Labor for Black Lives
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Statement on BC not joining Harvard & MIT lawsuit vs. ICE
YDS of BC officially condemns BC for its total lack of leadership and its inaction in response to the guidelines proposed by ICE targeting international students. One hundred and eighty universities from across the country filed an amicus brief in support of Harvard and MIT’s lawsuit against ICE. Boston College was not part of this group.There is no excuse for this abdication. Read the statement from the Presidents’ Alliance on Higher Education and Immigration here.
The UAW, the union that includes the Boston College graduate worker’s along with grad workers from Harvard, Northeastern, and Boston University, is filing an amicus brief in the case. The UAW previously filed an amicus brief in the case against Trump’s travel ban in 2018. On Monday graduate students from across Boston hosted a rally at the Massachusetts State House in opposition to ICE’s potential ban on international students. Why are graduate students doing more to fight for international students at BC than the actual university is?
BC claims to be a leading Catholic Jesuit university, but fails at almost every turn to take a moral stand when faced with the opportunity. From refusing to divest from fossil fuels, it’s association with weapons manufacturers, employing a police Chief who collaborated with ICE. continued discrimination against LGBTQ+ students, and it’s failure to confron racsim and hate crims on campus, BC fails to live up to its own claim of adhering to some set of moral values.
On BC’s website, on the page of the Office of International Students and Scholars, the school states that others have filed lawsuits and thus hopefully ICE’s proposed guidelines will not go into effect. This is completely outrageous. To say in the face of great injustice that others are doing something so hopefully it will be taken care of is morally indefensible and unacceptable.
We reiterate the call made by the BC Asian Caucus for BC to file an amicus brief in opposition to ICE’s guidelines. The fact that so many universities have done so and we are left demanding once again that BC take action in the face of a moral outrage is sadly not surprising, but it is nonetheless disheartening and unacceptable.
Rev. Andrew Wilkes calls for a Moral Coalition to Create Lasting Structural Change
A People of Color’s History of DSA, Part 4: DSA Looks Inward
July 07, 2020 03:44
By David Roddy and Alyssa De La Rosa
A People of Color’s History of DSA, Part 1
A People of Color’s History of DSA, Part 2
A People of Color’s History of DSA, Part 3
4: DSA Looks Inward
On Sunday, January 20, 1985, President Ronald Reagan was sworn in to a second term. DSA’s aspirations for a Mondale presidency–which DSA Labor Commission vice-chair Timothy Sears described as an opportunity to tell the truth about “[Reagan’s] phony ‘recovery’ with its staggering interest rates and declining standards of living, about the insane arms race, about the brutal budget cuts and the dirty little war in Central America–were now irrelevant.
With the departure of Manning Marable from formal organizing within DSA in 1984, Cornel West took the mantle as the organization’s leading Black scholarly voice. West described DSA as, “The first multi-racial socialist organization close enough to my kind of politics that I could join.” Like other people of color that comprised DSA’s National Minorities Committee, West was critical of DSA’s decision not to back Jesse Jackson’s primary campaign, noting at the time, “Jesse Jackson’s bid for the Democratic nomination constituted the most important challenge to the American left since the emergence of the civil rights movement in the fifties and the feminist movement in the seventies. Unfortunately, the American left, for the most part, missed this grand opportunity.”
Following the defeat of Mondale, the Democratic Left devoted an entire issue to the question of building multi-racial coalitions, featuring leading Black members of DSA. In this issue, DSA leader and Jackson campaigner Gerald Hudson noted, “In the summer of 1983, few on the black left doubted either the necessity or the possibility of creating a multiracial coalition. We had always been convinced that black unity was necessary to achieve ‘liberation,’ but we no longer believed it to be enough. Racism could not be eradicated from American society, nor the abject poverty of a third or more of Afro-Americans eliminated, without the creation of a broad-based movement for social change. We had good reason to be hopeful. In Chicago, in Boston, around the candidacy of Jesse Jackson for the presidential nomination of the Democratic party, movements embodying these convictions had emerged onto the bleak landscape of American politics. By mid-1984, though few of us doubted the necessity of such a coalition, many of us had come to doubt its possibility.”
Hudson observed that “This subject has led to debates within DSA,” continuing that “Many black leftists were dismayed with and puzzled by the failure of important segments of the white left to support either Mel King’s mayoral campaign in Boston or Jesse Jackson’s presidential campaign. After all, the movements that grew around the candidacies of these men sought the empowerment of blacks through programs and demands that were of general benefit. Moreover, they made explicit overtures to the progressive white community. When that community did not respond, many of us were baffled and disappointed.”
