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Wednesday was a big day. Thursday, though, might be even bigger: striker kids (whom this UCLA student thinks are great) have scheduled a rally at the Sundial at noon in preparation for their final negotiations. While it seems that the three academic components have been largely straightened out, expansion has yet to be settled–and the hunger strikers have promised to go on hungering until those demands are in the bag. At a meeting this afternoon, the strike negotiation team presented six demands to Executive VP Maxine Griffith, who said responded with variations on “no,” “we’re working on it,” and “I’ll get back to you on that.” The negotiators’ points, which will be presented again at a meeting toda at 4:00 PM in the IRC, are posted after the jump.
Meanwhile, about 650 people aren’t OK with that. Leaders of the anti-striker movement have called a “silent gathering” for tomorrow at 8:30 PM at Alma Mater (too late?) to protest the administration’s concessions.
Pictured is Professor Dennis Dalton, who hasn’t eaten since last Thursday, speechifying on the Sundial at the rally tonight. He told the assembled students, as quiet as if the steps were seats in a lecture hall, all about the successful movement for divestment from South Africa in 1985. “Again and again the students have been right,” he said, over his 39 year tenure at the University. “We have a tradition here at Columbia, and that tradition has to be upheld, and that tradition is to nonviolently protest injustice on this campus.” The movement has a granddad!
Finally, since we didn’t mention it earlier today, SGA’s statement on the strike is also posted after the jump, in Bwog’s third edition of the Hunger Strike Primary Source reader.
STRIKE COMMITTEE EXPANSION DEMANDS
Point 1 Columbia has a responsibility, as stated in the EIS, to mitigate the impact caused by the proposed actions. The body with which the university has committed to negotiating with is the West Harlem Local Development Corporation. However, the university has also reached agreements with other entities on issues of community benefits, most recently and prominently Borough President Scott Stringer, who has a representative on the LDC body. We demand that the University commit to, in writing and on the record, negotiating community benefits exclusively with the LDC, excluding any separate agreements with individual politicians, including but not limited to those politicians represented on the LDC.
Point 2 The agreement reached with Borough President Stringer is problematic on many levels. First, demand a clarification on what exactly is proposed. Is it a loan or a grant? When does the money get transferred and how does that happen?
Secondly, with an estimate of $200,000 per creation of each affordable unit, this would create 100 units in an area with 5,035 people living in unsubsidized housing. This is an extremely low floor in negotiating an anti-displacement program with the LDC, especially given the cost and potential profit of the project. The students demand that a far more significant commitment to affordable housing be a part of any agreement with the LDC and that Columbia come to the board with a number that mitigates the full effect of its project.
Point 3 Columbia has pledged officially to relocated the tenants living under the TIL program to equivalent housing. This is a positive step. We demand that any relocation occur as a result of direct agreement with the tenant affected and not through an agreement of property transfer with any city agency or outside entity.
Point 4 Columbia needs to take eminent domain off the table for the commercial property-owners in the area and reach agreements with them on an individual basis, even if that implies that they are to stay there in a revised development scenario.
Point 5 Using funding specifically earmarked for the expansion plans or fundraised independently of existing efforts, Columbia should develop and financially empower those parts of the university that provide community programming. The university should provide resources for the development of new programs in the Center for the Study of Ethnicity and Race, the Institute for Research in African-American Studies, the Office of Multicultural Affairs, the Double Discovery Center, Community Impact and other university institutions that would provide services for both students and community members.
Point 6 Columbia is one of the foremost educational institutions in the country and the world. As part of its expansion, we feel that the university has a responsibility to the community it is effecting, not merely to its own constituency. This responsibility is profound and goes beyond the Secondary School proposal. Students demand that local students be granted access to Columbia resources, including libraries and course auditing privileges. We also call for a scholarship admission program for CB9 residents, and for a comprehensive educational complex that would serve the community’s needs, including not only K-12 education but also an infant and pre-K school, a health clinic, and an adult education service. This should be funded directly by the university. The university’s resources are vast and can be shared more broadly.
SGA STATEMENT
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@bedbug Point 6 Columbia is one of the foremost educational institutions in the country and the world. As part of its expansion, we feel that the university has a responsibility to the community it is effecting, not merely to its own constituency. This responsibility is profound and goes beyond the Secondary School proposal. Students demand that local students be granted access to Columbia resources, including libraries and course auditing privileges. We also call for a scholarship admission program for CB9 residents, and for a comprehensive educational complex that would serve the community’s needs, including not only K-12 education but also an infant and pre-K school, a health clinic, and an adult education service. This should be funded directly by the university. The university’s resources are vast and can be shared more broadly.
this sounds great, but i wonder if they realize that this would only accelerate gentrification?
