First year English L&L PhD student Jennifer Alzate Gonzalez continues the conversation (recently reignited with #BBUM and events such as Speak Out!) with a statement on racial justice at UM and in GEO (left: Barbara Ransby gives the keynote address at Speak Out! 2/18/2014).
Student leaders across the University of Michigan have collectively reignited a decades-old movement for racial justice at the University of Michigan. Citing the now infamous “Hood Ratchet” Theta Xi fraternity party, as well as declining minority enrollment and poor racial climate for students of color, students over the past two semesters have taken to the Diag, to the Internet, and most recently, to the Shapiro Undergraduate Library to urge for the transparent execution of real change. The events have been manifold: We Are Michigan’s Diag Freeze Out and Freeze Out Follow Up; the Black Student Union’s nationally recognized #BBUM, or “Being Black at the University of Michigan,” Twitter campaign; the #BBUM demands outside the MLK Symposium; and the United Coalition for Racial Justice’s Speak Out, to name only those most publicized. These campus-wide events also galvanized GEO to dedicate its general membership meeting to issues of race and racial climate at UM. Although these various events employed different tactics and often mobilized different UM communities, what they have in common is an exhaustion with the University’s excuses for ever-declining minority enrollment and ever-worsening racial climate for students of color.
We have revealed how the administration hides behind its Prop 2 narrative — how it touts the 2006 ballot initiative banning affirmative action as the only catalyst for declining minority enrollment. This Prop 2 narrative allows the University to paint itself as a willing, but hampered administration with — as President Coleman has claimed — “both hands tied behind [its] back.” Moreover, we have seen how the University co-opts our rich history of student activism whenever possible, claiming the legacies of the Black Action Movement (1969, 1975, and 1987) and the United Coalition Against Racism (1987) for its own. This appropriation of student activism depicts the University of Michigan as a historical pioneer for diversity — as the torchbearer, rather than the impetus, for student protest.
Today, I challenge GEO to make its membership and leadership better reflect the racial diversity of GSIs at UM. This effort, already well underway, has been pioneered by GEO leaders of color but will ultimately require the support and active commitment of the entire union. I also challenge incoming President Mark Schlissel to listen to student protest, to solicit meaningful input from the campus community, and to put diversity at the top of his agenda. While the solutions should come from the bottom, their implementation must come from the top. As a collective campus community, we must now call on incoming President Schlissel to make a presidential mandate, akin to the Michigan Mandate of the 1990s, which will create and implement short- and long-term steps addressing the enrollment and retention of underrepresented minorities. Only then can we remake the University of Michigan into the racially diverse and politically progressive institution it must now become.
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