Brandeis University graduate student Christian Perry is fresh off an 11-day sit-in at the Bernstein-Marcus Administrative Center, which houses the president’s office, sparked by the failure by administration to meet the demands of Black students on campus to promote a more welcoming environment.
The students’ demands were not unlike those unfolding in recent weeks across the country.
“The interesting thing about us was that unlike all the other universities, we have an interim president,” said Perry, who called the limitations imposed by the temporary nature of the leadership “a very tricky, interesting and huge hurdle that we had to navigate.”
“There needs to be a sense of urgency and people need to understand that we’re not going to take the same kind of lip service that we’ve [been fed] for decades,” said Perry.
Dr. Christopher Emdin, an Associate Professor in the Department of Mathematics, Science and Technology at Teachers College, Columbia University and author of the forthcoming book, “For White Folks Who Teach in the Hood … and the Rest of Y’all Too,” said the country is failing to realize the impact of a number of micro-aggressions and conditions facing Black students and faculty members on their campus experiences.
Emdin said the approach to students and faculty of color responding to what appear to be individual incidents of racism needs to be changed to viewing them through a framing of being plagued with post-traumatic stress disorder. Though the protests may seem to be “spurred by one particular event, they’re [fueled] by a bunch of little micro-events” that have taken place over an extended period of time, he said. “All of those things coalesce in that moment” that they are denied entrance to a fraternity party or a swastika pops up on a dorm wall or a noose is spotted hanging from a tree, he said.
Emdin says that for many ― particularly Blacks ― the death of “Trayvon Martin was such a powerful watershed moment that really awakened us to the differences in how we process these things.” And every time they are faced with what appears to be an individual incident on campus, “these events are triggers.”