@I dont mean that In fact, I completely agree with you. I was merely saying that in ADDITION to being angry about all the things you mentioned, that the strikers are getting credit for something they didn’t pilot, and a concession that would not have been possible without there already having been a substantial about of work on it ALSO angers me. There’s a lot of anger in general.
@Can anyone Document the timeline of these negotiations. From what I can understand the majority of what was offered to the strikers last night was what the admin offered to them right off the bat, and things that had been in the pipeline for a long time. I know that the student councils had been working with the admin on making MC a seminar for a while, why are these people getting credit for others’ work? Why are they making it seem last night that the admin caved to them? For that matter, why is the admin allowing it to be portrayed that way, when it is just not the case? They threatened to stop the protest, and the strikers knew they were beaten, so rather than admit defeat they now triumphantly accept terms that were dismissed earlier….furthermore, how freaking closed off from view from the entire student body this entire thing has been allowed them to do this. The entire thing is a disgrace and a sham, and if they keep going with it, I hope they are removed from campus.
@what is wrong with everyone – people who are against the hunger strikers are going to protest the administration?? you don’t protest the administration conceding to requests, you protest the strikers tactics. Everyone needs to stop blaming the administration when it’s the students causing all the problems!
@no one is protesting the administration. we are trying to communicate with them that the large numbers of us do not agree with the hunger strike, and furthermore, we think it absurd that these few individuals should decide where columbia’s limited resources are going.
@well that’s the real substance of it. you protest the tactics of the strikers, and the administration’s capitulation to them on these issues.
as for #23, whether these things were ‘in the pipeline’ doesn’t excuse the validation of a tactic like this for some over-vague, nearly-incoherent manifesto, nor should the administration have allowed it to be portrayed as a ‘victory’ for them.
lots of people want change on campus. many people would like to see an increased role for OMA. real dialogue and peaceful protest are good ways to get that done. not camping out and starving until
hunger strikers: want to know why it seemed like bollinger wasn’t listening to you? your manifesto was so full of holes and reasoning that it took starving yourselves to get anyone to take you seriously.
now we have barnard students and alums that won’t go away dictating how the Core is taught, and it sets a precedent so that five-ten years from now, when this $50 “culture seminar” debuts, there can be another hunger strike, because it lumps “other” thought into one convenient seminar taught by grad students while the four semesters of western literature and philosophy are offered alongside it.
I didn’t protest because I never thought they’d cave. last time I ever put my faith in this administration standing up for principle.
@whoops talk about “incoherence.” that mistake in the fourth paragraph should read “holes and FAULTY reasoning”.
@wirc I’m OK with those Manhattanville demands, except for the rejection of eminent domain and the demand that CSER get more money or “community programming.” That’s BS
Now why couldn’t they have stated demand and built up a strong consensus? And why have I have been able to get a SCEGer to support something like this before?
@Exactly... Please, by all means, decry everyone opposed to a screaming group of students racists. Devalue your credibility, already tarnished by your attempt at imposing your own views on the rest of the Columbia community, even more by refusing the accept that their opposition might actually be based in reason.
For example, if the Core and lack of an ethnic studies department are such an issue, why did you come to Columbia, and why are you continuing on your path to graduating with a Columbia University diploma? And since you didn’t do your research on this, perhaps this wasn’t made obvious to you when you came to New York City, New York, USA, North America, Western Hemisphere, and finally Earth, but while indeed the world continues to shrink and the ability to comminucate across cultural lines does become more and more important, we are a part of and exist in a Western society. Perhaps if we know more about how and why we are as we are, we can then begin to understand someone else. And just maybe this works; Columbia has a long history of alumni in positions that successfully navigate those boundries everyday.
Another example. Acts of racism should be condemmed. Completely agree with you. But to think that the administration, at a place were adults with free wills come to study, can completely control the student body is abusrd. Moreover, to think the administration has done too little despite that huge handicap is even more absurd. The admninstrators have openly rebuked the offenders and launched investigations with the help of NYPD. They have already folded to the demands of sensitivity training, which from my understanding is essentially politically correct training. No, if anyone should be held responsible for those despicable crimes, it should be those who committed them. Maybe then the administration could be released of baby sitting duty and do something more useful.
Unfortunately, while I would like to continue to write out reasoned responses to your incoherent and disjointed platform, I like my Columbia education, a lot actually, and I have a midterm to take.
@wtf “ethnic studies major”?? does that sound degrading to anyone else?
@celeste This disconnected, ridiculous, and bizarre movement makes me so embarrassed for Columbia. But, it does highlight a large reason of why I dropped my MEALAC major: the more minority groups continue to play the victim card, the less I want to listen to their demands. I think that the hunger strikers truly highlight this: because they’ve somehow been adversely affected by the university, they can opt out of negotiations and hold their breath until the administration makes the move. It’s sick. And futhermore, what do Barnard students have to do with this strike–THEY DON’T EVEN TAKE CORE CLASSES. When students who don’t go to CU protest a CU policy, it makes absolutely no sense to me.
