Skidmore College Students Demand Firing of Faculty Members Who Attended ‘Back the Blue’ Rally
“It’s unfair and shameful that again and again we have to take time away from our education to pressure Skidmore administrators to treat us with respect”
In late July, a pro-police ‘Back the Blue’ rally took place in Saratoga Springs, NY, which is also home to Skidmore College.
A few members of the faculty at Skidmore attended this rally, and now Black Lives Matter activists on campus are demanding that they be fired.
This week, student activists held a protest.
Lucas Willard reports at WAMC News (emphasis is mine):
Skidmore Students Make Demands For Racial Justice
Students at Skidmore College rallied for racial justice on the first day of classes Monday.
Monday night’s rally in Saratoga Springs was organized by the student organization Pass the Mic. Adia Cullors, one of the demonstration’s organizers, spoke into a megaphone.
“It’s unfair and shameful that again and again we have to take time away from our education to pressure Skidmore administrators to treat us with respect,” said Cullors.
Pass the Mic prepared a list of 19 demands to college administrators.
The first on the list is to create a zero-tolerance policy toward racism, the last a dialogue with new college president Marc Conner.
The protesting students walked the short distance down North Broadway to Conner’s residence, where the demands were read aloud…
The list of demands by Pass the Mic includes the firing of faculty members who attended the Back the Blue rally.
The list of demands by Pass the Mic is posted below:
1. Skidmore must institute a zero-tolerance policy toward racism among faculty, staff, students and administrators.
2. Students must be given full access to all Campus Safety officers’ background records (including police complaints of those who are formerly officers), and an accessible database of all complaints against current and previous Skidmore officers must be created and made public.
3. The immediate firing of Mark Vinci, David Peterson, and Andrea Peterson.
4. Skidmore must institute mandatory and reoccurring anti-racist training for all professors and students.
5. Skidmore must make all of its investments public.
6. Skidmore must make all of its donations public.
7. Skidmore must reject all donations from the Koch brothers and denounce the racist and oppressive nature of the Charles Koch Foundation and its ties.
8. Skidmore must allocate a significant number of resources and funds back into the underserved Capital Region communities including expanding faculty and student volunteering and financial donations.
9. Skidmore must create a comprehensive safety plan for all BIPOC students in Saratoga, especially students living and quarantining and living off campus.
10. Skidmore must acknowledge that it is built on and benefits from the stolen land of the Haudenosaunee, Mohawk, and Mohican people.
11. Skidmore must also make a comprehensive plan to pay reparations through labor and finances to these indigenous nations.
12. Skidmore must pledge to ban all police presence from campus including as responses to disputes and for large-scale public events.
13. Skidmore must allocate increased funds and institutional support for the Black Studies department and for the creation of other departments and courses focused on the study of African history and the African diaspora.
14. Skidmore must immediately fill the positions of the OSDP office & Social Justice Center.
15. Skidmore must make institutional practices more transparent and accessible to students.
16. Skidmore must make all bias reports filed against professors/faculty public and accessible while concealing the identity of the person who filed.
17. Skidmore must ask for and receive permission from BIPOC students before using their image in any promotional materials.
18. Skidmore must provide safe on-campus housing at no additional charge to students living with/near their sexual abusers.
19. President Conner must hold an address/dialogue that is open and accessible to the entire student body, during which all students have the ability to speak and ask questions without limitation.
You can watch a video from the protest below:
Tinashe Gwakuka, a Skidmore College student: “Whether your ancestors came on the slave ships from Africa or the Caribbean, whether you came here on a flight or on a bus as an immigrant, they say we came on different ships, but we’re in the same boats now.” pic.twitter.com/J05jxbwYEX
— Bethany Bump (@bethanybump) June 7, 2020
On July 31, Skidmore College President Marc C. Conner released this statement:
Dear Skidmore Community,
As many of you are likely aware, two events in downtown Saratoga Springs on Thursday night, a Back the Blue rally and a Black Lives Matter counter-protest, resulted in a police response and reported arrests that drew news media and social media attention. The reports include concerns about the scale of the police response and the use of force against the counter-protesters.
We are in conversation with Saratoga Springs city leadership to learn more about the events and how we can support our entire community. Skidmore College is steadfast in our support for peaceful gathering, peaceful protest, the right to hold and express different views, and the safety of all members of our community. In these challenging times, we all need to work in partnership to preserve these fundamental principles while pursuing fair and just treatment of all members of our community.
Our commitment to diversity, equity and inclusion is firm and we will continue to articulate and uphold those values. In addition, I have been very clear about my and the College’s commitment to the principle that Black Lives Matter. This is consistent with our core values as a higher education institution, and we will continue to assert that commitment in all our actions.
