The 2015 Yale University Anti-racism Demonstration

The 2015 Yale University Anti-racism Demonstration

Introduction

Racism is a crucial topic that has been the subject in the USA, for many years, causing conflicts, chaos, and disruption in several institutions across the state. Several groups of people, activists, workers, and students are holding public meetings to address these issues, which are on the rise and urging the state to assist in charging the perpetrators for the discrimination. Minor ethnic groups like the Blacks, the Latino, and Spanish-speaking individuals have, in many ways, faced discrimination against racism in the USA. Universities have seen an upsurge in protests over the institutional unresponsiveness to the issues related to racial inequalities. The media has not played a helping hand on these issues. Instead, it has focused on popularizing the protests rather than the core problems making students demonstrate.

This article explores the social movements involved in the protests, the people who took part in it, their perspectives, and the impact of these protests concerning modern activism. An extensive analysis of the goals, motivation, and strategies used will be also be addressed in the article concerning racism in Campuses in the USA. The focus will be on Yale’s student protests that happened in 2015 at the university campus, following allegations concerning racial differences and segregation. In the end, it will give the impacts of the demonstrations and provide a suggestion in solving future protests from happening.

Yale University Demonstrations

Yale students and other people supporting them held a demonstration across the campus due to the rising tensions on the campus. Hundreds of students took part in the demonstration, which was called “March of Resilience,” to raise the awareness of racial insensitivity that had become rampant in the university campus. The protests at Yale are just part of what is happening across the state in different institutions over an extended period.  The protests at Yale resulted from the frustrations students were experiencing, from emails that had offensive Halloween costumes, and threats over freedom of expression. The allegations were that a woman had been turned away from a party due to the color of her skin, and she was a non-white. Calls on racial inequalities, together with the abandonment of policies that improves the inclusivity of the minor groups on campus. These grievances do have a negative impact on the environment in the universities, and a need to address them should be put in place to solve and have a lasting solution.

The university management has to understand students’ needs and the real issue, which was racism. Both the management, the professors, workers, and people around campus, require to understand how they either knowingly or unknowingly say, do, and act in ways that portray racial discrimination against students of color in and outside the classrooms. Before students can protest, it shows they have experienced these issues over an extended time, and tensions have been boiling inside the affected individuals before erupting to demonstrations. The negative experiences they go through cause frustrations and is an indication of the cultural incompetence among the lecturers. It shows the gap existing in the education system where racism, stereotyping, and derogatory comments have been integrated into the curriculum, portraying historical injustices that people of color have gone through. It threatens their sense of belonging when others view them as different, and great disparities existed in the 2015-2016 academic year, according to the works of scholars at the University of Pennsylvania’s Center for the Study of Race and Equity in Education. Results indicate that the issues have been long-standing and that Yale’s demonstrations are just part of many protests across the country.

Student protests have risen from 5.6% in 20014 to nearly 8.5 % in 2015, and among the students of color, it rose from ten percent in 2014 to sixteen percent, serving as the highest records of the survey since 1967. In the Yale protests, students were against the title ‘master,’ and the changing of the name Woodrow Wilson’s name from one of the graduate schools at Yale.  Elsewhere, they demanded naming one of the halls to be named after a former university president and member of the Black Liberation Army. The war has escalated on campus on several different occasions, indicating the tedious American culture that has existed for decades. Rising students’ requests have brought to attention the warnings and alerts indicating stressed emotions and or challenging materials that are appearing in the syllabus and are against racial equalities on the campuses. Non-Science research by professors in the National Coalition Against Censorship, 2015 indicated that fifteen percent of professors had been requested to give trigger warnings from students while in school. According to the Knight Foundation Survey done in April 2015, it showed that more than half of the students on campus believed that the climate in the university’s ground prevented them from saying what they believe in, because of fearing to offend other people here.

Other reasons causing unrest in campuses is the political atmosphere whereby some of the students are protesting against a particular politician who, in one way or another, is using racial discrimination utterances in their campaigns, while pursuing specific posts in parliament, Congress, and or Presidential elections. In some instances, the disagreements in the views about specific political parties and protests arising from these conflicting expressions have led to extreme protesting across the state. Students are calling for colleges to come up with well established safe spaces and lounges that allow free expression of oneself without racial discriminations, gender inequalities, and any other form of disintegration occurring on to them. The other frequent issue arising from students’ side is the grieving concerns, which is a type of interaction joke that slightly dehumanizes the students from minority groups or the marginalized communities in the USA. It involves racism, seclusion, and other forms of segregation occurring on the campus.

