and tired” and “I go to school in the home of the KKK.”
Joo said the group intended to publicize that “racism still exists on this campus institutionally and individually.”
The rally was not limited to discussion of racism. Joo said students with disabilities, queer students, students of different national origins and students of different socio-economic classes are all affected by discrimination.
“The cases of discrimination on this campus is multifaceted,” he said.
Melissa Fritcher, a local computer programmer who stood with the rally, said she was there because the University was “a lot worse” than her previous campus, Georgia Tech.
“I was here because I’ve experienced some of what they were talking about,” she said. “Just the negative comments on campus, and it’s not something that has any place on a college campus.”
She said she and her female friend were walking home one night when some men across the street started shouting, “Look at those boys!”
When she told them they were women, the men called them offensive terms and “made menacing behavior.”
“It’s just stuff like that,” she said. “There’s no place.”
At one point, there were about 80 onlookers lining East 13th Avenue, listening to the speakers. Takiya Ahmed, a chemistry graduate student, was among them.
“They’re demonstrating it’s a real problem,” she said. “To say it’s not a real issue would be to say that they’re lying, and I don’t think they are.”Ahmed said she wanted to hear professors’ views on the subject of bias at the University.
“What their challenges are in addressing these problems,” she said. “The professors’ voices are never heard about what’s going on in the classroom.”
The rally centered on the four demands:
? Staff the current Bias Response Team with full-time employees. Myers said the current accommodations have overworked the team and permanent staff members would help relieve the staff and add to the team’s authority.
“When students experience an incident of hate or bias on this campus, the bias response team … doesn’t have the teeth in terms of holding the perpetrators accountable because they’re using a form of mediation,” Joo said.
? Departmentalize interdisciplinary programs such as ethnic studies and women and gender studies and to create queer studies and disability studies minors. Transforming the programs would “enable for better recruitment and retention of underrepresented faculty and students,” according to the press release. It could also create more classes to be included in the multicultural course requirement pool, according to the release.
? Create a permanent staff position to raise awareness and educate about University community members with disabilities. “Confronting ableism and developing community for students with disabilities is an important issue on our campus but is often ignored in discussions involving advocacy and support,” according to the release.
? To create a staff position to advocate for residence hall students and facilitate “comprehensive/ongoing” residence hall assistant training, according to the release.
UO Action plans another rally next Wednesday at 2 p.m. at the intersection of East 13th Avenue and University Street an hour before the University Senate meets in nearby Columbia 150 for a scheduled vote on the revised diversity plan.