We do not know our own strength, and no one dares to tell us. This week, we began to feel that strength in our bones.
It began when the University announced its first public layoffs, following months of attrition through early retirement. It came as no surprise that those first layoffs were an attack on people of color on Duke’s campus—the merger of the Multicultural Center and International House and the termination of two of the Multicultural Center’s staff, Juanita Johnson and Julian Sanchez.
Public outcry, and a petition signed by about 500 students—our first show of strength—forced the administration to backpedal somewhat, delaying the merger and creating a task force “to examine how to meet the needs of minority and international students at Duke.” The two staff positions will still be eliminated, though, and the administration has said they are not negotiable as part of the task force’s mission.
To put it bluntly, nothing is non-negotiable when we begin to know our strength.
If we want to defend the autonomy of the Multicultural Center and International House, if we want to keep the two staff positions so vital to us, we cannot let our struggle end with the creation of this task force.
The proposed task force will certainly allow students to provide their input into this process. But input is not enough. We should be more concerned with exercising real power, and in that sense, we should see this task force not as a sincere response to our demands, but as a stalling tactic. Every day we spend debating and discussing within the confines of this task force is a day lost. While a few of us get caught up in its machinations, the rest of us should be talking to our fellow students, handing out fliers, organizing informational pickets and thinking about other ways we can exercise our power in a way the administration cannot simply dismiss, but must acknowledge, respect and make concessions to.
Zoila Airall, assistant vice president for student affairs, deserves special mention in this process. She has told us not to be distrustful, to let the process happen. In negotiations with the Soviet Union, Ronald Reagan was fond of saying, “trust, but verify.” Our position should be similar—trust the administration while at the same time organizing ourselves to exercise our collective strength. Through this we can verify that they are taking concrete steps to meet our demands.
Airall also advised us to think big. We could do worse than follow this advice when formulating our demands. We should demand a written agreement that the Multicultural Center and International House never be merged. We should further demand that the two staff positions be reinstated. We should not accept their dismissal as non-negotiable. Nothing is non-negotiable when we know our strength and are willing to use it.
When asked how much money the University would save by dismissing Sanchez and Johnson, the two staff members whose jobs are at stake, Airall callously demurred, saying that she, no less than the assistant vice president for student affairs, didn’t know. I don’t know about you, but I would personally prefer her to verify that statement before I trust it.
This leads us to a bigger problem. The University absolutely refuses, and will continue to do so until we demand otherwise, all attempts to make transparent the decisions that vitally affect students, staff and faculty. It refuses to keep us informed about employment decisions. It refuses to make its endowment transparent. It refuses to discuss its investments in Israeli apartheid or any other investment decisions it makes. Unaccountable, irresponsible and unethical—these words best describe how the administration operates. If we need money to supplement budgetary shortfalls, these words give us a clue where to look.
To solve such big problems, we should again take Airall’s advice to think big. We should demand students, staff and faculty decide collectively on all these issues—how and even more importantly whether layoffs will happen, and we should demand full access to Duke’s budget, along with the right to decide how our money is invested.
As we begin to discover our strength, what we are capable of when we work together to achieve common goals, we have a unique opportunity to make these demands a reality.
However, the danger of refusing to exercise that strength is great. If we settle for this task force as the only avenue of our struggle without getting more concrete concessions out of the University through a demonstration of our strength, we can be certain that when we show up in the fall, the merger will be an accomplished fact. Like thieves in the night, under the cover of summer vacation, the administration will carry out the merger, and we will be powerless to stop it.
Michael Stauch is a second-year Ph.D. candidate in history. This is his final column of the semester.
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