Despite the President of Yale, Peter Salovey speaking to students and promising a better and improved environment, while continuing to work with them in improving the university, the protests kept going on as the core issues were not addressed. What students were asking to be addressed was the healing, total inclusion, mutual respect, and better understanding of the issues affecting them in the campus. The president, however, asked the students to come up with the recommendations that will be addressed by the management in ensuring that demonstrations have reduced or stopped in the future days.

Students were protesting with various signs with different messages written on them, asking the management not to look away, and chanting that they have been there for a long time, they are not leaving as they are loved. They walked from the Afro-American Cultural Center, through the campus, and past the Sigma Alpha Epsilon house, where a particular individual had held a ‘White Girls Only’ party. But the university community denied it was ever happening, though an internal investigation was made after the emergence of the allegations. The management at the house argued that they had a diversified crowd, meaning they had a party with people from different ethnic communities. Still, it sparkled significant conversations throughout the community around Yale. The president of Sigma Alpha Epsilon house promised to focus on the process of fixing themselves so that they could save their reputation, and make everyone feel appreciated and comfortable.

Another protest took place in September involving the Black Lives Matter protesters, at Wesleyan which had organized for a boycott together with the defunding of the student newspaper for publishing a conservative op-ed concerning the movement. Tensions rose at Yale from the email where a faculty member had sent in response to a request from the Intercultural Affairs Council that compromises faculty plus the administration, asking students to think about their choice of Halloween costumes. The email went to students, the associate master of Yale’s Silliman College, Emily Christakis, had given her reply arguing the students to limit to costume choices was a restriction to their constitutional right to free expression. Emily explained that that American universities had once been safe spots for maturation and particular regressive, or transgressive experiences, but had now turned to places of censure and strict prohibition, which is against the constitutional rights. Her husband, Nicholas Christakis, issued an apology for causing pain to students, but not for the email.

Students’ Demands to be Implemented

The changes that Yale’s Black Student Alliance issued was a direction requiring the Sigma Alpha Epsilon’s fraternity to apologize for the incident that took place at the white girls only party. Also, it wanted the Greek community to read out the messages from the black feminists, reporting the things it had learned from the incident. An additional request was asking Yale to include training for students and the whole faculty on diversity and inclusivity of all members of the university. The minor community groups wanted to feel part of Yale’s community, without segregation or discrimination from fellow students, teachers, and any other individual at the campus. By promoting equality on the campus, everyone would have a sense of belonging and be part of Yale’s family fraternity.

The administration had been accused of its racial insensitivity, and that everyone should be allowed the freedom of expressing themselves without looking at cultural differences that existed between the various communities in the USA. Some students had protested over their linkage to past slavery that took place in the state many years ago. Many were calling on Yale’s first black Dean of the college, Mr. Jonathan Holloway, to be more active in making the institution a better place for students of color to be. Also, they demanded that the incident that took place at Sigma Alpha Epsilon house to be investigated for its allegation of segregating the students of color by holding a white girls’ only party, according to the Yale’s Daily News magazine.

A Yale senior, Aaron Lewis, had said that the debate on the Halloween had been misinterpreted, because students of color had been experiencing racism more often in campus, and had been a mismatch of what was found in Yale’s admissions brochures. It had changed from the once higher standard behavior to one that had deteriorated significantly. Yale was no longer immune to racism systems and the misogyny that was shaping the modern world. The students’ status was not being protected from racial norms that were prevailing on the campus, and even the Yale degree could not protect an individual from racism in any office a person works from in the state. According to Aaron, racial segregation has been far more in and outside Yale, and students protesting in the campus will not help in solving the issue, because even the neighboring community was experiencing similar problems, from the places of work, and the entire neighborhood.

Impact of the Demonstrations on Society

Protests by students in universities have rocked major universities in the country, the growing number of activists’ organizations, and movements throughout the state. Some observers argue that these unrests have been as a result of smaller groups becoming more vocal about pressing issues that students face on campus on a daily basis. Also, the female confreres motivated, which are headed by the ones in the leftist movement inclinations. Protesting was a sign of the end to the ‘silent generation’ where students had started criticizing the events happening in the larger community, away from the campus enclosure since the end of the World War Ⅱ. They were demanding a more direct involvement in the decision-making processes on the policies, and social issues affecting them with the neighboring communities near colleges.

