Student Protesters at Princeton Demand Segregation

November 22, 2015

Student Protesters at Princeton Demand Segregation

Student protesters at Princeton got the administration to consider instituting . . . segregation in campus housing:

Eisgruber and other senior administrators agreed, among other things, to:

Create a working group “to begin discussions on the viability of the formation of affinity housing for those interested in black culture.”

A group of professors supports the idea of segregated housing because it will provide a “place to which to retreat and find comfort.”

What a massive victory for social justice.

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Clarissa

15 responses to “Student Protesters at Princeton Demand Segregation”

Sternococktail

November 22, 2015 at 6:45 am

Separate houses for each of the world religion, separate for different political views, different for vegans and those who are not, different for those who is cheering different football teams… Maybe a little separate hut for each person?

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1. Clarissa
  
  November 22, 2015 at 8:20 am
  
  Absolutely. To replace the melting borders, people come up with very weird substitutes.
  
  I wish somebody at Princeton directed students to the books that discuss this phenomenon in depth. It’s sad that they are so poorly educated that they don’t understand any of their own feelings.
  
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2. danmillerinpanama
  
  November 22, 2015 at 11:47 am
  
  Perhaps a way to end the horrors of microaggression has finally been found.
  
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ladyfiaran

November 22, 2015 at 7:16 am

WTF is wrong here?! Is this what the Civil Rights leaders in the 50’s and 60’s fought for? We are going back in time, and not in the cool Back to the Future way either.

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Shakti

November 22, 2015 at 9:14 am

Eisgruber and other senior administrators agreed, among other things, to:

Create a working group “to begin discussions on the viability of the formation of affinity housing for those interested in black culture.”

I have no idea what that means? A dorm? Back in the day, my college had SLUs (small living units) which were basically houses with themes that held maybe 5-10 people. They spent time promoting the theme through programs and events, but what I really remember are the wall-shaking house parties. None of the houses were safe spaces for people who couldn’t deal with their roommates.

I’m sure they’ll be discussing forming a working group for years. None of these campus housing authorities like to give up real estate.

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1. Clarissa
  
  November 22, 2015 at 9:19 am
  
  The problem is that this will involve even more service work for professors and even more time and resources diverted from academics and research to administration. And who gets stuck in these kinds of service assignments? Older tenured white male professors? Obviously not. So this will again punish women and non-white junior faculty. And all for what, exactly? To play at segregation?
  
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2. J. Otto Pohl
  
  November 22, 2015 at 9:49 am
  
  These type of theme houses are pretty common. I would guess a very large number of colleges and universities have them. The Black Student Association at Grinnell had one when I was there in the late 80s and early 90s.
  
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  1. Clarissa
    
    November 22, 2015 at 9:53 am
    
    If it’s so common, then why does the project require so much protesting, sit-ins, and hassling the administration?
    
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    1. J. Otto Pohl
      
      November 22, 2015 at 10:11 am
      
      I don’t know. But, the presence of such housing has been around on many colleges, especially SLACs, for a long time now. By the 1990s such houses were pretty common place. Princeton is evidently one of the universities that didn’t get such housing then. The W.E.B. Du Bois House at Penn was created in 1972.
      
      http://dubois.house.upenn.edu/frontpage
      
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      1. Clarissa
        
        November 22, 2015 at 10:23 am
        
        Form the drama surrounding the situation, it seems that these students are asking for something different. I wonder of segregated classrooms are next. They are already effectively segregated, so why not administratively?
        
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  2. AcademicLurker
    
    November 23, 2015 at 8:51 am
    
    Maybe this a deliberate strategy. The students “demand” something they probably would have gotten from simply asking. This way they can enjoy the rush of pushing the administration around without any real risk of failing and being refused.
    
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    1. Clarissa
      
      November 23, 2015 at 8:54 am
      
      You mean they are doing this just for fun? That’s possible, and I’d have to praise their inventiveness if that’s true. 🙂
      
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      1. AcademicLurker
        
        November 23, 2015 at 9:04 am
        
        You mean they are doing this just for fun?
        
        Unlike the Missouri protests, my sense of the wave of “me too” protests that appeared in their wake is that most of these are driven by privileged students who want to have the “student protest experience” as part of their overall college experience.
        
        Maybe the wealthier universities could construct special “protest” dorms that angry student activists could burn down.
        
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        Clarissa
        
        November 23, 2015 at 9:08 am
        
        “Unlike the Missouri protests, my sense of the wave of “me too” protests that appeared in their wake is that most of these are driven by privileged students who want to have the “student protest experience” as part of their overall college experience.”
        
        Absolutely. I agree completely.
        
        “Maybe the wealthier universities could construct special “protest” dorms that angry student activists could burn down.”
        
        Great idea! 🙂
        
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m

November 23, 2015 at 11:44 am

When I went to a certain extremely prestigious private university in Silicon Valley in the late 90s/early 00s, we had a wide range of such houses (some of the themes included Africa and its diasporas; Asian identities; latino and Hispanic; Native American; French; Germanic; Slavic; Italian; etc.). The rules at the time were that only 25% of the residents in each house could be of the ‘target; ethno-linguistic group and the rest would be from the wider student body. Many people actively sought to get into these houses, as they often boasted nicer facilities than the other dorms and houses. In order to maintain residence, students would have to go to a range of in-house ‘cultural’ seminars and do a large presentation to the other residents (all part of the ‘residential education’ campaign). Frankly, I always thought they were super, super weird.

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