Rejected again
Since spring of 2004, BUS has pushed for an anti-discrimination harassment policy after a student’s car had racist epithets scribbled on the side of it and another student found a racist note slipped under her door. In December 2004, BUS called the university and Faculty Senate racist after it rejected their proposed anti-discrimination harassment policy on the basis of its wording.
“Racism has been declared dead by the nation. But racism still exists. It’s alive and well on the campus today.”
Faculty senators said the document was badly flawed and inadequate compared to the existing policy, also adding that a number of specific areas were vague. George Garrison, a professor in the Pan-African Studies department who attended the meeting, compared the discussion during the meeting between Faculty Senate and BUS as similar to the 1964 Civil Rights Bill being argued before Congress — where Congress debated the bill based on wording and technicalities. Faculty senator and economics professor Cheryl Casper, in particular, encouraged senators to vote “no” on the proposed policy.
Harris says the small technicalities were just an excuse. “It was very black and white,” he says. “Students don’t feel safe. You could see the students that wanted this policy, and they still didn’t listen.”
A later attempt with the Board of Trustees in January proved successful, resulting in approval of the proposal.
“There’s important signaling there in the seriousness in which the university holds this issue,” President Carol Cartwright said in an article published earlier this semester in the Daily Kent Stater. “We regard it as a serious matter when someone engages in unlawful discrimination. There will now be procedures used to implement the policies.”
Edward Crosby sits in his home in Stow among African artifacts. He is the founder of the Pan-African Studies program and believes Oscar Ritchie Hall is a historical facility that should not be used for classes outside of the program.
Crosby doesn’t necessarily see this as an improvement because he says it should have been implemented a long time ago. “Racism has been declared dead by the nation. But racism still exists,” he says. “It’s alive and well on the campus today. That’s what BUS was fighting in ’68, and that’s what BUS is fighting today.”
Crosby remains disquieted by the idea of the renovations, worried that the university will manipulate the use of the building. In order to comprehend the breadth of Crosby’s adamant allegation, one has to see the history of the building and the problems it has faced through the years in Crosby’s eyes — someone who has been there since the beginning.
Crosby recalls being told many times to leave restaurants near Kent State in the ’60s. “Kent State was one of the most racist institutions that I had experienced in my life,” he says. When the department began in 1969, the university had just stopped keeping lists of students by race, including those who lived off-campus. “That is the real history of Kent,” Crosby says.
The Burr is produced by students at Kent State University twice per academic year.No part of The Burr may be reprinted without permission.