Hunger Strikers Achieve Social Justice in Our Time, Along With Mandatory Anti-Oppression Training
After nine whole days (or is it ten? how long did Gandhi strike for? Weeks? Months? And imagine: he did it without Gatorade) two more of the strikers have dropped out. Threatened with being put on involuntary medical leave, activist/heroes Emilie Rosenblatt and Bryan Mercer decided they sort of wanted to graduate on time, Manhattanville and the metaphorical octopus be damned. This leaves just two of the original 5 still starving themselves so that Columbia won't continue to starve their hearts and minds.
According to Bwog and The Spec, Columbia has acceded to several of the strikers' zillion demands, mostly to keep the Manhattanville expansion off the table. But when looked at carefully, these "concessions" are mostly things Columbia had under consideration on Day 1 of the strike, like making Major Cultures a potential part of the Core. Columbia is basically promising to consider the strikers' demands at some point in the future.
Still, the strikers' semi-literate-look-at-me-mom-I'm-using-big-words-and-am-so-smart-even -though-I'm-in-junior-high-school blog is filled with awkward gurgles of joy:
We are pleased to announce that after a day of great adversity, we have emerged with significant victories on many of our demands and a clear vision of what student power can accomplish."
Yes! They defeated the Burmese junta! They ended the war in Iraq! Oh, wait, wrong cause. Nope, they're just super-excited about the mandatory "anti-oppression" training they've won for all new faculty, which sounds more like a workplace dystopia straight out of Office Space than something that will effect social justice in our time.
After the jump: the New New Left bends PrezBo to their will! A list of Columbia's concessions.
The concessions according to Bwog:
- Student participation and voting power in a CSER review, to begin in Fall 2008 and end in Spring 2009, which will include hiring the three three new "cluster hire" faculty members. They stopped short of awarding hiring power to the Center, since CSER faculty are still divided over whether that's even desirable.
- More student representation on the Committee on the Core, including potentially public meetings.
- Student participation in an outside review of the OMA, to begin in January and continue for 6-9 months. On the table in this review will be an "upper level administrator" for Multicultural Affairs across all undergraduate arts and science schools.
- By the end of November, a decision on the expansion of the Intercultural Resource Center, including an LGBT community center
- Fundraising $50 million to develop a Major Cultures seminar, which would have to go through a pilot stage and extensive review processes (think Frontiers) before becoming a full-fledged Core requirement.
- Mandatory anti-oppression training (which the B&W explained in a cover story last year) for all incoming new faculty.
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November 15th, 2007 at 3:57 pm
Only at columbia can you get that many idiotic students to attend a stupid rally like that.
November 15th, 2007 at 4:34 pm
Here’s an idea for you. Let’s find a number of issues which an institution is already considering and go on a hunger strike in favor of those issues. That way, if the institution decides to pursue those issues, we can claim victory from our hunger strike, making us activists. Damn, we’re so cool (oh, and smart too!!).
November 16th, 2007 at 8:21 am
Brilliant!
These students go to Columbia dreaming of being social activists, hoping and praying for another 1968-type so that they can demonstrate and fight for social justice. Imagine arriving at school and finding out that it doesn’t actually happen every year, and that there is no actual student unrest, no protests, no social injustices worthy of a riot. Wouldn’t you be upset? They are trying to liive out their dreams before its too late…let them eat cake.
November 16th, 2007 at 10:55 am
Actually, Major Cultures is already part of the Core. They just want it to become a seminar-style class, not a huge lecture.
November 17th, 2007 at 4:58 am
Major cultures my butt. The world runs with Western industrial technology funded by Western capitalism and Western economics, operates in Western nation-states.
Even the anti-Western enemies use Western ideas as their rallying point, from Communism (Marx wasn’t from Ethopia, you know) to anti-imperialism (thank you Eddie Said)..
To pretend otherwise is an exercise in folly. Or “multiculuralism.” There is a good deal of overlap between the two, really.
Columbia was right since Barzun laid it down. Shame they have to dilute it.
November 21st, 2007 at 10:38 am
“A hunger strike is a method of non-violent resistance in which participants fast as an act of political protest, or to provoke feelings of guilt or to achieve a goal such as a policy change. Most will take liquids but not solid food.”
admittedly taken from wikipedia, but it’s true. so stop knocking the strikers’ incredibly courageous behavior.
and: mr. grunt. you say there are no social injustices about which it’s worth being outraged? are you mad? are you aware that we are engaged in an unjust war, we have percentage-wise the most people imprisoned in the world, millions of our citizens are without medical care… shall the list go on? i hate to sound bleeding-heart, but your cynicism and lack of compassion and engagement with our nation and world is disturbing.
November 21st, 2007 at 10:39 am
“A hunger strike is a method of non-violent resistance in which participants fast as an act of political protest, or to provoke feelings of guilt or to achieve a goal such as a policy change. Most will take liquids but not solid food.”
admittedly taken from wikipedia, but it’s true. so stop knocking the strikers’ incredibly courageous behavior.
and: mr. grunt. you say there are no social injustices about which it’s worth being outraged? are you mad? are you aware that we are engaged in an unjust war, we have percentage-wise the most people imprisoned in the world, millions of our citizens are without medical care… shall the list go on? i hate to sound bleeding-heart, but your cynicism and lack of compassion and engagement with our nation and world is disturbing.