#NotAgainSU organizers and Syracuse University administrators discussed faculty diversity training, disarming Department of Public Safety officers and protections for striking graduate students in their second negotiating session Tuesday.

#NotAgainSU, a movement led by Black students, has occupied Crouse-Hinds Hall since Feb. 17 to continue its protest of a string of racist, homophobic and anti-Semitic incidents that have occurred at or near SU since early November.

Organizers presented Chancellor Kent Syverud with a list of 19 demands in November. He signed 16 as written and revised the remaining three. The movement has added 16 demands since it began occupying Crouse-Hinds, beginning negotiations on the additions Monday afternoon.

During the Tuesday negotiations, SU officials agreed to implement mandatory diversity training for non-tenured faculty. #NotAgainSU previously retracted a demand that the university publicly disclose whether tenured faculty members received diversity training.

“There are instances of professors harassing students of color, students of marginalized identities, consistently,” an organizer said. “Implementing this diversity training, and non-tenured faculty to complete this within one academic year, I think needs to be done with urgency.”

Officials also promised that graduate students on strike will not be penalized or risk losing their teaching assistantships. More than 100 graduate students and workers who identify as Black, indigenous and people of color, as well as international students, have been withholding their labor since Feb. 19 in support of #NotAgainSU.

Some graduate students have received emails from Graduate School Dean Peter Vanable asking about their plans, and others have been informed that substitutes will take over their discussion sections, recitations and labs, a protester said.

Paying substitute teaching assistants to fill the positions of striking graduate students is part of the university’s commitment to all students, but graduate students’ will be allowed to return to their positions when the strike ends, SU officials said in the meeting.

“If you’re looking for an assurance that students who are striking now will be able to come back to the classroom and they won’t have their jobs supplanted by someone else, I can make that offer, make that promise,” said J. Cole Smith, dean of the College of Engineering and Computer Science.

Administration also promised that reimbursement and stipends, tuition and the ability to apply for funding will not be jeopardized for graduate students in the future.

Gabe Nugent, deputy general counsel for SU, said the university will not agree to #NotAgainSU’s demand for Department of Public Safety officers to be disarmed. Peace officers on campus undergo more than 400 hours of training, Nugent said.

Nugent was not well-versed enough on the department’s policies to comment on potentially disarming officers in certain circumstances, such as when officers police protests or parties, he said.

Protesters’ experiences with DPS officers during the Crouse-Hinds sit-in have illustrated DPS’ incompetence, a protester said. The movement has criticized the way DPS officers have interacted with organizers throughout the Crouse-Hinds occupation, and organizers continue to call for the resignations of DPS Chief Bobby Maldonado and Associate Chief John Sardino.

“They never discharge their weapons, so I don’t see a point in having (them), especially for things that actually require force,” a protester said.

The union representing DPS said in a statement Thursday that officers have acted under orders from Syverud and senior SU administration throughout the protest rather than from their superiors in law enforcement.

Protesters expressed frustration that DPS representatives were not present at the negotiations to discuss the department’s protocol. Maldonado decided not to attend the negotiations, Nugent said.

“We made an intentional decision to bring the folks in this room, and I’m not going to say more than that,” Nugent said.

Marianne Thomson, dean of students, said the university would need to have more than an hour of negotiations to commit to any kind of comprehensive review of disarming DPS.

Amanda Nicholson, interim deputy senior vice president for enrollment and the student experience, said SU cannot offer free printing to students, a demand of #NotAgainSU. SU will double the available printing funds for students from $20 to $40, she said, costing the university $400,000 annually.

No decision has been made about the demand for laundry services to be free, Nicholson said.

“I believe in the laundry issue,” Nicholson said. “I’m going to keep pushing on it to see if there’s a way we can do that.”

Protesters also pressed officials about the university’s commitments to counseling services. #NotAgainSU organizers want to open an additional counseling position to lower the ratio of counselors to students.

SU hired four new counselors prior to the start of the 2019-20 academic year, said Rob Hradsky, senior associate vice president of the student experience and dean of students. The university also created four additional counselor positions after #NotAgainSU’s November sit-in at the Barnes Center at The Arch.

SU believes the four additional counseling positions are adequate, Hradsky said.

Newly-created positions in SU’s counseling center exceed the perceived future demand for mental health services from students, Hradsky said. SU gathered feedback from students and evaluated the progress of students who currently use mental health services, he said.

An organizer said that process is not enough to estimate future demand for student mental health services.

Keith Alford, chief diversity and inclusion officer, said he would like to revisit the availability of mental health services at tomorrow’s negotiations.

An organizer said #NotAgainSU will refuse to work with SU any further on mental health services if the university doesn’t agree to add at least one additional counseling position.

A student at the negotiations said the university needs to expel any perpetrator of hate crimes immediately to show SU is taking the situation seriously. There should be varying degrees of punishment for bystanders, the student said.

SU will try to hold accountable any individual who has helped someone commit targeted vandalism, Thomson said.

SU officials and students also revisited discussions about multicultural living and learning communities Tuesday.

Thomson said Monday that SU could not promise to create a multicultural living and learning community in each of the university’s residence halls. #NotAgainSU organizers argued that the administration had already agreed to this in November.

The movement’s initial list of demands called for the expansion of multicultural learning communities “to more residence halls on campus,” but did not specify the communities should be located in every dorm.

Hradsky on Tuesday confirmed that SU will launch a multicultural living and learning community in Day Hall, where several racist incidents have occurred.

Thomson will revise SU’s response for additional multicultural living and learning communities and revisit them during negotiations Wednesday.

Nicholson also said the university would recommit to improving housing services for students with disabilities.

SU is currently undergoing a disability review with an outside company, and issues that protesters brought up will be given to that company during its review, Hradsky said.

Published on March 4, 2020 at 12:05 am

Contact Michael: msessa@syr.edu | @MichaelSessa3