Campus Activism

Two stories in two different state university campus newspapers this week create quite a contrast regarding the future of conversations about race on Michigan university campuses.

First, there is The South End, the Wayne State University paper telling on Wednesday about the plight of the on-campus NAACP chapter...

...at the chapter's NAACP 99th Birthday Celebration, . . . empty seats outnumbered occupied ones.

[of] The chapter's 30 paying members, fewer than 10 showed up for the Feb. 12 event. This pattern has been common. ... on average, four or five members attend the organization's regular bi-weekly meetings.

And on it went, details of how a nearly century-old, brand-name civil rights movement, on a large public university campus, in the middle of a large and overwhelmingly black city, struggles to muster even a handful of regulars who care enough to attend a regular meeting.

But five days later in Ann Arbor, a slightly different story is told by the Michigan Daily...

Ward Connerly, the outspoken affirmative action critic who helped set legislation in motion that banned affirmative action in the state of Michigan, spoke at the Law School this weekend. A crowd of about 250 students, activists and professors gathered in Hutchins Hall Saturday morning to hear Connerly speak on a panel that also included University Law Prof. Sherman Clark and Yeshiva University Law Prof. Marci Hamilton.

So, there's still a lot of people willing to get up on a Saturday morning and listen to differing views on how to advance race relations. It's just that the NAACP doesn't seem to have a seat at the table -- the article makes zero mention of the NAACP involvement in this event.

But the paper mentions another group that did demand a seat at the table...

About 20 members of By Any Means Necessary, a pro-affirmative action group, protested outside before the event. As Connerly began his opening remarks, some of those members interrupted... by shouting over him.

And also...

During the question and answer session that followed the panel discussion, BAMN members repeatedly asked questions and occupied the microphone lines to speak. BAMN coordinator Neil Lyons called Connerly a fraud and a liar.

Which resulted in this...

As the noise escalated during Connerly's remarks, the auditorium lights flickered briefly and BAMN members' microphones were turned on and off in an attempt to settle BAMN and the rest of the crowd.

So, where does one find 20 or so hijackers to take control of an otherwise civil and well attended debate on race relations at the University of Michigan?

Answer...

"You can't argue racism and racist policy in public and get away with it!" yelled Joyce Schon, a second-year law student at Wayne State University and a BAMN organizer, from her seat.

Joyce obviously has enough time to take a break from her law studies and organize her rabble full of ruffians and roadtrip to Ann Arbor. But I somehow bet she doesn't make the time to attend those NAACP meetings right in her own back yard.