Hudson locates “class first” politics as the source of the white progressive community reluctance to embrace the Rainbow Coalition, stating“ many democratic socialists came to believe that it was possible to discern a saving unity in a progressive economic program. The enormous appeal of this idea should not be underestimated. Did not the various oppressions out of which these movements arose have an economic aspect? Though racism or sexism was not reducible to their economic aspects, that they had such an aspect meant that their victims would benefit from an economically based progressive program.”
However, Hudson also observed, “Racism and sexism, insofar as they cannot be economically defined, go unopposed. When movements develop that do oppose these problems, they go unsupported by supporters of economically based coalition politics. Moreover, although white leftists may agree, for example, with the need for a full-scale effort against racism, in practice they often perceive the need for a coalition that includes constituencies that will not accept an anti-racist campaign (e.g., in Boston many leftists saw the need to mobilize racist white ethnics and called race a divisive issue in the 1983 mayoral race). Unfortunately, we have not been willing to step back and assess the failures of economically based coalitions and examine the complex issues involved in the building of such coalitions. ”
The Black Left and the Democratic Party
For West, the question of the rightward shift of the Democrats under Mondale, “the efforts for black unity and the political articulation of people of color in this country is now sophisticated enough to link its concerns with the downtrodden white working poor and the morally sensitive white middle class–as evidenced in the Jackson campaign. Soon the domestic front political pressure is brought to bear on the Democratic party to either embrace or exclude progressive forces. If it chooses the former, leftist possibilities loom large within the two-party system; if it chooses the latter, the only alternative becomes that of wholesale assault on the two-party system with the creation of a third political party.”
Still, some Jewish members of DSA remained skeptical of Jackson’s ability to attract Jewish voters. Paulette Pierce, at the time a member of the National Executive Committee of DSA’s Feminist Commission, wrote forcefully against this mindset: “Jewish progressives charge anti-Semitism, and black progressives suspect that a not too subtle racism may be at play. Without an open and perhaps heated exchange about this issue, the left will find it impossible to organize successfully within the black community, and black leftists already in progressive organizations like DSA will find it increasingly difficult to function… We are accused of engaging in racially polarizing politics and told to grow up and content ourselves with an integrationist strategy.” Pierce argued that “it is implicitly racist to assume that a coalition strategy which puts racial issues at the core of its politics cannot succeed. At best, such a position assumes that racism is presently so entrenched in our society that multi-racial alliances based on equality are currently impossible.”
Pierce also highlighted the chilling effect DSA’s endorsement of Mondale had on its small Black membership: “What is deeply troubling to many blacks including this writer is why so many of the constituencies targeted by the Rainbow Coalition stayed away and chose to support the neoliberal domestic and cold-war foreign policies of Walter Mondale…What is left unstated but may be the most important reason why white progressives stayed away is their fear that a coalition which puts antiracism at the center of its politics will alienate white labor, the constituency which many on the left still believe is essential to a successful progressive alliance…Obviously, Jackson was not the perfect candidate, but why must the black candidate be perfect? In anticipation of those who will ask, ‘Must we then accept the worst?’, Jesse was not the worst, Mondale was.”
Once again, those in the organization that were sympathetic to a sort of progressive Zionism took exception. Jeffry Mallow, who first criticized Marable for his endorsement of Jackson, responded to Pierce: “ The January-February issue of DEMOCRATIC LEFT was more than a little troubling for a Jewish socialist to read…we have Paulette Pierce’s apologia for Jesse Jackson’s antisemitism, wherein she…portrays the “hymie” remark as a one-time gaffe, rather than one of many antisemitic slurs which Jackson has uttered over the last decade” and “implies that Jews and other whites are racist because they refused to vote for a black anti-semite. Frankly, what attracts Jews to the democratic left is that they do not have to ignore their identity, divorce their people, and support everybody’s self-determination but their own. Let’s hope that, at least in DSA, it stays that way.”
The National Minority Commission and the 1985 Convention
The result of these divisions was the whitening of an already white-dominated organization. A report back from the 1985 convention noted that “Low participation of Black and Latino delegates, however, was a cause for concern. While every major convention plenary afforded minority representation from the podium, there were still fewer Blacks, Latinos, and Asian members at Berkeley than at the New York convention in 1983.”
