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.
Shoulda drop-kicked her ass out of the house the moment she opened her mouth to let loose that garbage.
Books............they need to see a book............and be shown how to read it.................
Aren’t there speech restrictions on campus that would stifle/censer/preclude such speech?
Saw this story on the news last night because they had to do their obligatory MLK day story. There were only 5 kids in the room doing this (only 5) (did I mention it was only 5). The camera kept going to each one separately to make it look like there was a huge crowd. It was truly embarrassing.
if they are qualified and gain entrance on the merits of their academic performance, no problem. otherwise. NO!
Sounds like you’re the problem - it’s following you around... :)
Ann Arbor is a bizarre town anyway.
They create a lot of their own problems because they advertize their weakness by bragging about their diversity and tolerance. It attracts the predator class like a bunny with a broken leg attracts coyotes.
We demand that the university give us an equal opportunity to implement change, the change that complete restoration of the BSU purchasing power through an increased budget would obtain.
Mac - Translation. Wah. Gimme money.
We demand available housing on central campus for those of lower socio-economic status at a rate that students can afford, to be a part of university life, and not just on the periphery.
Good luck with that. I live just outside the city. I couldn't afford Ann Arbor housing even if I wanted to live in the city. Ann Arbor's expensive thanks to the trust fund babies.
We demand an opportunity to congregate and share our experiences in a new Trotter [Multicultural Center] located on central campus.
What's stopping that now?
We demand an opportunity to be educated and to educate about America’s historical treatment and marginalization of colored groups through race and ethnicity requirements throughout all schools and colleges within the university.
More like indoctrination.
We demand the equal opportunity to succeed with emergency scholarships for black students in need of financial support, without the mental anxiety of not being able to focus on and afford the university's academic life.
And po white trash get left off as usual.
We demand increased exposure of all documents within the Bentley (Historical) Library. There should be transparency about the university and its past dealings with race relations.
What's stopping you from exposing documents in a library?
We demand an increase in black representation on this campus equal to 10 percent.
We voted affirmative action down with MCRI, so no deals.
#8 Change our diapers
Holder, himself, made his early political bones in just this way. I wouldn't be surprised if this is a put-up job by Holder's Just-Us Civil Rights Division.
The reason I’ll never be chosen to run a university is my response to a threat like this would be to hire a few hundred armed guards and pay for it out of affirmative action scholarship funds.
This is how they turned Detroit into a ghost town,.
Mogadishu of Michigan
I recently saw a documentary on Pivot channel about how Detroit became a living zombie town, it started with black riots in 1960s that promoted white flight and businesses with them.
Then the remaining zombies (on welfare mostly) kept electing the most corrupt officials to further fleece the treasury, making sure there were few working government services.
I guess this shows that Democracy doesn’t cure all ills, contrary to what libs claim.
“the requirement of classes teaching all students about the historical treatment of minorities,”
I imagine that will be teaching about indentured servants(basically slaves who were not black) and Irish and other “minorities” who were shunned and couldn’t get jobs?
Riot! Rampage! Mayhem!
Burn down the school you’re not learning anything marketable anyway!
It cracks me up watching the idiots in Ann Arbor argue over the homeless.
When it was super cold a week or so back, they were turning people away from their homeless center because there were too many homeless for it to work according to their plan. They were horrified that some suggested letting the excess in to sleep on the floor. They don’t want their shelter to look like a flophouse. LOL
Meanwhile the interfaith shelter over here in “Jacksatucky” routinely fills every available inch of floor space with sleeping homeless. The homeless are happy to have that floorspace because it beats the hell out of freezing to death in an alley. Ann Arbor is more concerned about their fragile self image.
Thanks for the ping; post. Tyranny of the minority scum bubbling up in the socialist cesspool. Are they majoring in physics or community agitating?
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