Productive and open discussions and initiatives between the city and the College are already in motion. Our recently announced Initiative on Racial Justice emphasizes that “this must be deeply collaborative work, involving all constituencies of the College, including students, staff, faculty and members of the Saratoga Springs community as key partners.” We will continue to engage with community leaders on this important work to seek ever-increasing levels of justice and inclusivity in our communities.
Emily Chase of the student newspaper, The Skidmore News reports:
The vague wording of President Conner’s recent emails concerning racial injustice at Skidmore and within the Saratoga community has had many students worried and demanding that it not stand in place of a facilitated discussion with his student body.
To this point, the crowd marched from Palamountain Hall to the Scribner House on North Broadway, which is where President Conner currently lives. Along the way, chants such as “No Justice, No Peace!” and “Say his name, George Floyd!” could be heard across campus.
Once outside the Scribner House, Pass the Mic leaders formally delivered their list of demands to President Conner. Then, they opened up the space and invited BIPOC students to voice their feelings about their experiences of racism on Skidmore’s campus.
At this time, it’s not clear if the school will act upon the student demands to fire any faculty members.
Featured image via Twitter video.
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Comments
When the inmates run the asylum, go find another asylum.
Imagine paying back your loans for attending this dump?
Imagine hiring somebody who graduated from that dump?
Back in the day the “Seven Sisters” were never really been about education, but about finding up-and-coming husbands from the Ivy League.
In my day, that was called pursuit of an MRS degree.
Good reading for everyone.
“Chris MacIntosh: The “woke culture” is simply Marxism writ large.
It’s been with us for at least two generations, educating our children in the West with neo-Marxist ideologies. They’ve simply become more and more egregious. It started with gender studies and feminism studies.”
Marxism Is Coming At Breathtaking Speed – Do This Before It’s Too Late
https://www.zerohedge.com/geopolitical/marxism-coming-breathtaking-speed-do-its-too-late
…..
“I had a conversation many years ago, which only came back into my consciousness three or four years ago. I was still about 20 years old at the time. I met a gentleman who said something about how to figure out where our country is going.
He was an asset manager who I just bumped into while doing a hike up Table Mountain.
He said, “If you watch what’s taking place in the universities, if there’s a very strong zeitgeist in one way or the other, watch that. Whatever that zeitgeist is, you’re going to find that, within five to ten years, in the country.”
The reason is that the leaders of the country—the CEOs, the people in management, in politics, in the courts, all come from those universities. If you look at what has been transpiring in the West over the last decade at least, in the universities—it is frightening.
It’s not a surprise now that we find these people are in positions of power. They’re instituting their vision of how the world should work. Their ideology—their zeitgeist—is Marxism. So, this woke culture is just Marxism.
Unfortunately, it is now in the DNA of the West.
As much as I want to believe that we could eliminate that, it starts with the universities and being able to educate a whole new class of people correctly….”
kid more not a seven sisters school – Skidmore rated way below the sisters.
Skidmore’s gonna get burned…..
It is too simple. Expell those students for being fascists. But, of course, Skidmore will do the dishonourable thing and cave to the students.
Of course. The Skidmore administration is on their side.
Skidmore Administration is worried they are not viewed as liberal as Williams, Amherst, Middlebury, etc. They have to fire these Profs to prove they down with the cause.
Dean Vernon Wormer replied:
Dear Protesting Students:
You are expelled.
You have until 5pm on August 31, 2020 to get your entitled, semi-literate selves off campus.
Anything that you leave behind will be sold and the money will be donated to Back the Blue.
Sincerely,
Vernon W. Wormer
Dean
If that happened, happy alumni would easily donate whatever money was lost from kicking these ‘students’ out.
“Fat, drunk, and stupid is no way to go through life, son.”
This supports my suggestion that the federal student loan program should be terminated. It should be replaced by a program where colleges and universities finance the loans, with the loans dischargeable in bankruptcy court.These monsters would never be admitted because they most likely would default, and the institution would be out the money.
Such a grotesque generation of “students”. No one wants to hire worthless, uneducated, emotionally unstable ninnies with more demands than abilities.
These children and very young adults are being sold down the river and they have no idea that it is happening.
I disagree. Who do you think will staff the HR departments of businesses, teach children in public schools, fill faculty slots in colleges and universities, and (ultimately) law enforcement of the Woke variety?
Unemployable? HA! In Soviet Amerika they will hold the best-paying jobs!
Staff? Or, staph?
HR is shrinking and being outsourced…..makes sense since it is the most hated department right after the Title 9 dept.
Have you heard of http://www.unwoke.hr? If I were hiring today, they’d be my goto.
The federal government should long ago have ended all funding, of any kind, to non-STEM higher education.
It needs to happen NOW! Not tomorrow, TODAY!