The Commissions, meanwhile, organized to change Harrington’s proposed economic policy draft for the 1985 convention arguing ”Any left should examine the economy from the point of view of the working class-this draft does not. Any accurate view of the US working class would have to notice that our society is stratified by race…It is the responsibility of a socialist organization to offer an analysis that includes within its perspective the economic realities of the entire people.” This language was accepted and the convention had a special plenary on race and the left where “Cornel West advocated an anti-racist, anti-imperialist strategy for the organization….Speaker Bev Stein described Portland’s role in building the Oregon Rainbow Coalition. Mel Pritchard of San Francisco spoke of the complex issues faced by DSA’s minority members. Jim Jacobs called for focused organizing to counter racism in white communities, and Dolores Delgado Campbell outlined Latino issues and concerns.”
Mel Pritchard, who came out of the New American Movement, was elected Organization Secretary for the National and Racial Minorities Committee at the 1985 Convention. He spoke to us about his frustration with DSA at that time, arguing that at the time of the merger DSOC “weren’t going to do any conscious anti-racism work. That was essential to their strategy in organizing…That’s not gonna work. I was hoping the merger might create more of a case to do anti-racism organizing.” However, he found the economism advocated by the former acolytes of Max Schactman previously in DSOC left little hope that the anti-racist work carried about in NAM by the likes of himself and Manning Marable could viably continue within DSA. Within a year he left “because the Shachtmanites who institutionally controlled DSOC controlled DSA”
Dolores Delgado Campbell, another speaker on that panel and co-chair of the Latino Commission at the time, related to us about the difficulties in retaining members of color in the organization: “We had people who were drawn by what we said we represented but it wasn’t enough for them. They were drawn by people like Manning Marable and Harrington recruited people like Dolores Huerto and Eleicaio Medina, who were major leaders in the UFW. ”
Nonetheless, Our Struggle/Nuestra Lucha–the Commissions newsletter–noted that “by majority votes the delegates supported our positions of the draft economic plans and Central American [solidarity] work,” indicating that the organization was broadly sympathetic to the work of the Commissions.
That year, the Latino and Anti Racism Commissions developed a series of local leadership “Facing Racism” talks, designed to highlight that “the authentic popular struggles of people of color are constituent parts of the left we seek to create.” Beverly Stein, the Co-Chair of Portland DSA, noted in Our Struggle/Nuestra Lucha that “the events were very successful, attracting new face to DSA and giving us an opportunity to educate, primarily the white left, about racism.”
Lookings Toward a future Rainbow Coalition
By the spring of 1986, DSA began warming relations with the Rainbow Coalition, with both Michael Harrington and Jesse Jackson addressing the opening session of a conference titled New Directions, which brought together the various strands of labor and social movements together to organize for a leftward shift within the Democratic Party.
Writing in the November/December 1986 edition of the Democratic Left, DSA Afro-American Commission chair Shakoor Aljuwani argued for DSA to take an active role in a potential Jackson 1988 campaign; “The Rainbow Coalition showed that it is possible to build a broad and powerful constituency of the “locked-outs and drop-outs,” the poor, and working people - groups that in other countries form the base of parties of the left. It was the major progressive voice to counter the onslaught of conservatism. It brought dynamism to the otherwise lifeless efforts of the Democratic party against the Reagan offensive.”
Aljuwani spoke to the need for the organization to embrace the consciously multi-racial strategy of the Rainbow Coalition, writing that “In the moral vision and political program of Jesse Jackson and the Rainbow Coalition there exists a deliberate attempt to embrace the interests and needs of Afro-Americans, the elderly, women, Hispanics, indigenous peoples, small farmers, Jews, Arabs, displaced industrial workers, trade unionists, gays, peace activists. The major problem has been convincing the three major liberal constituencies – labor, feminists, and Jews – of the seriousness of that vision and rhetoric. It is here that DSA can play a major and possibly even a key role. Some in DSA have raised the question of whether the Rainbow Coalition will be a tool only for ethnic political interests or become a broadly based multi-issue grassroots movement. Our response to the Rainbow can help shape the answer.”
Manning Marable, divorced from DSA following the 1984 Presidential election, noted the profound need for a progressive program to address rising rates of Black impoverishment: “In New York City, between 1980 and 1992, 87,000 private-sector jobs were lost. During the same time period, the number of African-Americans living below the poverty level increased from 520,000 to 664,000 people. The average black family in New York City now earns $24,000 annually, compared to over $40,000 a year for whites.”
