When students at the University of Washington (UW) led a series of protests last year over what they saw as institutional racism on campus, some staff and faculty occasionally joined them.
Denzil Suite, vice president for student life at UW, said that was by design in order to help alleviate the “us versus them” sentiment that can ensue when such protests take place.
For those reasons, Suite said: “It is not unusual to see academic deans and other senior leaders of the university engaging with students during protests.”
Indeed, in a particularly polarizing election year in which campuses throughout the United States saw protests on issues that ranged from racial hostility to the controversial immigration policies of presidential candidate—and later President-elect—Donald Trump, UW leaders did not simply fade into the background.
Among those who joined students, faculty and administrators in a Black Lives Matter protest on Red Square this past April at UW was Dr. David L. Eaton, dean and vice provost of The Graduate School at UW. He also joined a march to the Intellectual House—a Native American longhouse-type space on campus that pays homage to the original inhabitants of the campus land, where protesters temporarily “took over” a scheduled discussion.
“The protest was civil and orderly, albeit loud, as it should be,” Eaton told Diverse. “I was moved by the perspectives of the student organizers of the protest. I was pleased the way our campus police provided security for the protestors, but ‘at a distance’ and in a respectful and nonthreatening way.”
