Social media are augmenting activist tactics of the past
By Thomas Curwen, Jason Song and Larry Gordon
Picture
MARK BOSTER Los Angeles Times
STUDENTS AT Occidental College in Eagle Rock occupy a building to protest handling of diversity issues.
Picture
ARNOLD GOLD New Haven Register via Associated Press
YALE UNIVERSITY students and faculty rally last week to demand that the campus become more inclusive of all students.
Picture
DANIEL BRENNER Columbia Daily Tribune via Associated Press
AYANNA POOLE leads a march Friday at the University of Missouri, where the president resigned under pressure Nov. 9, helping to fuel a broader movement.
If the University of Missouri was the spark, then the fire didnt take long to spread.
Since the resignation of its president and chancellor on Nov. 9, protesters have organized at more than 100 colleges and universities nationwide. Social media sites have lighted up with voices of dissent, and what began as a grievance has evolved into a movement.
Inspired by the marches in Ferguson, Mo., and Black L***s M****r, students are taking to social media to question the institutions they once approached for answers. Calling for racial and social reforms on their campuses, they are borrowing tactics of the past hunger strikes, sit-ins and lists of demands and have found a collective voice to address their frustrations, hurt and rage.
Their actions seem to have hit the mark.
Last week, the dean of students at Claremont Mc-Kenna College left the university after students protested her comments to a Latina student with the offer to work for those who dont fit our CMC mold.
Tuesday night, Jonathan Veitch, the president of Occidental College, said he and other administrators were open to considering a list of 14 reforms, including the creation of a black studies major and more diversity training, that student protesters had drawn up.
Students at USC have similarly proposed a campuswide action plan, which includes the appointment of a top administrator to promote diversity, equity and inclusion.
Nationwide, complaints of r****m and microaggression are feeding Facebook pages and websites at Harvard, Brown, Columbia and Willamette universities, as well as at Oberlin, Dartmouth and Swarthmore colleges.
Protesters at Ithaca College staged a walkout to demand the presidents resignation, and Peter Salovey, president of Yale University, announced a number of steps, including the appointment of a deputy dean of diversity, to work toward a better, more diverse, and more inclusive Yale.
For decades, students have helped drive social change. Campuses, said University of California President Janet Napolitano, have historically been places where social issues in the United States are raised and where many voices are heard.
Over the decades, student protests have shifted attitudes in the country on civil rights and the Vietnam War, nuclear proliferation and apartheid, and some of todays actions are borrowing from tactics of the past.
Although some of the strategies may seem familiar, it is the speed and the urgency of todays protests that are different.
What is unique about these issues is how social media has changed the way protests take place on college campuses, said Tyrone Howard, associate dean of equity, diversity and inclusion at UCLA. A protest goes v***l in no time flat. With Instagram and Twitter, youre in an immediate news cycle. This was not how it was 20 or 30 years ago.
Howard also believes that the effectiveness of the actions at the University of Missouri has encouraged students on other campuses to raise their voices.
A president stepping down is a huge step, he said. Students elsewhere have to wonder, Wow, if that can happen there, why cant we bring out our issues to the forefront as well?
Shaun R. Harper, executive director of the University of Pennsylvanias Center for the Study of Race and Equity in Education, agrees. The resignation of two top Missouri administrators, Harper said, showed students and athletes around the country that they have power they may not have realized before.
The protests show were all together and we have the power to make the change we deserve, said Lindsay Opoku-Acheampong, a senior at Occidental.
Its affirming, said Dalin Celamy, also a senior at the college. It lets us know were not crazy; its happening to people who are just like you all over the country.
Celamy, along with other students, not only watched the unfolding protests across the country, but also looked to earlier protests, including an occupation of an administrative building at Occidental in 1968.
Echoes of the 1960s in todays actions are clear, said Robert Cohen, a history professor at New York University and author of Freedoms Orator, a biography of Mario Savio, who led the Free Speech Movement at UC Berkeley in the 1960s.
The tactical dynamism of these nonviolent protests and the public criticism of them are in important ways reminiscent of the 1960s, Cohen said. Todays protests, like those in the 60s, are memorable because they have been effective in pushing for change and sparking dialogue as well as polarization.
Although the targets of these protests are the blatant and subtle forms of r****m and inequity that affect the students lives, the message of the protests resonates with the recent incidents of intolerance and racial inequity on the streets of America.
There is a reason for this, Howard said.