Cornel West and the Development of DSA’s Anti-Racist Politics
In 1985, Cornel West–Chair of the Afro-American Commission preceding Aljuwani–developed a pamphlet for DSA’s strategic position on racism titled “Towards a Socialist Theory of Racism.” West laid out the following questions addressing DSA’s orientation to race: “What is the relationship between the struggle against racism and socialist theory and practice in the United States? Why should people of color active in antiracist movements take democratic socialism seriously? And how can American socialists today learn from inadequate attempts by socialists in the past to understand the complexity of racism?”
West criticized socialist movements that placed “racism under the general rubric of working-class exploitation…At the turn of the century, this position was put forward by many leading figures in the Socialist party, particularly Eugene Debs. Debs believed that white racism against peoples of color was solely a “divide-and-conquer strategy” of the ruling class and that any attention to its operations “apart from the general labor problem” would constitute racism in reverse.” West criticized this position as an “analysis that confines itself to oppression in the workplace overlooks racism’s operation in other spheres of life.”
He also criticized a conception of racism that “acknowledges the specific operation of racism within the workplace… but remains silent about these operations outside the workplace. This viewpoint holds that peoples of color are subjected both to general working-class exploitation and to a specific “super-exploitation” resulting from less access to jobs and lower wages. On the practical plane, this perspective accented a more intense struggle against racism than did Debs’ viewpoint, and yet it still limited this struggle to the workplace.”
West presented an alternative theory of racism for DSA, arguing the “racist practices result not only from general and specific working-class exploitation but also from xenophobic attitudes that are not strictly reducible to class exploitation. From this perspective, racist attitudes have a life and logic of their own, dependent upon psychological factors and cultural practices…To put it somewhat crudely, the capitalist mode of production constitutes just one of the significant structural constraints determining what forms racism takes in a particular historical period. Other key structural constraints include the state, bureaucratic modes of control, and the cultural practices of ordinary people. The specific forms that racism takes depend on choices people make within these structural constraints.”
West placed the “whitening” of DSA between its first and second National convention in the context of a historical “black suspicion of white-dominated political movements (no matter how progressive)” due to “the distance between these movements and the daily experiences of peoples of color…”
He elaborated that this disparity was amplified by “the disproportionate white middle-class composition of contemporary democratic socialist organizations creates cultural barriers to the participation by peoples of color,” and pointed out the paradox that “this very participation is a vital precondition for greater white sensitivity to antiracist struggle and to white acknowledgment of just how crucial antiracist struggle is to the U. S. socialist movement. Progressive organizations often find themselves going around in a vicious circle. Even when they have a great interest in antiracist struggle, they are unable to attract a critical mass of people of color because of their current predominately white racial and cultural composition. These organizations are then stereotyped as lily-white, and significant numbers of people of color refuse to join.”
West thought that “the only effective way the contemporary democratic socialist movement can break out of this circle (and it is possible because the bulk of democratic socialists are among the least racist of Americans) is to be sensitized to the critical importance of antiracist struggles. This “conscientization” cannot take place either by reinforcing agonized white consciences by means of guilt, nor by presenting another grand theoretical analysis with no practical implications.” He further argued that “a major focus on antiracist coalition work will not only lead democratic socialists to act upon their belief in genuine individuality and radical democracy for people around the world; it also will put socialists in daily contact with peoples of color in common struggle. Bonds of trust can be created only within concrete contexts of struggle. This interracial interaction guarantees neither love nor friendship. Yet it can yield more understanding and the realization of two overlapping goals: democratic socialism and antiracism.”
West’s piece became the primary anti-racist text of DSA, and whether followed or not, would serve as the road map to steer the organization forward.
Socialism Will Win
You’re listening to Revolution Per Minute on listener sponsored WBAI in NYC broadcasting at 99.5 FM and streaming on your favorite podcast app. To connect with us after the show you can email us at revolutionsnyc@gmail.com. You can find us on our website revolutionsperminute.simplecast.com or on twitter @nycRPM
Defunding the Liberal Police
Last week, Burlington acting Chief of Police, Jon Murad, was allowed to address a 1,000-person Black Lives Matter rally in Burlington. Faced with pressure from hundreds of residents at public hearings demanding the City defund the police and remove 30% of cops from the street, Murad gave a skillful, liberal defense of expansive policing and the large budgets this requires. The affect of this was not exactly clear (he wasn’t booed off the stage), but the message did conflict with popular chants to abolish the police later on the march.
VTDigger published an instructive profile on Murad. You can read that here. It is an expose on how the Chief of Police, and policing itself, are tied in multiple ways in net of business, racism, and militarism.