Don’t be fooled, I’m quite a liberal person, but these sorts of antics only push me to the more conservative side. Come on, when I start believing what Chris Kulawik says you know that this whole deal has gone too far.
Hunger strikers, get a a life.
@word we’ve been learning about the holocaust and the civil rights movement and lots of other stuff since we were in elementary school. i very much doubt that a class that teaches “don’t be racist” will be effective just because it will be poorly taught and a waste of time at college.
maybe i’ll go on a shower strike until world peace and alternative energy are solved.
@Oh and bring the pointy hoods and crosses.
@... Seriously, it’s not legitimate to argue people who disagree with you are racist.
@uhhuh so i guess the black students against the strike are racist motherfuckers with hoods and crosses too? that makes a lot of sense
@who are you The Goebbels of the pro-strike gestapo?
@Yess!!! Everyone against the strike should come to Alma Mater! That way we know who these racist fuckers are.
@haha i hope you realize how completely ridiculous you sound. get well soon, and good luck with getting what you want in life with an attitude like that.
@Perplexed Why is SGA advocating for expansion of ethnic studies. It is a sham, non-disciplinary major that fails to adequately meet Columbia’s academic standard. It’s rather embarrassing when such proposals are backed blindly by an organization that fears repercussions from a zealous bloc of students.
@alum At what point do Quigley and the admissions office start feeling heat for letting in these rabble-rousers? Something must be done about the admissions office if they keep taking kids who obviously hate the school and haven’t done their research about what the Core Curriculum is and is meant to accomplish. Why do we keep accepting kids who do not want to be at Columbia, but rather CCNY?
@why silent? anti-strike people, go do something actually productive with your time.
or at the very least, engage in dialogue with people who support the demands instead of being silent.
@We are only silent in the figurative sense. We oppose the strike for different reasons and first demand an appropriate, democratic discourse.
@well there has been engagement in dialogue with strike supporters–if you look at their facebook group there is quite a lively discussion going on there, some of which are asshole posts, but some of which are legitimate questions that i KNOW strike supporters have seen. and not answered (or perhaps they are unable to answer?)
i don’t understand why they keep telling us to talk at the tents instead of posting their answers in a public forum where EVERYONE can see them. first of all this just seems like a skirting tactic to me. secondly, not all people affected by this brouhaha are around on campus, and there are at least some of us who would love to see some answers to the questions instead of being exhorted every day to come see the strikers in a tent.
@lolrus Shit, shit, shit.
A few kids throw a hissy fit, and now everyone’s going to eventually have to take major cultures as a seminar?
And FFS, mandatory anti-oppression training…this is a university, not a playschool.
Watch this: one of the strikers will become serious ill and his or her parents will file a lawsuit against Columbia. Force them all to take medical leave…for both physical and mental reasons.
Enough is enough. I am tired of their little shit fits, and every other student who is actually here to learn should be likewise.
@Then... do something about it and come to the Silent Anti-Strike Gathering tonight at 8:30pm. RSVP at the above link.
Bwog’s commenters are often criticized for their anonymity and biting criticisms of the hunger strike. Tonight, you have a chance to put your money where your mouth is.
Alma Mater
Tonight 8:30pm
RSVP @
http://columbia.facebook.com/event.php?eid=14797485014&ref=mf
@lolrus “Final negotiations”
IT’S CRUNCH TIME.
Dammit, this makes it sound like a hostage situation.
@yeah it IS a hostage situation. a group of moonbats are holding our university hostage.
@Alum Some of the things the strikers want (like the health clinic and adult education programs for CB9 residents) are reasonable, but most aren’t. Even as to the reasonable goals, the tactics being employed are not reasonable at all. It is one thing to say Columbia should do something but quite another to demand it and to make threats if those demands are not met.
Columbia should not substantially alter its development plans except as part of an agreement with the community. It should not even seriously consider doing so as part of the ill-advised negotiation with these striking students.
If Columbia appeases this group, how long will it be before another makes its own demands? Even negotiating beyond a relatively modest level sends the wrong signal and invites more such abuse in the future.
@anti-strike http://columbia.facebook.com/event.php?eid=14797485014&ref=mf
PLACE: Alma Mater
TIME: 8:30 PM
EVENT: a silent gathering against the hunger strike.
whether you object to the resolution, the methods of the strikers, the capitulation of the administration to such methods, or any other reasons you might have to this disappointing turn of events, please come out and show your support in silence.
then begin networking to take the next steps against this lunacy.
http://columbia.facebook.com/event.php?eid=14797485014&ref=mf
@nitpicker the Daily Bruin is actually the UCLA paper, not Brown’s.