A stature of Georgetown Founder John Carroll sat at the center of a group of well over 200 students on Monday morning, as they formed a circle in front of Healy Hall and called on the administration to respond to a series of incidents of racial intolerance that rocked the campus last week.
An anonymous e-mail sent last week, addressed to BSA leaders with the words “Dear Niggers,” prompted the protests.
Coming on the heels of Friday’s rally in Red Square, the group of protesters vowed to stay in the fight until real change is effected by the Georgetown community. “This is not just another Red Square Protest,” said Eda Henries (SFS ‘04), treasurer of Georgetown’s African Society. “It’s a damn movement!”
The e-mail was sent from an account in Florida, University Spokesperson Julia Green Bataille told the Hoya. After a string of racist and homophobic incidents on campus, the e-mail was the incident that “topped it all off,” Georgetown NAACP member Danielle Payne (SFS ‘07) said.
When members of the BSA, NAACP, and other campus groups met last Thursday to discuss the e-mail, Payne said, they were called to protest as much by several other disturbing events as by the letter itself.
Several hundred students from a wide swath of the Georgetown community turned out for Friday’s rally, many holding signs and wearing black clothing to show their solidarity. A diverse group of on campus minority groups, including several representing black students as well as the Muslim Students Association, Jewish Students Association, GU Pride and the Asian Students Association, sent speakers to the rally. Many said they were moved to action by last week’s e-mail.
At Monday’s rally, leaders handed DeGioia a petition calling for several specific reforms. The reforms, defined by the BSA and NAACP, include greater promotion of diversity at Georgetown through educating faculty and students about diversity issues, creating a procedure of resources and adjudication for alleged victims of hate crimes, changing the University curriculum to include a mandatory diversity requirement, and creating an African American Studies major.
The administration has moved quickly to reassure students that it is committed to confronting racism. When President DeGioia accepted the petitions and letters of the protesters on Monday, he declared his commitment to diversity and said that the University will investigate the claims of protesters.
“Too many people have worked too hard for too many years to create a unique community here,” he said. However, University officials have not yet offered a specific response to the proposals. According to Bataille, DeGioia plans to publicly announce a response after spring break.
Concerns remain among protest leaders that the University will not live up to its word. Four years ago, several letters sent to the administration that were critical of minorities spurred protests and discussion on campus, but, according to JSA President Deidre Moskowitz (CAS ‘05), they were not followed up by real administrative reform. “The campus remains silent while the administration sweeps it under the rug,” she said.
Protesters said that they will continue to agitate for reforms until they see real change enacted. BSA leaders emphasized on Friday that a more tolerant community will only come through structural changes and said that they wanted to work closely with the administration.
Payne, however, expressed a determination that was found among many of the protesters. “If things don’t change, we’re going to keep rallying and protesting,” she said.
Regardless of the e-mail’s origin, groups demanding reforms cited other recent instances of racism on campus. Two weeks ago, posters promoting Black History Month were vandalized and copies of an anonymously published newsletter were illegally inserted into The Fire This Time, a minority newspaper. The one-page newsletter, entitled “The New Current,” criticized homosexuals, Jews and blacks. In one particularly controversial line, the newsletter read, “Just like the Jews, when you give gays an inch, they take a mile.”
Payne also corroborated reports that black students have faced racial slurs and had water thrown on them. In one incident, she said, a resident of Prospect Street was called a “nigger,” and told by an intoxicated white student to “go pick up her welfare check.”
The speakers at Friday’s rally said that minority students are reacting to perceived racial insensitivity in the classroom as well. BSA President Veronica Root (MSB ‘05) said on Friday that she had once witnessed a professor joke with students that being a minority is the easiest way to get accepted to Georgetown.
Maryam Mohammed (SFS ‘06), the Secretary of the Muslim Students Association, said that a Muslim friend had been discouraged from reciting Martin Luther King Jr.’s “I Have a Dream Speech,” because the professor had wrongly assumed that she wasn’t an American citizen.
Many of the speakers reminded the audience that black students are not the only ones subject to discrimination at Georgetown. Jen Lee (CAS ‘04) said that ever since she was mocked in the Alumni Square courtyard for her Asian heritage, she has been determined to confront racism head-on. “This just can’t pass anymore,” she said. “Let the anger be there, and don’t just bottle it up.”
As various minority groups have been targeted in recent incidents, many speakers emphasized that this was not solely a “black issue,” and that all minorities must bond together in the face of racism.
“To be black on this campus is hard, to be gay on this campus is hard, to be any kind of minority on this campus is hard,” said Aja Davis (CAS ‘06), President of GU Pride.
