Posted on 01/21/2014 5:47:58 AM PST by Altura Ct.
Members of the University of Michigan Black Student Union said they would have to resort to “physical action” if a list of seven demands issued on Martin Luther King Day are not met within seven days, The Ann Arbor News reported.
“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,” said senior Shayla Scales to a group of students gathered on campus, according to the Ann Arbor News.
The seven demands, read aloud by an activist associated with the union after a speech by entertainer and activist Harry Belafonte, included calls for more control over the Black Student Union’s budget, more housing for lower-income students, a new multicultural student center, the requirement of classes teaching all students about the historical treatment of minorities, access to emergency scholarships for minority students, increased exposure to library materials and a requirement that 10 percent of the campus be represented by black students.
Besides the speech by Belafonte, who has recently compared conservative business leaders to the Ku Klux Klan at a rally for New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio, the social justice activist group By Any Means Necessary, which strongly advocates affirmative action policies, also rallied on campus, blocking traffic in the process.
Monday’s demands come two months after the Black Student Union began a Twitter campaign with the hashtag #BBUM. The hashtag, which stands for “Being Black at Michigan,” trended nationally and was a response to a campus fraternity’s plans to hold a “Hood Ratchet Thursday” party.
“The BBUM campaign, as difficult as it was to hear, has been incredibly insightful. We hear you, and we are making changes,” said University of Michigan president Mary Sue Coleman before Belafonte’s talk, The Ann Arbor News reported.
Coleman, along with school provost Martha Pollack, had issued a three-pronged approach to address diversity at the school. The school plans to implement diversity and tolerance programming beginning next year, according to another report from The Ann Arbor News. A student-faculty committee is also being set up to address campus diversity.
The school has been the center of many similar debates. The U.S. Supreme Court backed the University of Michigan law school’s affirmative action policies in a landmark 2003 case. But in 2006, Michigan voters overturned the law. The Supreme Court heard oral arguments on that matter last October.
The percentage of black students at the school has declined since the 2006 vote. Black students made up 4.6 percent of the school’s student population in 2012, down from 6.8 percent in 2008, according to The Ann Arbor News.
Members of the student union who issued the seven demands for change would not specify what types of physical actions they planned to take, the Ann Arbor News reported.
I bet the entire list of demands can be reduced to” We want free room,board and tuition, to be able to party all the time and degrees in Black Studies at the end. Oh and money for nothin’ and your chicks for free!”
:) post/thread BUMP!
I’ve reached the conclusion that what goes on in these schools (public/college) is just as evil as what goes on in religious cults. There ought to be facilities set up to deprogram brainwashed victims.
:-).
Thanks.
My son was just escorted out of the engineering building after holing up in the basement scared out of his wits. They’re still searching the building. We were communicating with him by text, but reception in the basement was spotty. Daughter was thankfully in her dorm at the time.
Scary! Listening to scanner traffic online. What a confusing mess!
I missed the demand for more minority professors....they must have missed it in the cut and paste.
The seven demands, read aloud by an activist associated with the union after a speech by entertainer and activist Harry Belafonte, included calls for more control over the Black Student Union’s budget, more housing for lower-income students, a new multicultural student center, the requirement of classes teaching all students about the historical treatment of minorities, access to emergency scholarships for minority students, increased exposure to library materials and a requirement that 10 percent of the campus be represented by black students.Instead, all students below a 2.9 GPA at the end of each term or semester, should lose all their grants and scholarships, to make way for people who would actually make the best use of them. Thanks Altura Ct.
Whoops, thanks cripplecreek.
Vote Rob Steele for UofM board of regents.
Left unsaid there is that on the same day the SCOTUS ruled that the U of M's undergraduate Affirmative Action admissions policy is unconstitutional.
Yet Mary Sue Coleman and crew, to the best of our knowledge, have never tweaked the undergraduate admissions policy to bring it into conformity with the SCOTUS ruling. Nor has she complied with the state law approved in a referendum in 2006 banning race preferences in state government.
Mary Sue should have been charged with contempt of court several years ago for failing to comply with the SCOTUS ruling. Good riddance to her on her upcoming retirement. (Don't think her successor will be much better, but you never know.)
BTW, it's hardly surprising that the Black Student Union would present their demands in the aftermath of a Harry Belafonte speech on campus. Belafonte is a Communist and has been for decades.
Was the case argued orally yet?
The SCOTUS generally issues most of its decisions in the spring, toward the back end of its term (which ends in June).
Yeah Bill Shuette went to DC and argued the case himself.
I personally can’t see the supreme court agreeing with the appeals court on this one. That would be like saying “If you’re poor, you win”.
Haven't been there for quite some time, but have been in contact indirectly.
You're right that it is run by white liberals, simply because the U of M is by far the largest employer and some of the students vote there as well.
But "all the bad aspects of the East Coast transplanted to the Midwest"? Not exactly. Crime rate isn't high and there are relatively few foreigners compared to the big East Coast metro areas. Also, relatively little poverty. And, maybe like the East Coast, it has a lot of cultural events for a city its size, which isn't necessarily bad.
Believe it or not, there are people still very much alive today who can recall when Ann Arbor had a Republican mayor and a Republican congressman representing the area, and that was not considered particularly strange.
I call Ann Arbor, Berkley east.
My daughter was accepted to Michigan but she opted for another university,now her daughter has been accepted.
Lord knows where she’ll go——she does have choices.
The world has gone mad.
.
Thanks. The day I hear that "All applicants are treated equally 'regardless of race' will be a day I can and will celebrate, I've had to deal with affirmative action hires, and that is one of the worst, dumbest, crappiest, despicable, character killing, policies ever.
The bad thing is that it takes a mountain of paperwork to let a lazy worker go, after they finish the probationary period. I had a white worker who worked his butt off, but got caught hot for marijuana on a drug test. He was gone after the boss heard about it.
Had one Hispanic worker who got caught using the interned to surf porn sites, buy stuff for his wife (all after hours) and I got blamed for not securing the network access.
If that same guy had used his user name and password from home with his computer, he could have done the same thing. I am so glad I am now retired.
< /rant mode off>
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