Maybe instead force the students to live up to their first demand, a zero tolerance policy for racism, by expelling them for offering subsequent demands based upon race or ethnicity?
Last year the rack rate at Skidmore was $56,322 (tuition only). Of course, most students don’t pay that amount, but you wonder how these liberal arts colleges can survive.
A lot of them won’t survive. Many alumni have stopped donating to “woke” colleges, and the coronavirus has made many students take gap years and leaves of absence.
So donations, tuition, and dorm fees are all taking a hit. Many liberal arts colleges are going to finish this academic year between $50M and $100M in the red. If their endowment isn’t at least several times this amount, they are in trouble.
I stopped giving to Bowdoin College in the 1990’s when they outlawed fraternities. During my time at Bowdoin, the college provided my factual education while my fraternity provided by social education. The standing joke was that the faculty was more liberal than the students, and they stuffed that down our throats with their progressive policies.
Why are Americans being manipulated into pandering to parasites?
Peer pressure. “Your classmates donated $xxx, here is your donation history…”
“”10. Skidmore must acknowledge that it is built on and benefits from the stolen land of the Haudenosaunee, Mohawk, and Mohican people.””
My reading of NY history (Among others, Nelson Greene’s “History of the Mohawk Valley”) informs me that (1) Mohawks were part of the Haudenosaunee (Iroquois) Confederation, and as “Keepers of the Eastern Gate”, were the only tribe with landed interest in the Saratoga area (2) that pretty much all of the land in the area of Saratoga Springs along with various other tracts in Mohawk territory were not “stolen”, but bought and paid for by Europeans settlers, most notably by adopted Mohawk and British aristocrat Sir William Johnson, and (3) that the Mohicans in Eastern NY had been annihilated by the Iroquois more than a century before Skids was founded. BTW, (4), the Mohawks abandoned all of their holdings in NY after the Revolutionary War, when they moved to Canada along with the Johnsons. That’s what happens when you pick the losing side.
What was that that ‘cancel culture’ was a made up story?
These children at Skidmore have never learned that respect cannot be demanded; it must be earned.
“At this time, it’s not clear if the school will act upon the student demands to fire any faculty members.”
Behind the scenes you can bet that the Skidmore administration is pressuring the profs to resign. And if they don’t take the hint and leave, other means will be used (disruption of the profs’ lectures with the administration’s approval, slashed tires and vandalized personal property with the perps being protected, physical violence by the brownshirts, threats against the profs’ family members and friends).
If the professors are harrassed, sue the crap out of the school for not supporting them and allowing such harassment.
Depends on the judge they get. If the judge is a Communist or a GOPe squish, fuggedaboutit!!
Look at the Oberlin College case involving the Gibsons that LI has been reporting on so excellently. That was a slam dunk case of college-sanctioned harassment that went against Oberlin, yet the case drags on.
I wonder if the college has a zero-tolerence policy against harassment? Extortion?
I will resist the temptation to say Skidmore could be repurposed into a driving school.
…or Skidmore could become the Wedgie school…
If the name is changed to Skidmark, it’ll fit.
.
Didn’t the Euro replace the Skidmark?
“It’s unfair and shameful that again and again we have to take time away from our education to pressure Skidmore administrators to treat us with respect”
Actually, you don’t have to do that at all. You choose to for power-mongering reasons.
Imagine working at a “University” where no one running the place knows the purpose of a university. Or, they do know and they’re such craven weasels *do* know and they don’t have the fortitude to defend it from destruction by expelling these cretins.
Perhaps if these children went to college they would learn the definition of “racism” and understand that equal opportunity does not mean equal outcome.. Perhaps it is time to rename these institution more accurately so that instead of calling them “institutions of higher learning” they would be called “daycare for those suffering delayed maturity into adulthood”.
Oh, they do know that equal opportunity doesn’t mean equal outcome. That’s why we see protest signs today that say “We want equity, not equality.”
That list looks like the one I used to make from the Sears Catalog a month before Christmas: too long and wildly out of reach.
If Skidmore caves into this, then they should be driven out of business; and what is wrong with these idiots that they don’t understand that people have First Amendment rights to attend any assembly they choose, even if the social justice warriors disapprove.
So many people spending so much money in order to become stupid…and they keep spending it in the hope that the socialists will write-off the debt.
Never vote Democrat.
Skidmore College, the 13th grade, is full of angry bitter failures — that’s the faculty. The students can barely read. A total waste of money on Liberal fantasy “education.” NO! NO, we won’t fire ANYONE for their beliefs. The only people who should be fired are BLM bowel movement phonies.
I demand a bounty and no bag limit on these students.
Okay, but no scalping because, you know, that is cultural appropriation.
How about Skidmore’s administration kicking some of these moronic students out?