Students demand action, explanation from administrators

If administrators were wondering what diversity looks like, now they know.

More than 600 students marched from the Nyumburu Cultural Center to the steps of the Main Administration Building this afternoon, calling for the reinstatement of Assistant Provost for Equity and Diversity Cordell Black, a 30-year faculty member and diversity administrator, who was told earlier this week he was being removed from his administrative position by Provost Nariman Farvardin.

"This is what diversity looks like!" chanted students of all colors and class standings, majors and religions, sexual orientations and gender identities as they marched up the steps of the administration building carrying signs and banners, demanding to be heard.

The demonstration came on the coattails of a meeting last night during which students drafted a list of three key demands to present to administrators — Black's reinstatement, the release of all budget and diversity records and documents and a moratorium on all further university layoffs and reorganizations until students, faculty and staff are given a say.

"Without a full examination of all budget documents and records ... we cannot correctly weigh the consequences of particular cuts," the document reads. "We cannot plan for diversity if we don't know where we're starting."

But student demands and grievances didn't end there.

March attendees were given brightly colored pieces of paper to write their feelings on.

"Invest in people, not research," one sign read.

"Without diversity, there can be no equality," read another.

As students marched up the steps of the administration building, shouting "no justice, no peace," to administrators looking through the windows, University Police officers stood in front of the building doors.

"Having the police out here shows their insecurity," Graduate Student Government President Anupama Kothari said. "I'm here for me and for what I believe in. One black or brown face in a sea of white faces — that's not diversity. That's a joke."

Neither Black nor Farvardin attended the rally, but waves of faculty and alumni and a handful of university officials did, including Vice President for Student Affairs Linda Clement, Assistant Vice President for Student Affairs Jim Osteen, Assistant Vice President for Student Affairs Warren Kelley, University Police spokesman Paul Dillon and Stamp Student Union Director Gretchen Metzelaars.

"There's lots of energy here," Kelley said. "We'll see how it all pans out."

Before the march began today, Mark Conway, the president of this university's chapter of the NAACP, and Student Government Association President Steve Glickman met with Farvardin to discuss the three demands. During the rally, Black Student Union President Amber Simmons, student activist Malcolm Harris and Co-President of Community Roots Jazz Lewis were escorted to the meeting in the Administration Building by University Police.

"We [went] in there with the attitude, ‘You need to meet these demands or things are going to escalate,'" Glickman said.

The students' first demand was for the reinstatement of Black to his administrative position on a full-time basis. But the provost told the student leaders that was the one item with which he wouldn't comply.

"[The provost] said it was a personnel issue," Glickman said in an interview after the meeting. "He said he has the autonomy to make his own team."

In an interview yesterday, Farvardin insisted the decision to remove Black from his position was strictly budgetary.

"We have to deal with our $40 million budget drop," Farvardin said. "When you're in these positions, you have to make difficult decisions."

But student leaders who met with Farvardin this afternoon said the provost told them if Black chose to stay on as a tenured French literature professor, the university would not save any money.

"What else that isn't a budgetary issue is being pitched as a budgetary issue?" asked Harris, who helped organize the march and also writes a column for The Diamondback.

The rally, which lasted for about two hours, attracted passersby sympathetic to the cause.

"The diversity of this campus is part of the reason I came here," said sophomore biochemistry major Russell Valle.

Valle said he had no idea the rally was happening until he came upon it. After standing for a minute, considering the scene and listening to hundreds of voices cry, "Whose school? Our school," he smiled.

"This is the reason I came here."

A follow-up meeting will be held on Tuesday at 7 p.m. in Nyumburu, student leaders said, to figure out the next step for student leaders and campus activists.

mlang at umdbk dot com