Wednesday, September 27, 2017 // The Statement
6B

By the 1970s, Black nationalism emerged 

as a salient force in campus activism at the 
University as liberal leaders and students of 
color became increasingly jaded by the Civil 
Rights Movement’s painfully slow pace.

The 1968 LSA building sit-in following 

King’s assassination proved to be a power-
ful model for civil rights groups on campus 
because it proved the potential of direct 
action to attract public attention.

The sit-in proved students on campus 

could engage in successful negotiation with 
the University and leverage institutional 
change. It also foreshadowed activism in 
the 1970s, which looked to this event as an 
example for future organizing efforts.

While the BSU was able to win key con-

cessions in the years that followed the his-
toric sit-in, some demands were not met, 
such as calls for hiring more Black faculty. 
As a result, the University saw an increase 
in civil rights activism.

In 1970, the BSU, Black Law Students 

Association, Association of Black Social 
Work Students and Black students in the 
Psychology 
Department 
and 
Medical 

School launched a campus-wide strike, 
dubbed the Black Action Movement.

A statement issued by BAM outlined 

the movement’s demands, including an 
increase in Black graduate and undergradu-
ate recruiters and a call for 10 percent Black 
student enrollment by the 1973-1974 aca-
demic year.

“BAM was a response to the fact that 

Black students did not believe that the 
administration had taken the demands of 
the (1968) lock-in seriously,” McCoy said. 
“So some of the students, while in a meeting 
with the administration became fed up with 
the conversation and these students decide 
to not go to class and instead to go on strike.”

BAM’s successful disruption decreased 

class attendance by 75 percent and closed 
the University for 18 days. In the end, Flem-
ing agreed to the 10 percent Black student 
enrollment goal, which the University failed 
to achieve. This move drew sharp criti-
cismfrom then-U.S. Vice President Spiro 
Agnew, who insinuated the University 
would gut its admissions standards in doing 
so.

A second iteration of BAM — dubbed 

BAM II — sprouted in 1975 when the Uni-
versity failed to uphold its promises from 
five years prior but quickly fizzled out after 
issuing a lengthy list of demands. Calls for 
10 percent Black enrollment again failed.

For the most part, the spirit of BAM 

and BAM II were not recaptured until 
1987 when students from United Coalition 
Against Racism — an organization founded 
initially to fight for University divestment 
from the apartheid state of South Africa 
— organized BAM III in response to racist 
incidents in residence halls and a controver-
sy in which a campus DJ for then-campus 
radio station WJJX broadcasted obscene 

racist statements on air.

UCAR leaders then presented a list of 11 

demands to then-University President Har-
old Shapiro. When they weren’t accepted, 
BAM III staged a sit-in attended by over 250 
students.

Following talks between Shapiro and 

UCAR leaders, the University agreed to sev-
eral of BAM III’s policy positions — includ-
ing the recognition of Martin Luther King 
Jr. Day, the announcement of a six-point 
plan to increase Black student enrollment, 
the installation of a vice provost for minor-
ity affairs, a budget for BSU and an updated 
procedure for incidents of racial harass-
ment. Also included in the University’s deal 
with UCAR were plans to break ground on 
the now-defunct Baker-Mandela Center for 
Anti-Racist Education.

To McCoy, BAM III signified one of the 

last times on campus when a united front of 
Black student activists and their allies were 
able to extract major concessions from the 
administration.

“BAM III was very consequential for 

influencing campus politics but then also 
for helping to diversify the University by 
pushing the President to do something 
more specific, like increasing Black enroll-
ment and minority enrollment in general 
and hiring more minority faculty.”

************
The mixed successes of each BAM move-

ment ushered in a new era of progress at the 
University — one in which Black students 
were more empowered to take direct action 
against the institution to correct historic 
injustices and help improve students’ sense 
of security on campus.

In 1988, former University President 

James Duderstadt sought a solution to the 
years of tension over low minority enroll-
ment. His solution was The Michigan Man-
date, which increased representation of 
minority populations in the student body 
and among faculty members. The plan more 
than doubled enrolled minority students 
from 1986 to 1995.

At its peak, the Black student population 

approached 9 percent in 1994. At the time, 
student activist groups saw The Michigan 
Mandate as the fulfillment of BAM I, II and 
III’s loftiest goals.

Following 
Duderstadt’s 
resignation 

as University president in 1996, the U.S. 
Supreme Court invalidated the University’s 
affirmative action policy in 2003 in Gratz 
v. Bollinger. In the landmark case, Jenni-
fer Gratz claimed the method by which the 
University administered affirmative action 
policies was unconstitutional because it 
gave an unfair advantage to minority appli-
cants. 

While the case did not prohibit the Uni-

versity entirely from using race-based affir-
mative action in admissions decisions, the 
decision weakened the University’s pre-
ferred methods of attaining a critical mass 
of minority students in each freshman class.

It was not until 2006, when a statewide 

ballot referendum, Proposition 2, prohibit-
ed public universities in Michigan from tak-

ing race into consideration for admission. 
Ever since, the percentage of Black students 
on campus has declined, and later stalled at 
about 4 to 5 percent.

