The Problem with Everything by Meghan Daum

Author:Meghan Daum
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Gallery Books
Published: 2019-10-21T16:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 5 What Hath One Lecture Wrought!: Trouble on Campus

Nearly thirty years ago, when I was a sophomore at Vassar College in Poughkeepsie, New York, student activists made national headlines when they seized control of the college’s main administration building and disrupted campus life for several days. The inciting incident was an offhand comment made by New York senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan, a legendary liberal and champion of women and minorities (that was the phrase back then, “women and minorities”) who had come to campus to receive an honorary title called the Eleanor Roosevelt Chair. Moynihan gave a lecture in conjunction with the award and spoke with students, staff, and community members at a reception afterward. It was here that many witnessed him making a remark to a woman named Folami Gray. The remark was perceived by at least a few people, including Gray herself, as racist.

This was well before the days of ubiquitous recording devices; there’s never been complete consensus on what was actually said and what was meant by it. Most reports, however, suggest that Gray, who directed a local youth organization and was of Jamaican descent, challenged a statement Moynihan had made about America being “a model of ethnic cooperation.” At this, Moynihan is said to have told Gray something to the effect of “if you don’t like it here, why don’t you pack your bags and go back to where you came from?”

Moynihan then turned to a student, who, perhaps in an effort to diffuse the tension, asked if he was a senior senator. Gray interjected and said, “He’s a senior racist!”

This was decades before the age of memes, but there’s no telling what sort of viral load a phrase like “senior racist” could carry today. (You can imagine a GIF of Betty White shaking her finger in the spirit of “you’re not calling me a senior racist!”) Nor were we anywhere near the era of clickbait headlines like “Aging White Male Senator Insults Woman of Color at College Wine and Cheese Reception and You Won’t Believe What Happens Next!”

Here’s what did happen next. A group emerged that called itself the Coalition of Concerned Students. The coalition held a series of meetings over two weeks that included representatives from a variety of campus political and social organizations (the Black Students’ Union and the Vassar Jewish Union, among them). There was no specific agenda initially. As one leader told the student newspaper, The Miscellany News, “We were trying to form a unity between student groups on campus to seek some solidarity. We thought that as a united group, we might be able to get a little more action out of the administration on concerns that each of the individual groups had been voicing to no avail for weeks, for months, for years.”

Early in the morning of the first day of demonstrations, students began blocking doors to the college’s administration building, a large multiuse building called “Main,” which stands at the end of the campus’s main driveway. They barred entrance to all but other protesters and those who lived in the building’s dormitory area.

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