As Alex Vitale demonstrates in The End of Policing, police are an armed apparatus of an economy based on profit and class division, needed to oppress, exploit, and subjugate, especially people of color. Modern policing grew from several strands of ruling class violence: colonial occupations, strike breaking, suppressing working class protest, and slave patrols. Capitalism requires this in order to protect huge class inequality and sustain the flow of profits. Policing is centrally about racism, militarism, and defending the power of capital over our labor, our lives, and our planet.
In Murad’s biography, many of the institutional connections underpinning modern policing are clear: he completed 2 degrees at a ruling class university (Harvard), worked as a security consultant for banks and other large corporations, identifies with the military and U.S. imperialism, demonstrates a long-term commitment to policing propaganda, and had a quickly advancing career with the NYPD under the infamous police commissioner William Bratton.
Bratton is the best known advocate of broken windows policing, an invasive and racialized form of social control that urban police departments around the world have adopted, several under Bratton’s personal direction. Bratton, a Democratic, also emphasizes the importance of public relations, spinning the most egregious practices and results from broken windows and stop-and-frisk risk to insulate the legitimacy of policing from justified criticism and attempts to defund.
Bratton was also a mentor of Burlington’s former Police Chief Brandon del Pozo. Del Pozo was forced out after a presiding over police killings and violent attacks on Black residents, plus police harassment of civil rights activists. During his tenure del Pozo claimed an unlimited appetite for more cops to do social good, embracing the liberal hope that police can be a progressive social force. This also goes along with racially diversifying policing, which both Murad and Bratton promote, but which research show has little to no effect on out-of-control police violence and killing.
As Vitale documents, the invasive “community” policing Murad did in New York housing projects is exactly what the anti-racist movement for police defunding, against mass incarceration, and for abolition points to as the problem.
The multiracial rebellion for Black lives and the thousands in Burlington who have rallied and testified and protested have successfully put defunding police and firing violent and abusive cops on the public agenda for next year's budget. But on the other hand, it's also the case that policing has support from the sectors of real estate, retail, banking and finance, military industrial complex, Democratic Party, Republican Party, major media and the highly motivated police and military associations.
Unfortunately, some groups that should be on our side are not. While several unions and union federations have sided with the movement for Black lives, the Vermont State Employees Association (VSEA) executive director, Steve Howard, has sided with policing and retaining cops in unions. Pro-police union bureaucrats, along with the economic and political rulers, all hope, not without some basis, to ride out the moment with delay, redirection, scare tactics, and cosmetic reforms. They will not willingly work to undermine the policing that helps maintain the existing system of racial injustice and class inequality.
A key question is how can we continue to escalate and strategically expand the brilliant and inspiring protest movement that has got us this far. The current level of protest and lobbying pressure on the Mayor and City Council has forced some recognition of the problem. But it may not be enough given the powerful forces arrayed against police defunding.
KRJ on Defunding the Police, Christian/Buddhist spirituality, and her NYC City Council Campaign
Authoritarian "Democracy" and the New York Democratic Primary
Support for Urooj Rahman: https://fundrazr.com/71fsC0?ref=sh_09Ftc6_ab_5z27OP7I9s75z27OP7I9s7
https://www.cunyclear.org/ Twitter: @CUNY_CLEAR
DSAForTheMany is @nycDSA's Multi-Candidate slate for state offices. The endorsed candidates are Jabari Brisport, Julia Salazar, Marcela Mitaynes, Phara Souffrant Forrest, & Zohran Mamdani.
For federal races NYC DSA has endorsed Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Samelys Lopez while Lower Hudson Valley DSA has endorsed Jamaal Bowman.
Polls stay open until 9pm. If you haven’t voted yet and feel safe heading to the polls, make sure your vote is counted. If you’re having issues at the polls or questions about voting please call 866-700-5927.
Statement on Layleen Polanco and BC Board Member Darcel Clark
Darcel Clark should not be on the BC Board of Trustees. Her record as Bronx District Attorney is incredibly disturbing, from the egregious conduct of her office withholding exculpatory evidence while attempting to prosecute people like Pedro Hernandez, Otis Smith, and Walliris Velez to her role in the Kalief Browder case. Her recent decision not to press charges against anyone in connection with the death of Layleen Polanco reaffirms our position. Layleen Polanco was an Afro-Latina transgender woman who died in Rikers due to complications related to epilepsy in June of 2019. On June 5th of this year Clark announced she would not be pressing any charges against guards or staff at the prison. In her original release Clark included Layleen’s deadname. Just one week later NBC released surveillance video showing staff at the prison failing to attend to Polanco for an hour and a half, despite knocking on her door and seeing that she was unresponsive. Polanco was in solitary confinement despite the prison and prison doctors being aware of her epilepsy. When guards finally entered the cell they could be seen laughing. Polanco was in prison because she could not pay her $500 bail. Her case is sadly another example of the criminalization of transgender women and vulnerable communities through over policing and criminalization of poverty. The failure to care for Polanco while she was imprisoned and Clark’s decision not to press charges exemplify the disregard the criminal justice system has for transgender lives. YDS of BC once again calls for Clark to be removed from the BC board of trustees.