Even today, the issue of affirmative 

action remains a contentious issue on cam-
pus. Some conservative student leaders, like 
Strobl, feel the ballot initiative removes any 
unfair advantages in the already-cutthroat 
admissions process.

“YAF has always been against racial pref-

erences — we don’t call it affirmative action 
because it is not true to its word, it does 
nothing affirmative,” Strobl said. “We have 
always believed that it is more important to 
judge a man by his talent and his hard work 
and you should not see color first.”

It is clear that Proposition 2 was a major 

setback for those advocating an increase 
in Black student enrollment; however, not 
all proponents of affirmative action admis-
sions policies feel it can fully account for 
the nearly 5-percent decline in Black enroll-
ment from its peak in 1994.

“Part of the goal of student activism 

should be to combat the narrative that the 
administration is pushing that the reason 
they can’t do anything about enrollment fig-
ures is because of Prop. 2,” McCoy said. “It 
is important to hold the University account-
able for their role too.”

************
The student activist movement familiar 

to many current students, faculty and Uni-
versity administrators was born in 2013 
when the BSU coined the popular phrase 
Being Black at the University of Michigan 
via the #BBUM hashtag on Twitter.

The hashtag quickly became a public 

forum for Black students at the University 
to share their experiences with implicit 
racial microaggressions, encounters with 
hate messages, racially-motivated verbal 
assaults and the pressures of often being the 
only Black student in class.

Former student Jeremy Cook tweeted on 

November 19, 2013, shortly after the coining 
of the #BBUM hashtag, his frustration with 
tokenization.

“That first class when Black culture 

becomes the topic and you suddenly become 
the voice of all Black people #BBUM,” Cook 
tweeted.

Other Black students shared stories about 

peers assuming they were from Detroit sim-
ply because of their racial identity.

Once again, the spirit of BAM was recap-

tured. The BSU gained a national audience 
and sought to seize the political moment.

In a 2015 interview, former BSU trea-

surer Robert Greenfield spoke about repeat-
edly pushing, albeit unsuccessfully, for the 
demands made by BAM years earlier.

“Once we gained national attention, we 

(had) leverage to go back to the U of M black 
community and ask what they wanted to 
have done/fixed,” Greenfield wrote. “Many 
of the demands are lasting agreements that 
the University never came through on (but 
agreed to) — this included the 10 percent 
critical mass of black students on campus.”

It is yet to be seen whether #BBUM had 

success in swaying the administration. In 
2016, Schlissel unveiled the University’s 
new Diversity, Equity and Inclusion strate-
gic plan to address student concerns about 
racial inequality and enrollment. But many 
feel the plan isn’t robust enough to boost 
minority enrollment to the same degree as 
The Michigan Mandate, and is inadequate 
as a response to racist and hate-based inci-
dents on campus.

The last academic year alone saw a num-

ber of hate-speech incidents, including 
anti-Black fliers posted on University prop-
erty and hacking of a University profes-
sor’s email to send anti-Semitic messages 
to students. This comes at a time when 
hate crimes are also on the rise nation-
ally; according to a recent Huffington Post 
report, between 2015 and 2016, the number 
of documented hate crimes increased by 
about 5 percent.

Many students simply do not feel the Uni-

versity is doing enough to create a safe envi-
ronment for everyone.

“We want actual action,” LSA senior Jen-

ise Williams said last February after the 
anti-Semitic and racist emails were sent. 
“My parents were here 30 years ago fight-
ing for the same things … and (now) I didn’t 
want my sister to come here because of the 
shit I deal with here.”

To McCoy, the concern students feel 

regarding the administration goes straight 
to the top.

“From my personal experiences, people 

of color on campus don’t have any confi-
dence in President Schlissel,” McCoy said. 
“Whenever there are concerns about their 
safety or about racism, he seems to kick the 
question back to (the protesters), and he 
often asks, ‘Well what would you want us 
to do about this?’ And this could be an hon-
est reaction where he just doesn’t know, so 
that doesn’t inspire any confidence. Or the 
cynical view is that it could be a deflection. 
… And I don’t know if either one is better.”

************
Last week’s racist vandalism in West 

Quad cannot be viewed in isolation. Years of 
student grievances and racially-motivated 
incidents led Greene to take a knee on the 
Diag Monday morning.

As of fall 2016, Black student enrollment 

at the University stood at 4.94 percent — a 
far cry from the 10 percent demanded by 
each iteration of BAM, and a significant 
decline from the 1994 enrollment figures.

No one has been implicated for the rac-

ist flyering, rock painting, email hacking or 
door tag defacing, either.

The past six decades of the University’s 

protest culture and campus climate have 
led us to this point. SDS, BAM, UCAR and 
now #BBUM gave and give a public voice for 
liberal student activism — each generation 
passing the baton of social justice on to the 
next.

This is a powerful political moment on 

campus, but it is not unique. The student 
body and administration have both been 
here before. The only question that remains: 
Where will they go from here?

ACTIVISM
From Page 5B