Campuses are microcosms of society, he said, and are often comparable in terms of representation and opportunity. So there is a similar fight for more representation, acceptance and inclusion.
The dynamic can create a complicated and sensitive social order for students of color to negotiate.
Latino and African American students are often under the belief if they leave their community and go to colleges, that it will be better, Howard said. They believe it will be an upgrade over the challenges that they saw in underserved and understaffed schools. But if the colleges and universities are the same as those schools, then there is disappointment and frustration.
In addition, Howard said, when these students leave their community to go to a university, they often feel conflicted.
So when injustice comes up, he said, they are quick to respond because it is what they saw in their community. On some level, it is their chance to let their parents and peers know that they have not forgotten the struggle in the community.
On campuses and off, Harper, of the University of Pennsylvania center, finds a rising sense of impatience among African Americans about social change. As a black person, I think black people are just fed up. Its time out for ignoring these issues, he said.
While protests in the 1960s helped create specific safeguards for universities today, such as Title IX, guaranteeing equal access for all students to any educational program or activity receiving federal financial assistance, a gap has widened over the years between students and administrators over perceptions of bias.
Institutions often valued for their support of free speech find themselves wrestling with the prospect of limiting free speech, but to focus on what is or isnt politically correct avoids the more important issue, Cohen said: whether campuses are diverse enough or how to reduce r****m.
Occidental student Raihana Haynes-Venerable has heard criticism that modern students are too sensitive, but she argues that subtle forms of discrimination still have a profound effect.
She pointed to women making less than men and fewer minorities getting jobs as examples.
This is the new form of r****m, she said. thomas.curwen
@latimes.com jason.song@latimes.com larry.gordon@latimes.com
Liberalsarecool wrote:
Social media are augmenting activist tactics of the past
By Thomas Curwen, Jason Song and Larry Gordon
Picture
MARK BOSTER Los Angeles Times
STUDENTS AT Occidental College in Eagle Rock occupy a building to protest handling of diversity issues.
Picture
ARNOLD GOLD New Haven Register via Associated Press
YALE UNIVERSITY students and faculty rally last week to demand that the campus become more inclusive of all students.
Picture
DANIEL BRENNER Columbia Daily Tribune via Associated Press
AYANNA POOLE leads a march Friday at the University of Missouri, where the president resigned under pressure Nov. 9, helping to fuel a broader movement.
If the University of Missouri was the spark, then the fire didnt take long to spread.
Since the resignation of its president and chancellor on Nov. 9, protesters have organized at more than 100 colleges and universities nationwide. Social media sites have lighted up with voices of dissent, and what began as a grievance has evolved into a movement.
Inspired by the marches in Ferguson, Mo., and Black L***s M****r, students are taking to social media to question the institutions they once approached for answers. Calling for racial and social reforms on their campuses, they are borrowing tactics of the past hunger strikes, sit-ins and lists of demands and have found a collective voice to address their frustrations, hurt and rage.
Their actions seem to have hit the mark.
Last week, the dean of students at Claremont Mc-Kenna College left the university after students protested her comments to a Latina student with the offer to work for those who dont fit our CMC mold.
Tuesday night, Jonathan Veitch, the president of Occidental College, said he and other administrators were open to considering a list of 14 reforms, including the creation of a black studies major and more diversity training, that student protesters had drawn up.
Students at USC have similarly proposed a campuswide action plan, which includes the appointment of a top administrator to promote diversity, equity and inclusion.
Nationwide, complaints of r****m and microaggression are feeding Facebook pages and websites at Harvard, Brown, Columbia and Willamette universities, as well as at Oberlin, Dartmouth and Swarthmore colleges.
Protesters at Ithaca College staged a walkout to demand the presidents resignation, and Peter Salovey, president of Yale University, announced a number of steps, including the appointment of a deputy dean of diversity, to work toward a better, more diverse, and more inclusive Yale.
For decades, students have helped drive social change. Campuses, said University of California President Janet Napolitano, have historically been places where social issues in the United States are raised and where many voices are heard.
Over the decades, student protests have shifted attitudes in the country on civil rights and the Vietnam War, nuclear proliferation and apartheid, and some of todays actions are borrowing from tactics of the past.
Although some of the strategies may seem familiar, it is the speed and the urgency of todays protests that are different.
What is unique about these issues is how social media has changed the way protests take place on college campuses, said Tyrone Howard, associate dean of equity, diversity and inclusion at UCLA. A protest goes v***l in no time flat. With Instagram and Twitter, youre in an immediate news cycle. This was not how it was 20 or 30 years ago.
