Black Student Group at U. Michigan Threatens Physical Action if Demands Aren’t Met
Any student group that makes threats is doing more harm than good to their cause.
Ben Freed of M Live reports.
Being Black at University of Michigan organizers threaten ‘physical action’ if demands aren’t met
Activists on the steps of Hill Auditorium Monday said that University of Michigan officials have seven days to meet seven demands addressing lack of diversity and inclusion at U-M or ‘physical actions’ will be taken on campus.
Speaking Monday after a speech inside the auditorium by civil rights activist Harry Belafonte, representatives of the University of Michigan Black Student Union — the group that started the Being Black at University of Michigan (#BBUM) movement in the fall — issued a set of seven demands that they see as vital to improving life for minority students on campus…
“… Without action, alternatively, we will be forced to engage as an entire community in ways to implement the changes we request. We will allow the university seven days to end negotiations and come to conclusions on our seven demands. If negotiations are not complete we will be forced to do more, beginning to increase valiantly our activism for social progress and take physical actions on the University of Michigan’s campus.”
The group’s seven demands were read by senior Eric Gavin:
- We demand that the university give us an equal opportunity to implement change, the change that complete restoration of the BSU purchasing power through an increased budget would obtain.
- We demand available housing on central campus for those of lower socio-economic status at a rate that students can afford, to be a part of university life, and not just on the periphery.
- We demand an opportunity to congregate and share our experiences in a new Trotter [Multicultural Center] located on central campus.
- We demand an opportunity to be educated and to educate about America’s historical treatment and marginalization of colored groups through race and ethnicity requirements throughout all schools and colleges within the university.
- We demand the equal opportunity to succeed with emergency scholarships for black students in need of financial support, without the mental anxiety of not being able to focus on and afford the university’s academic life.
- We demand increased exposure of all documents within the Bentley (Historical) Library. There should be transparency about the university and its past dealings with race relations.
- We demand an increase in black representation on this campus equal to 10 percent.
Being Black at University of Michigan organizers threaten 'physical action' if demands aren't met (M Live)
Comments
….sigh……
Is that all they know how to do?
Demand?
Per chance, what are they going to give in return, or hasn’t that entered their racist little brains yet?
“I’m sorry I ruined your Black Panther party.”
Where’s the White Student Union? The Rev Dr King must be spinning in his grave at the racist actions perpetrated in his name–especially black liberation ‘theology’.
Go back to Africa, you demanding twerps, and take ‘Banana Boat Belafonte’ with you.
I’m so tired of these racist tantrums. (Remember the Panthers’ rant performance at the Leonard Bernstein party? – see Tom Wolfe’s “Radical Chic & Mau-Mauing the Flak Catchers” – 1970). Was there progress from all that bad-assed behavior? Is that why they’re repeating themselves today?
Black students need to get into the 21st. century and stop defining themselves as ANGER.
I’ll be very upset (as a UofM alumna) if the school bends.
Prepare to be upset. They are going to cave.