Sign the petition to remove Clark from the BC Board of Trustees here.
Of Pandemics and Academics: How the University of Michigan Robbed 30,000 Students
By Trenten Ingell and Joshua Sodicoff
You — and thirty thousand of your peers — are getting shafted by the University of Michigan, the leaders and best… go blue! Our fair-enough university boasted on the flyers you read as a prospective student, the banners that line campus, and many other methods of communication we receive about its immense power. It holds an endowment equivalent to the yearly expenditures of the government of Jordan, the largest stadium in the United States, and many of the top academic departments in the world. If it’s so great, and surely any representative of the University would agree, then why have they failed in supporting students beyond their most basic responsibility during the COVID-19 crisis? From the few weeks preceding spring break through now, the University has dealt with the needs of undergraduates strictly on the basis of necessity and not of humanity. In the process, they’ve failed to account for the nuances of these issues and have created new, unforeseen problems. From the very beginning of this crisis, these systemic failures have stood out to us. That is why we’re trying to organize students and other stakeholders in our community to speak out against our administration and the lack of accountability that’s led us to our current situation.
We want to acknowledge that we understand and accept that many of the actions that the University has taken during the current pandemic were necessary from a public health perspective. Do we miss our friends, having places to be, and Ann Arbor? Of course. But we’re realistic, and we know that an open campus during a global pandemic would only lead to disaster. That being said, at almost every point the University made one of these critical COVID-19 decisions, they botched it. Because of their inability to act, they have cost students their time, money, mental health, and for some, their ability to return home.
Do you remember how the University chose to cancel classes three days after the end of spring break? Other universities, also on break, gave students fair warning so that they didn’t have to engage in unnecessary, costly and potentially hazardous travel. But ours cancelled after we came back from break, some of us traveling across or even out of the country. It was only predictable that some of us would return to Ann Arbor with COVID-19. In addition to their delay in cancelling classes, the University gave no other information on how operations would proceed. Students were left in the dark about important decisions and left to react to them day-by-day. Surely, managing a crisis is difficult. But how did administrators not give credence to the impact of leaving a student body the size of a city in the dark? In travel costs alone, the University cost its student body hundreds of thousands dollars. This number is especially large when you consider that a strong majority of University of Michigan students are in-state.
Far more grievous was university housing’s actions to reduce the population density of on-campus living. What started with a series of emails pleading for students to move escalated to a notice that all students without a sufficient reason for staying on-campus would have to leave as early as March 17th. This was just three days before Governor Whitmer signed a statewide moratorium on evictions. The language in this email suggested students would lose keycard access the following morning if action was not taken. Only after the deadline set out in the email was any clarification given on the policy. Clarification that did nothing to mitigate fears that the University continued to hold the power to forcibly remove students from their rooms. The power structure in tenantship at the University implied that resistance was futile, and so the University conducted mass evictions.
Meanwhile, while universities across the country announced housing refund policies as part of a coherent COVID-19 response plan, the University remained silent on this issue until March 20th. Administration wondered why students remained in their prepaid housing when no guarantee of compensation for leaving was made. Housing’s decision to offer a measly $1,200 refund for half a semester of rent, utilities, and dining was a slap in the face to students who pay astronomical costs for these services. Room and board is, on average, $12,000 a year. We were told to leave campus right after spring break, halfway through the semester, equating to three thousand dollars in lost costs. Meanwhile, $1,200 is what we would have received if we were eligible for federal relief checks (another topic we could wax poetic on). Americans agree that this check wasn’t enough to make up for lost wages, and for University students who did not budget for the costs associated with providing for themselves, it goes much less far. Furthermore, upon cursory research, we found that the University’s disruption of services clause in the Community Living at Michigan document calls for a proportional refund in the event that Housing is unable to fulfill its obligations, like providing food or rent. In every sense, residents of university housing were shortchanged, and the continued lack of proportional reimbursement remains a gross violation of the University’s own policy.
