The graduating class of Bethune-Cookman University (BCU) made headlines around the world when they stood up and turned their backs during a commencement address delivered by U.S. Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos. BCU President Edison Jackson interrupted her remarks after the protest continued and said, “If this behavior continues, your degrees will be mailed to you. Choose which way you want to go.”
Jackson’s admonishment was appropriately framed as a choice. The students had to choose sides. At that moment the decision by the students to show resistance was solidified. They could not straddle the fence as so many have become so accustomed to. The Trump administration is quickly forcing people to choose sides.
An argument can be made that the students’ choice to continue their protest was in alignment with the philosophies of the school’s founder Mary McLeod Bethune. Bethune wrote in 1944 that “if we accept and acquiesce in the face of discrimination, we accept the responsibility ourselves and allow those responsible to salve their conscience by believing that they have our acceptance and concurrence. We should, therefore, protest openly everything…that smacks of discrimination or slander.”
Support for the students’ resistance has been less about the personal attributes of DeVos and more about her proposed policies that threaten to gut funding for HBCUs and public schools, among other things. The policies of the Trump administration are set up to have a discriminatory impact on the working class and people of color.
The graduating students showed that they not only selected a major at BCU, but they selected a mission. Their mission involved taking a stand for something bigger than them –a stand against a Trump administration that wants to rip health care away from 25 million people as well as significantly diminish funding for after-school programs, college preparation programs, Pell Grants and similar assistance.
The students’ protest showed disapproval for an administration that seeks to starve out traditional public schools in an effort to siphon money into the hands of private interests and reinvigorate the War on Drugs as evidenced by Attorney General Jeff Sessions’ recent directive to vigorously prosecute low-level drug offenders.
The situation was one that could have easily been avoided had the university administration been sensitive to the loud voices opposing her selection as graduation speaker, including a petition that contained 60,000 signatures. It is ultimately the students who hold the real power at these institutions. There is no college or university without them. The students exemplified the kind of courage that is missing from too many high-ranking university officials.