Over the years, university students have had a misunderstanding of the old conflicting ideas with questionable acts affecting the people in the USA. They have revolted over practices like compulsory military training, where they expressed their dissatisfaction in wars, demonstrating peacefully, and solemnly pledging to never go into wars, after the First World War. Besides, students have joined picketing involving the labor unions to assist in helping the associations to organize themselves and demand for rights that were denied to the workers, or pushing for the implementation of particular codes under the Labor Union’s Law. There have been long-standing expectations in higher educations that students wanted to see being addressed but have never been given adequate attention in solving the perennial issues arising in campuses or the community at large.

It is believed that most of the students do not have a specific political ideology, and what they keep fighting for is what modern society is experiencing daily. Much of the protests are a way of bringing to attention the wrongs happening in society, like the neglecting of minor ethnic groups, existing or entering the USA. And the rights of these people are violated, denied, and manipulated for personal gains, forgetting the human nature that was ideally given to us by God. The primary structures in the country, ranging from the government, military, church, businesses, and labor communities are preventing genuine human realization, and human beings end up lacking a meaningful commitment to their lives. These structures are failing to translate educational, political, religious, and social ideas into reality. Democracy has been overthrown and not followed anymore because Civil Rights have been neglected without implementation.

They do not want to change anything, but to push these structures to start working and implementing the specific ideologies that have been despised for a long time. Through these protests, students are self-expressing their ideas and what they would like to see the major structures implementing for a better and successful nation.   These structures exist to help man live, but they need a man to live to their expectations, of which it becomes evil if they have individuals seeking total mastering over life. It is according to Buber and Heidigger, who argued that, let the truth be. Frankl says that the greatest motivational force in man is for an individual trying to find meaning in their life. The motivation is similar to other statements preferred by personality theorists or philosophers of teleological persuasion, who believed that man was always striving to reach excellence in life.

Protests are not just confined on campuses, but looking at the revolution in music, art, and existential theology shows that the revolt against the structures is deeply embedded in American society. The protests are a reaction to these structures to bring out the identity and authenticity of who am I, and how one can be him/herself. When people work for long hours just to survive, it raises the burning questions which come to consciousness, and the search for their meaning becomes inevitable. University students perceive that the environmental conditions are causing them a personal effect and challenges in establishing a sense of personal identification.

On the other side of the coin, the psychologists dealing with development argue that the students are in the adolescence phase and that they are in an arrested-state of resolution of an identity crisis.  It is a way these young people are flinging to non-conformity before they can adapt to adult society. Additionally, the psychologists believe that campus protests are an intrigue of a minute group substituting institutions and administration as objects of real focus for their rebellious nature, who, in reality, are the parents. Society has to address the problems highlighted by students protests as it is difficult to live in a society that neglects one’s essential problems or issues, as stated by Goodman. Campus protests are a way of showing concern over the irrelevance ideologies that the majority are exposed to, neglecting the real meaning of life or the future.

Suggestions to Solve Future Protests from Happening

Some of the solutions proposed in solving the main issue of racism on campuses and society at large include implementing the policies that promote equality in the state. Equipping college trainers with skills of addressing people of color, teaching on the different racial groups, and cultural backgrounds in the country. Also, attending seminars and conferences talking about diversity in the country and promoting unity among citizens will promote respect among members of society living or interacting with people of color. The press has a huge task of promoting equality and abolishing racial biases in the state as it is the primary tool people use to express their feelings, views, and opinions regarding different ethnic groups existing in the US. Believing that the minority groups can be of significant part in the building of the state, and appreciating the efforts people of color put in daily activities in class and community at large. Campuses need to acknowledge that discrimination is existing on their grounds and find a way to help victims of racial abuse because it affects their performance in academics and lives. There is a need to integrate diverse cultures, people, and activities in the curriculum to provide a sense of belonging for the minority groups. The administration should address any tensions rising from the racial discrimination responsibly as soon as they feel it in campuses. By recognizing that they share a significant responsibility in solving these issues, they will manage to find a lasting solution to racial discrimination and inequalities.

Conclusion

By looking at the study above, it is clear that racial inequality has been around campuses for an extended period, and that students protesting is a way of expressing the grievances and experiences they go through while in school. It is also a representation of what the present society is functioning, and that the primary structures like the government, military, religion, businesses, and labor community have neglected their core mandates in addressing the meaning of life in humanity. When these issues are well addressed, there will be no demonstrations in our universities as the structures of the state will have implemented the basic rights. Implementation of policies will assist in curbing racial disparities in the US and create a great nation that is free from discrimination. All the recommendations suggested will assist university administration in ensuring equality among students from diversified backgrounds in the country. Further research can also be done to provide better solutions for future use through the help of leaders, Congress, and the Constitution of the USA.