The fallout from the racist graffiti in Day Hall has been swift and loud. Only three days since the hate crime became public knowledge, student leaders and organizations have facilitated sit-ins, hosted forums and compiled a list of demands for the administration.

The list includes a variety of short and long term demands for Syracuse University, including reforming SEM 100, requiring diversity training for new faculty members and the development of new and increased resources for underrepresented students at SU. One of the demands, the option for students to select a “same race” option on the housing application, has proven more controversial than the others.

You want to live in a room with students who share your identity because you know that students who don’t share your identity cannot understand your experience, your culture and your fears. Students of color are expressing a need for the university to ensure their safety in their homes, and since on-campus housing is mandated for first- and second-year students, there is no argument that the university isn’t obligated to provide it.

But there is something plainly insidious about offering white students the option to check a box demanding they live with another white kid.

It’s important to underscore the fact that this reaction was not written to undermine the list of demands as presented by the students protesting. They did incredible and difficult work — work that was not theirs to do, in order to craft a thoughtful, comprehensive list of changes SU needs to make.

But students who have been targeted, who are frightened, who are sitting on the floor and begging to be heard, are being made responsible for planning the actions of SU’s administration, and that’s not their job. It should not be their burden to tell Chancellor Syverud, and the board of trustees, and Dolan Evanovich and DPS what it takes to keep students at SU safe; that’s the responsibility of those very administrators.

White students being able to demand they live exclusively with white students is wrong, because unlike students who identify with minority groups, white people do not share a single unifying culture other than privilege. White people demanding an all-white space at a university that is already overwhelming white is plainly racist.

But that doesn’t mean students of color shouldn’t be able to make requests to live with another student of their race, and it doesn’t signal a greater issue with the demands made by the protesting students.

What it does is two things. First, it underscores the pervasive fear students of color are living with here at SU, a fear they may not be able to escape even as they lie in their beds. Second, it illuminates the fact that students are the ones having to pull SU towards equity and inclusivity.

For every discrepancy you find in the list of demands or the questions being asked of administrators, of which there have been near none, remember that these students were not given the opportunity to put hate-crime in their planners and calendars. These students are stepping up to do the work SU officials are paid to do with no warning, no resources, no compensation and no time. And they are doing it in the wake of a potentially traumatic experience.

And then ask yourself why the university was incapable of doing the same.

Sydney Gold is a freshman policy studies and public relations major. Her column appears bi-weekly. She can be reached at segold@syr.edu. She can be followed on Twitter @Sydney_Eden.

Published on November 13, 2019 at 11:48 pm