The scenes and crowds take shape differently and the clothes evolve over time. But generations of Syracuse University students, shaken by a shock to the American consciousness, have perched on the steps of Hendricks Chapel, looking over a sea of peers or scattered passersby creeping toward the domed building with curiosity.

Students shouted from the SU landmark following the killing of four collegiate Vietnam War protestors. Forty-four years later, they stood on the same stairs, hands raised in subdued solidarity with a slain teenager named Michael Brown.

From events that pierce the national psyche to university-specific issues, SU boasts a rich history of student protests. While some eras — particularly the late 1960s and early 1970s — left more of an imprint on the university than others, members of the university community believe SU has entered one of its most active eras of student expression in a decade.

Students this semester have carried out a variety of demonstrations and movements across a spectrum of issues, both national and university-specific. Rallies have encouraged university divestment from fossil fuels, opposed the closing of the Advocacy Center, urged the continuation of scholarship programs and fought against perceived university inaction on racial marginalization, among others.

“There’s been more student activism in the last four weeks than the last four years,” said Ben Kuebrich, a fifth year graduate student in composition and cultural rhetoric and a Divest SU member. “Something is happening.”

***

When Robert McClure started teaching at SU in 1969, “everything about the university was protest.” After four Kent State University students were killed while protesting developments in the Vietnam War on May 4, 1970, a student strike effectively shut down the SU campus for more than two weeks.

Construction materials, mattresses and other miscellaneous items were piled to form barricades at the road entrances to the university. Classes were canceled and students flooded the Quad for rallies and demonstrations.

Furor surrounding one grievance fed another, and McClure couldn’t avoid the tide of dissent. McClure, an untenured faculty member at the time, voted not to give a popular professor tenure.

Walking to work at the Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs, he noticed a group of students picketing outside the building. As he got closer, he realized they were chanting “Fire McClure.”

“I thought it would be prudent to go in the side door that day,” said McClure, Chapple Family Professor of Citizenship and Democracy Emeritus in Maxwell.

Universities, like American society in general, go through an ebb and flow of activism, McClure said. Various factors have fueled past SU protests, and this semester, like in the early 1970s, student activists have seen a diverse range of causes strengthen one another.

“The causes and struggles are being linked and feeding each other,” said Derek Ford, a Ph.D. candidate in the School of Education and member of the ANSWER Coalition.

Ford and Kuebrich of Divest SU both pointed to a perceived “corporatization” of the university as a possible driving force behind this semester’s protest culture. Mounting levels of student debt, compounded by what some students see as insufficient policy on racial and gender issues and a lack of decision-making transparency, have earned the ire of many student activists.

 ***

Syracuse Police Chief Thomas Sardino sat at the top of the stairs to the then-Tolley Administration Building during the May 1970 student strike, puffing tobacco from a pipe. Paul Finkelman — who McClure called one of the “great agitators of all-time”— and dozens of other students gathered below as they conducted one of a series of sit-ins that semester.

Finkelman remembers Sardino sitting and chatting with students while supervising through the wee hours of the morning. Some protestors whipped out joints and started smoking them in front of their city’s police chief.

Sardino was asked if he wanted to put some marijuana in his pipe. He smiled and kept smoking, Finkelman remembers. He chose not to incite more tension between students and authority, displaying a deft touch in community relations that students from the tumultuous era still admire.

“He helped the university survive,” said Finkelman, who is now a senior fellow at the Penn Program on Democracy, Citizenship and Constitutionalism at the University of Pennsylvania, and a scholar-in-residence at the National Constitution Center in Philadelphia.

Law enforcement and university administrators proved vital to student expression in the late 1960s and early 1970s. As students carry out a string of demonstrations in a less volatile 2014, Sardino’s son, DPS Associate Chief John Sardino, touts authorities’ ongoing role in preserving peaceful protest.

The SU Department of Public Safety has noticed an uptick in rallies this semester. While DPS hasn’t been alerted to every rally, it has officially documented three already this semester, compared to one to two in a typical academic year, John Sardino said. 

Many members of the university community feel the new administration under Chancellor Kent Syverud has shown itself to be open to protest, despite some student qualms about its willingness to respond to protest with policy changes.

“Recently we have been reminded that one of (the) best things about our students is that they are not afraid to speak up for issues they truly care about and change they envision,” said Kevin Quinn, SU senior vice president for public affairs in an email.

*** 

Prominent environmental activist Van Jones spoke in Hendricks Chapel this month with an orange Divest SU square tacked to his chest. Nearly two years since Ben Kuebrich helped shape the group after American environmentalist Bill McKibben’s speech in the same building, Divest SU has yet to achieve its concrete goal.

After gaining significant support on campus, the group received a letter saying SU would not divest.

The decision — a careful consideration of the university endowment and resources — didn’t irk Kuebrich as much as Divest SU’s exclusion from the decision-making process and a lack of sustained conversation on alternative steps the university could take. The decision helped provide the impetus for a Sept. 30 rally, which brought roughly 80 people to the steps of Hendricks Chapel. 

“It’s about knowing when you’re right even when it seems unpopular,” said Kuebrich.

Divest SU faces a challenge that has hampered generations of student demonstrators — converting public expression to concrete policy changes. Members of the university community stress that specific proposals and sustained expression of grievances remain the best ways to affect change in the university.

Kadisha Phillips felt a similar sense of symbolic achievement as she sat on the steps of Hendricks Chapel in silence earlier this month. Phillips, press and publicity chair for the SU chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, helped conceive the chapter’s silent protest outside a university-sponsored forum on diversity issues.

Phillips felt the strength of the rally when passersby previously unaware of the protest sat down in solidarity. But despite any additional support garnered that day, the NAACP has yet to see a concrete response to alleviate its concerns.

Kuebrich noted that SU has taken some, though not comprehensive, steps to appease student concerns this semester. After the university announced it would cut off two locations in its Posse program — which traditionally provides full scholarships to students from key locations — a protest took place on campus.

SU would go on to revise its Posse policy, extending its Atlanta program by one year. Kuebrich also pointed to the Chancellor’s Workgroup on Sexual Violence Prevention, Education and Advocacy. The university formed the workgroup in response to backlash over its decision to close the Advocacy Center and transfer its services to the Counseling Center.

Many student activists for the two causes would feel the policy doesn’t go far enough in alleviating concerns. But student activists have said that persistence will serve them better than just about anything else.

Said Kuebrich: “It remains to be seen if all this activity brings more action.”

Published on October 16, 2014 at 12:01 am

Contact Jacob: jspramuk@syr.edu