Howard also believes that the effectiveness of the actions at the University of Missouri has encouraged students on other campuses to raise their voices.
A president stepping down is a huge step, he said. Students elsewhere have to wonder, Wow, if that can happen there, why cant we bring out our issues to the forefront as well?
Shaun R. Harper, executive director of the University of Pennsylvanias Center for the Study of Race and Equity in Education, agrees. The resignation of two top Missouri administrators, Harper said, showed students and athletes around the country that they have power they may not have realized before.
The protests show were all together and we have the power to make the change we deserve, said Lindsay Opoku-Acheampong, a senior at Occidental.
Its affirming, said Dalin Celamy, also a senior at the college. It lets us know were not crazy; its happening to people who are just like you all over the country.
Celamy, along with other students, not only watched the unfolding protests across the country, but also looked to earlier protests, including an occupation of an administrative building at Occidental in 1968.
Echoes of the 1960s in todays actions are clear, said Robert Cohen, a history professor at New York University and author of Freedoms Orator, a biography of Mario Savio, who led the Free Speech Movement at UC Berkeley in the 1960s.
The tactical dynamism of these nonviolent protests and the public criticism of them are in important ways reminiscent of the 1960s, Cohen said. Todays protests, like those in the 60s, are memorable because they have been effective in pushing for change and sparking dialogue as well as polarization.
Although the targets of these protests are the blatant and subtle forms of r****m and inequity that affect the students lives, the message of the protests resonates with the recent incidents of intolerance and racial inequity on the streets of America.
There is a reason for this, Howard said.
Campuses are microcosms of society, he said, and are often comparable in terms of representation and opportunity. So there is a similar fight for more representation, acceptance and inclusion.
The dynamic can create a complicated and sensitive social order for students of color to negotiate.
Latino and African American students are often under the belief if they leave their community and go to colleges, that it will be better, Howard said. They believe it will be an upgrade over the challenges that they saw in underserved and understaffed schools. But if the colleges and universities are the same as those schools, then there is disappointment and frustration.
In addition, Howard said, when these students leave their community to go to a university, they often feel conflicted.
So when injustice comes up, he said, they are quick to respond because it is what they saw in their community. On some level, it is their chance to let their parents and peers know that they have not forgotten the struggle in the community.
On campuses and off, Harper, of the University of Pennsylvania center, finds a rising sense of impatience among African Americans about social change. As a black person, I think black people are just fed up. Its time out for ignoring these issues, he said.
While protests in the 1960s helped create specific safeguards for universities today, such as Title IX, guaranteeing equal access for all students to any educational program or activity receiving federal financial assistance, a gap has widened over the years between students and administrators over perceptions of bias.
Institutions often valued for their support of free speech find themselves wrestling with the prospect of limiting free speech, but to focus on what is or isnt politically correct avoids the more important issue, Cohen said: whether campuses are diverse enough or how to reduce r****m.
Occidental student Raihana Haynes-Venerable has heard criticism that modern students are too sensitive, but she argues that subtle forms of discrimination still have a profound effect.
She pointed to women making less than men and fewer minorities getting jobs as examples.
This is the new form of r****m, she said. thomas.curwen
@latimes.com jason.song@latimes.com larry.gordon@latimes.com
Social media are augmenting activist tactics of th... (
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Hey, look. A copy and paste king. Do you have any opinions of your own, or are you just going to share other peoples opinions?
RWNJ wrote:
Hey, look. A copy and paste king. Do you have any opinions of your own, or are you just going to share other peoples opinions?
KHH00 has no opinions of his own. I'm sure cool wind, and jelun will be happy to see nappy back!!
archie bunker wrote:
KHH00 has no opinions of his own. I'm sure cool wind, and jelun will be happy to see nappy back!!
yes Kchhoo is back and a big sneeze (or is it snooze?) as always.
no propaganda please wrote:
yes Kchhoo is back and a big sneeze (or is it snooze?) as always.
I can already see that his new tactic is to overwhelm the main with his cut and paste drivel hoping to get a bite. I'll just ignore him.
archie bunker wrote:
KHH00 has no opinions of his own. I'm sure cool wind, and jelun will be happy to see nappy back!!
:thumbup: :thumbup: :thumbup:
no propaganda please wrote:
yes Kchhoo is back and a big sneeze (or is it snooze?) as always.
:thumbup: :thumbup: :thumbup:
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