Thursday, April 18, 1996
Columbia University student activists vow to fight for Ethnic
Studies implementationBy Daniel Gonzalo Alarcón
The hunger strike at Columbia University is over. The five-day
standoff in Hamilton/Liberated Hall is over. The struggle for
Ethnic Studies is not.
Negotiations with the administration began on Friday, April 12
and continued throughout the weekend.
Our team of people had always been willing to negotiate, while
it was the administration that had consistently avoided dialogue.
We came in with a proposal; they came in with nothing. On Saturday,
they came back and admitted they hadn’t even read our proposal.
Without going into too many specifics, the arguments came down
to the wording of a one-sentence rider to be attached to the final
agreement. The administration was threatening mass arrest all day
Monday, giving us ultimatum after ultimatum, deadlines and
coercion. But we stood our ground.
They gave us an offer, and said 9 o’clock the coppers come in
and arrest everyone without warning. WE STAYED. They said the same
at noon. We stayed.
At 5 o’clock, they came back with something else. Other faculty
members came in to speak to us, to faculty on our side and to other
student veterans of other struggles to tell us to accept Â
that you should accept a victory when it is presented to you,
instead of holding out for the impossible.
We were emotionally and physically spent. Words can’t describe
the feeling in that room, as we realized as a collective of 200,
that we had an impossible decision to make.
We could accept the administration’s offer, which granted us
four faculty tenure lines, a vaguely-worded proposal to establish a
faculty commission to look into ethnic studies (no caps), and
amnesty for all the students involved.
Or, we could face mass arrest; suspension and expulsion; the
continuation of the exhausting strike; and the possible loss of
faculty support. Obviously, neither choice was ideal.
In the end, we accepted the administration’s proposal. I read in
the New York Times Tuesday a quote from a dean saying that they
gave us nothing, that they granted us nothing. The BS machine has
begun to work its media magic, but let me tell you the truth:
WE PUSHED COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY TO RECOGNIZE US AS A POWER TO BE
DEALT WITH. WE HAVE BROUGHT THE ETHNIC STUDIES STRUGGLE TO THIS
CAMPUS, AND IT WILL NOT GO AWAY.
We realize we didn’t get everything we wanted, but we didn’t
expect that, either. The administration has the nerve to claim that
the hunger strike and the student protest had nothing to do with
the approval of the Latino Studies Curriculum or the Asian American
Studies Curriculum, that they had already decided to grant at least
two of these faculty lines.
The truth is, they never intended to do anything on these
matters. The truth is, if they had their way, they would throw us
all out of school and put their money elsewhere.
We aren’t going anywhere. We signed the document with
reservations and comments:
1) This is a beginning. We are taking the professors and the
tenure as a step in the right direction.
2) In no way does this mean that our struggle has ended. We will
be watching the committee closely. If they so much as hint at
selling us out, they will have hell to pay.
At 9 o’clock Monday night, we broke bread with the hunger
strikers and took down the tent which had stood in the center of
Columbia’s campus for two weeks and a day.
Does it feel like a victory? Not exactly. We didn’t fight and
starve and go to jail for some blue-ribbon committee! But when I
see the faces of the people who fought together with so much
courage and dedication, I’m not pessimistic.
We achieved something on paper, but among us, we created a
nucleus of struggling students who will not give up until education
is just.
That said, round one of this struggle is over. We are proud of
the community we forged during these weeks. It was truly a
beautiful thing.
Alarcón is on the Committee for Ethnic Studies and the Core
Curriculum at Columbia University.
See Related Pages:
Columbia University Ethnic Studies Homepage
Article from "The Moment"