Teaching Women's Studies in Conservative Contexts by Cantice Greene

Author:Cantice Greene [Greene, Cantice]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780367597146
Barnesnoble:
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
Published: 2020-08-14T00:00:00+00:00

III. Coalition and Disagreement Within the Concerned Collective

In addition to addressing the problem of how best to understand the intersections of oppressions, the LGBTQ protest made manifest the usefulness and necessity of forming political coalitions amid pronounced differences in social, political, and religious identities. Although this coalitional strategy proved tremendously effective, it was not without its difficulties along the way.

The Concerned Collective was very nearly fragmented at times over the question of which tactics to use to meet their goals, as well as that of whether to have movement leaders or a coalitional collective without hierarchy. The students held no illusions that changing the university’s EEO policy would in itself fix all of the problems with the exclusion, marginalization, and intolerance of underrepresented groups in the campus culture. As a result, their organizing involved many debates about whether to ask for additional structural changes alongside their one demand that the policy be amended. In the end, the Concerned Collective settled on fighting only for the policy change because such an amendment would serve a symbolic function in addition to providing actual legal protection for LGTBQ persons. This singular focus was strategic, because it both made clear to the administration what was desired and struck at the very core of the university’s metaphysics, which underlay its policy decisions. If the metaphysical belief in heterosexual difference could be shaken, then, according to an intersectional analysis of oppressions, the conceptual ground of other purportedly natural metaphysical differences might also give way.

Another site of discussion within the Concerned Collective involved disagreement about whether to employ reformist activist tactics that worked within the formalized guidelines of the institution or radical tactics that sought to express ideas that would not be condoned or facilitated by those guidelines. In the end, the group chose to deploy both kinds of tactics strategically in complementary ways. For example, a subgroup of students who would present arguments in favor of amending the university’s policies to the board of directors formed within the Collective. Their calls for the board of directors to act in accord with the university’s Jesuit Catholic mission represent reformist activist tactics at their best. As these students were preparing their arguments, other students were demonstrating, fasting, and raising awareness at what they came to call “Camp Hope”—a well-trafficked area in the atrium of the Student Center that they made sure was occupied by student activists twenty-four hours a day. This was no simple task, given the series of new prohibitions that the administration levied on this space during this time, including a restriction against bringing furniture into that area, which meant that those individuals on a hunger strike could not sit down, and an injunction that the area be vacated from 3:00 a.m. until 5:30 a.m. for cleaning. The Concerned Collective had additional radical strategies organized and ready to be implemented should the board of directors decide against amending the university’s policies. This combination of reformist and radical tactics was highly effective in achieving the Concerned Collective’s goals, and did so in a very short time.

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