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