Letter to the Editor: Students Need to Go Beyond Dialogue by Embracing Their Power

On March 10, The Guilfordian published an article titled “Students need to listen to others in our community” that commented upon the events surrounding the assault of a black trans student, the administration and the protest actions that students organized to make their voices heard. The author’s intent was not to cause harm, but rather to find ways to move the community toward a place of justice. Unfortunately, I believe it has taken several positions that will set the Guilford community up for a continuing cycle of pain and trauma instead of leading it to a place of liberation and restoration.

Contrary to the author’s assertion, the protest that arose as a rapid response to the assault of a black trans student on the evening of February 28; the subsequent failure of Public Safety to do anything but respond with transphobia, racism and a lack of urgency; the ensuing protest on the steps of Founders Hall and the debacle that was the administration’s painfully out of touch response actually do reflect the reality of the world outside of “the bubble.”

From Standing Rock to Palestine to Ferguson to Charlotte to Mizzou to any other instance of rebellion against oppression and attacks on communities, across the American empire people who have been brutalized by the powers that be are finding their voices in spontaneous expressions of righteous anger. The protests that students organized to call out the systems of power and oppression that were responsible for the situation on campus were similar in nature.

Also reflected are the classic well-rehearsed theatrics of those who want to maintain the current power structure. In this case, one in which students are kept from positions of actual power and are instead forced to beg actual power players to make more ethical decisions. The talking heads who are tasked with re-pacifying the slowly awakening masses jump into action. Hollow promises of a renewed commitment to accountability and dialogue, a heel-dragging plea for time and patience as “a thorough and fair investigation is undertaken” and feigned shock that somehow a system designed to protect the profit margins of an institution did exactly what it was designed to do.

And, finally, it reflects the dangerous and misguided analysis that attempts to blame the symptoms of a rotten system instead of looking at the root causes. Students protesting the assault of one of their community members is not the problem here. The problem is that decision-making power is resting in the hands of people who think that an increased presence of the racist, transphobic Greensboro Police Department is an adequate response to a black trans person being assaulted.
The problem is not that students ripped down banners on campus and repurposed them with their own core values. The problem is that it seems some people are more concerned about property damage to a $158 million institution than they are with the fact their community members are being forced to amplify their voices with direct actions in the face of sexual assault, deportations and other life-threatening issues.

While students who do not understand or agree with these expressions of rebellion against oppression may “fear (their) remarks would be strongly chastised or ignored completely,” it’s important to remember that often those who engage in expressions of outrage at injustice, such as the students who came to the defense of their community member in the face of institutional violence, are doing so in the face of increased vulnerability and danger such as deportation, assault, murder, hate crimes, harassment and much more.

The problem is not that a college president with a six-figure salary was maybe placed for a few seconds in the position of having to interact with hurt and furious students who had been told that their friend had been subjected to further transphobia and racism after being violently assaulted, a situation that almost any administrator worth their salt should be more than prepared to navigate with grace and humility.

The problem is that it seems community members are being tone-policed and asked to respond to trauma in hushed voices and subdued actions that prioritize the comfort of bystanders, instead of folks remembering our commitment to center marginalized voices, especially when they are in a place of righteous anger. Martin Luther King Jr. spoke on this very dynamic when he wrote about how “the white moderate, who is more devoted to ‘order’ than to justice; who prefers a negative peace which is the absence of tension to a positive peace which is the presence of justice; who constantly says: ‘I agree with you in the goal you seek, but I cannot agree with your methods of direct action.’” Hopefully, we can learn from the lessons of the past by committing to radical strategies that combat liberalism and its tendency to steer us away from true structural change.

Finally, I strongly disagree that “the behavior and language observed will not lead to progress or understanding for any party involved.” Historical analysis has actually shown the exact opposite to be the case. Mizzou students didn’t get their racist president removed by asking nicely. They got it by using a multitude of strategies that forced those in power to address an issue that they had chosen to ignore. I believe that the student organizers at Guilford are doing just that.

They are engaging in political education and building alternative ways to care for one another in the face of an institution that has repeatedly displayed its inability to do so. And, most importantly, they understand, as Frederick Douglass did, that “power concedes nothing without a demand.”