At the collegefix.com site, one learns that at New York University, students demanded that “an entire floor of the mixed use building in the Southern Superblock plan be entirely dedicated to Students of Color, and another for Queer Students on campus.” At “Oberlin University, students have demanded ‘safe spaces’ for black students.” In 2016 at San Francisco State University, an “Afro-themed dorm floor” was created.
Leo Hohmann documents how “an Illinois college has defended its restriction of portions of a mandatory course to black students even though part of the stated goal of the class is to teach students ‘an appreciation for diversity.'” In an effort to achieve better graduation rates among black students, the University of Connecticut is “implementing a ‘bold’ new strategy to help boost its abysmal graduation rates for black males. The plan involves the clustering of 40 black male students in a portion of one dorm, no whites or Asians allowed, in what the university calls a ‘learning community.'” On the other hand, the University of Vermont “provides a safe space for white students to explore their ‘white privilege.'”
Walter Williams explains that since so many black college students are not prepared for college work, “for college administrators and leftist faculty, the actual fate of black students is not nearly so important as the good feelings they receive from a black presence on campus.” Williams asserts that it is a “gross dereliction of duty for college administrators to cave to these demands.”
Nevertheless, WeDemand.org has a “list of hundreds of ‘demands’ by black student movements at universities across the country. Many of the demands include calls for major reductions in white faculty and separate ‘safe spaces’ for black students.” At the University of Missouri, there was a demand for a “blacks only healing zone.” Whites were told to leave the room and meet somewhere else. In 2015, the Motley Coffeehouse at Scripps College maintained that it would be open “from 6-10 only for people of color and allies that they invite … to decompress, discuss, grieve, plan, support each other[.]”
Oberlin College demanded that “space throughout the campus be designated as a Safe Space for Africana-identifying [sic] students.” At Harvard University, “[b]lack members of the class of 2017 decided to form an individual [graduation] ceremony.” According to the students, “[t]he separate graduation is an effort to highlight the aforementioned struggles and resilience it takes to get through[.]”
One is reminded of Michelle LaVaughn Robinson’s thesis, titled “Princeton-Educated Blacks and the Black Community,” wherein the first lady-to-be “wondered whether or not [her] education at Princeton would affect [her] identification with the Black community.” Thus, Ms. Robinson argued “that the relative sense of comfort [respondents] may feel when interacting with Blacks in comparison to Whites (and vice versa) in various activities reflects the relative ease and familiarity the respondents feel with Blacks in comparison to Whites which, in turn, indicates the extent to which the respondents are personally attached to Blacks as individuals in comparison to Whites as individuals.” That such drivel was used in a Princeton thesis some 31 years ago explains why the race-obsessed presidency of Barack Obama is not a surprise.
As a lineal descendant of this line of thinking, it follows that “Courtney Woods, who is finishing a master’s degree in education policy and management from the Graduate School of Education, asserts that ‘Harvard’s institutional foundation is in direct conflict with the needs of black students. There is a legacy of slavery, epistemic racism and colonization at Harvard, which was an institution founded to train rising imperialist leaders. This is a history that we are reclaiming.'” Michael Huggins, who is graduating with a master’s in public policy from the Harvard Kennedy School, asserts that “[t]his is an opportunity to celebrate Harvard’s black excellence and black brilliance.”