The University’s best claim to an adequate response — its rapid transition to online coursework — also failed large swaths of students. Yes, some professors developed a strategy for continuing to provide coursework. Between us, we had great-to-fair experiences with the transition online but this is not the overwhelming response. Some courses that could have moved lectures and discussions online with enough thought simply reduced their requirements to short weekly assignments. Labs and other hands-on courses lost most, if not all, of their value. There was never any sign that departments were monitoring the continuity of coursework. When professors knew no one was watching, many chose to do the bare minimum. But still, with access to our course evaluations and Canvas pages, the University will pretend it did enough because we have the credits from this semester on our transcript. We know that this accomplishment is incomparable to the same of any other semester. When we come back, students will pay for the gap between expectations of their online learning experience and the reality of severely diminished outcomes from the change in environment and learning style. Whether this includes students being unprepared for further coursework from less attentive prerequisites or students abandoning tracts of coursework entirely from a department’s response to online classes, we will figure out soon enough
Of course, as we navigate through the pandemic, we will share our personal journey to fight against the University. From the very beginning of the crisis, when the University refused to publicly announce if a proportional refund would be offered as it pressured students to leave university housing, the both of us thought it was important to rally student voices against the failures of the administration. We started with a petition to request the University follow the stated policy of prorating services not rendered with respect to housing and dining — a fight that has since evolved into collaboration on research and representation for a class action lawsuit against the University. During this endeavor, we learned more about the scale and variety of problems that our peers were facing, from unresponsiveness of departments beyond housing to dissatisfaction with online coursework. We felt uncomfortable stopping our efforts at an issue that was close to us as former university housing residents when we saw that all of our peers were, in some way or another, receiving unjust treatment.
In the process of developing our requested response, we attempted to reach out to diverse voices in our community. The first step of this was the creation, and subsequent distribution, of a Google Form with questions about student priorities. It also provided space to describe what elements of crisis response students found most important. We saw that students overwhelmingly supported a proportional refund for aspects of the winter term, a reduction in tuition for the spring, summer, and fall terms, and greater transparency in decision-making. With data and additional suggestions from this form, we reached out to a GroupMe we had made for students interested in supporting a fuller response from the University for help in writing a document detailing our rationale and our finalized list of demands. We also reached out to the Graduate Employees’ Organization (GEO), a union representing graduate student instructors and student staff assistants at the University. Recently, GEO successfully negotiated a new contract despite the pandemic. We sought their input on issues of strategy and for feedback on our draft demands. Ultimately, we settled on the following:
- A 50% discount for tuition and fees for the Spring, Spring/Summer, and Summer 2020 terms, a 25% tuition discount for the Fall 2020 terms, with an additional 25% discount in the event that classes continue in an online format.
- A pro-rata refund, retroactively effective March 12th for room and board, tuition, and fees for the Winter 2020 term.
- Subsidies for rent payments for students living off campus, and university assistance in terminating leases in the event that classes continue in an online format in the Fall.
- Additional academic resources, including additional tutoring and make-ups for lab courses, meant to compensate for the decrease in quality of the second half of the Winter 2020 term.
- A 50% reduction in expenditures toward executive officers and service units as well as a half reduction in utility costs passed on to students as a means of partially offsetting these demands.
Instead of helping students negotiate with landlords, the University ardently pressured students to leave. Instead of providing further financial assistance to its students during a turbulent economic period, the University and its administration ranted about its own supposed financial struggles in an attempt to explain why it was unable to address even the most basic of student concerns. The dust has settled now, and we want to address the glaring flaws in the University of Michigan’s response to COVID-19 through these demands.
The primary criticism of these demands has been the associated numbers. Originally, we tried to conduct research into university financials to develop a full picture of where tuition goes and what costs might be lower under the current circumstances. We quickly found a bit of opacity with cash flows beyond the department level, making it difficult to back up any decisions we made. Instead, we decided to err on the side of requesting more than we expected to receive. In the event that we negotiate with the University, compromise is to be expected. So why start with a weak position?
Our current issues revolve now around tackling the repressive set of policies and bureaucracy that the current university administration has established. The existing structure of our university does not allow the students to have any voice in discretionary spending or crisis-related decisions, and because of that the University has been unable to understand or react to student needs as they come. If the University wants to exert its institutional authority over us as students, so be it. But this should at least be done with some effort to buttress the social safety net of the student body at large. They have these investments and liquid assets to use. They are, as an institution of learning, tasked with promoting a quality education and charming college atmosphere which we have all likely come to appreciate in our academic careers. Not only has the University failed to provide the basic service of a safe and secure environment for its students, it has robbed many of those students the financial safety net that has yet to be provided by any state or federal institution.
We have to be clear about what the consequences of a poor long-term response from the University may be. Already, the University is counting on a net outflow of students due to an unwillingness to pay full price for an inferior semester. In response, they admitted 500 more freshmen than originally intended. Students will transfer out, take gap years, or in some cases end their college careers entirely. As the economic outcome of the pandemic becomes more clear, we think that a higher proportion of students than originally accounted for will take one of these paths. Students already taking off and unable to pay tuition are unlikely to return. For the University, this will mean lower revenue far beyond just the Fall semester. Some students will likely attempt to bridge this difference with loans, a risky choice to make in the midst of a growing national college debt crisis and in one of the worst economies of the last hundred years. For many, this choice will surmount to indentured servitude to lenders for years. Because students will return, whenever that may be, with a shallow understanding of content they were supposed to have learned this semester, they are more likely to perform below standards that have yet to be addressed by anyone at the University. This is a perfect storm of negative factors, leading to a student body depressed in all senses of the word at the most crucial time in their development. We will have the burden of a crisis completely outside of our control on our backs for the rest of our lives. From an organizational standpoint, this is also very bad for a university that prides itself on its alumni network and extensively solicits donations from its graduates. If it means anything to you, reader, we promise to complain about the response to anyone who asks about our thoughts on the University after we graduate…
We have been led to believe as students that the University has an abundance of resources available to students on and off campus. The list goes on of the great facilities, departments, and amenities of living. It leaves a bitter and unsavory taste in our mouths as we are told by this same university that it is now unable to provide the necessary financial support to its students through this crisis, and that it has somehow lost all ability to forgive tuition and housing payments, or spare even a single cent on lowering tuition for the upcoming term. They have led us to believe that the University will hemorrhage from the effects of COVID-19 and they will need to make cuts in how much they are able to provide to students during this time. This is one of the greatest fabrications the University has engineered. We understand that it is not as simple as breaking open the piggy bank of a multibillion dollar endowment; it is a reallocation of assets and a change in policy that accommodates the circumstances of the current pandemic. What would you estimate the University’s current assets sum to, in total? I guarantee you, you will underestimate the bloated behemoth that is the account book of any institution of higher education. As we begin to imagine this staggering amount of accumulated assets, we must consider what is necessary for an institution of learning to guarantee for its students.
The choices administrators have made so far have had severe material consequences for their students. And the inaction of our University has set a precedent for institutions of learning to pass on their financial liabilities to their student body. As we aim to unionize and negotiate a fair deal for students, we ask you, the reader, to consider for yourself the consequences of a silent and apathetic student body during this crisis.
We have reached out to dozens of orgs other than YDSA at the University of Michigan, our sole organizational sponsor, and we have yet to receive a single response. We assume that org leadership naturally doesn’t want to invoke the wrath of the University on their funding and relationships to the wider community. But because we now have a system where students are being seriously harmed, we must act. If we as a student body do not voice our dissent of the current university policy, we will be robbed once again and will have no one but ourselves to blame. Ignoring this opportunity to engage with the system endangers both your own and your fellow classmates’ financial security. You have nothing but the time and ability to spread this discourse of a fair deal for students, but we perhaps naively have expected this out of the student body, the supposed leaders and best that Michigan has to offer.
We implore you to consider once again what your interests are as a student. As someone who is currently paying for housing and tuition, ask yourself some questions. Do I think the Board of Regents has my best interest at heart? How can I expect a fair deal from the University’s administration who continue to act in the self-interest of the University’s capital interests, and have been nothing but antagonistic to the housing and academic needs of its students? If I can’t expect any form of refund or financial aid during this time, what is it that I can do to help myself and my fellow Wolverines?
Well, we are here to answer that last question! As representatives of Students for a Fair and Transparent COVID-19 Response, we are here to demand the University answers the needs of its students before the Board of Regents make budgetary decisions for this upcoming Fall term. It is imperative that we are proactive during this crisis, and that we can unify as a student body to pressure the University to listen. We have many avenues through which we intend to organize, such as tuition strikes, threats of mass-disenrollment, and media outreach. Feel free to ask us questions or give us feedback at either of our emails, ingellt@umich.edu and sodicoff@umich.edu. If you have a problem that you have faced because of the University’s response to COVID-19, we want to know and we want to help! This struggle is ours to solve in concert, to understand our rights as students during this time, and to set precedent for the University to respond fairly to our needs during times of crisis.
Of Pandemics and Academics: How the University of Michigan Robbed 30,000 Students was originally published in The Michigan Specter on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.