#NotAgainSU organizers reflect on progress 1 year after protests
Nabeeha Anwar | Presentation Director
While #NotAgainSU organizers knew that being suspended was a possibility, they never thought DPS would seal off the building and prevent other students from bringing food and supplies inside.
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UPDATED: Nov. 16, 2020 at 12:31 p.m.
When Gaelyn Smith returned to Syracuse University to take graduation pictures, she felt unwelcome on the campus she had called home for four years.
It was the first time Smith, who is now a graduate student at SU, had been on campus since January. In the months since, the #NotAgainSU movement had occupied Crouse-Hinds Hall for 31 days. The movement, led by Black students, protested the university’s handling of a series of racist incidents through two separate building occupations during the 2019-20 academic year.
Smith was one of the movement’s core organizers when it occupied the Barnes Center at The Arch in the fall and participated remotely in the spring. Returning to campus brought her a familiar sense of anxiety and discomfort, as well as the feeling that she was unwanted.
“The last time I’d been on campus, there were people who didn’t want me on campus anymore,” Smith said. “It’s a really hard thing to deal with, knowing that there are people at an institution of higher learning that don’t want you to get an education, that don’t want you to be there.”
Student organizers with the movement told The Daily Orange that their memories of the protests, and the systemic racism that sparked them, remain fresh a year later. While the protests increased awareness about racism at SU, there will likely have to be more movements like #NotAgainSU before real change comes to pass, they said. Tayla Myree, who graduated from SU last year and was an organizer with #NotAgainSU during both protests, is disheartened by the way the university treated protesters during the early days of the Crouse-Hinds occupation.
#NotAgainSU occupied Crouse-Hinds for 31 days beginning Feb. 17, making it one of the longest-running student protests in SU’s history. Some organizers opted to remain inside Crouse-Hinds when the building closed on the first night of the protest. About three hours after the building closed, the university suspended more than 30 students, including Myree, who had stayed.
The following day, the Department of Public Safety sealed off the building, preventing outside food, medicine and supplies from entering, even as a crowd of protesters amassed around the entrance. DPS officers would engage in several physical altercations with protesters, and organizers alleged officials used food and supplies as bargaining tools before the building reopened.
While #NotAgainSU organizers knew that being suspended was a possibility, they never thought DPS would seal off the building and prevent other students from bringing food and supplies inside, Myree said. Many of the organizers received letters stating they had made the Dean’s List on the same day they received suspension notices, she said.
“It’s disheartening and very upsetting that the school reacted the way that they did,” Myree said. “And we had enough faith in the institution that they would never react that way because it’s not something we ever thought of.”
Chidube Egbo, a senior acting student who participated in #NotAgainSU’s occupations of the Barnes Center and Crouse-Hinds, said the first night and the second day of the Crouse-Hinds occupation were the most trying for protesters.
Egbo was one of several students who showed up outside of Crouse-Hinds on the first night after word spread that SU was suspending students inside.
“It was just sad and terrifying because we didn’t know what was going to happen,” he said. “We didn’t know what the university was going to do or how they were going to hurt students.”
SU can only make up for its treatment of protesters in Crouse-Hinds by meeting the group’s demands, said Ursula Swiza, a senior biotechnology major and a former #NotAgainSU organizer.
Over the course of the two occupations, #NotAgainSU submitted over 30 demands to SU’s administration regarding the university’s treatment of Black students and students of color.
Chancellor Kent Syverud signed several of the movement’s demands in the fall but revised others. In the spring, #NotAgainSU organizers and university officials engaged in four contentious negotiation sessions but achieved common ground on few of the group’s key demands.
The university has made incremental progress on meeting the movement’s demands, recently adding punishments for bystanders of hate crimes to the Code of Student Conduct and allocating $600,000 to a city volunteer program.
“It’s an ongoing process,” Swiza said. “It’s not just going to magically fix itself in a span of a year. (SU) has a lot of work to do. And it’s going to take them years and years of ongoing work, and focus on that work.”
While the university has the ability to protect marginalized students on campus, it doesn’t allocate enough resources or money to do so, #NotAgainSU said in a statement to The D.O.
“(SU) has the power to decide who is a priority on campus and they are able to protect marginalized students,” the group stated. “But they don’t and they choose not to over and over.”
More than making slow progress, the university also must actively commit to being an anti-racist organization, Smith said.
“Just because I can go to Syracuse University doesn’t mean that this university is inclusive and welcoming of me,” Smith said. “Our educational experiences are not the same as our white counterparts because of the intense amount of microaggressions, overt and covert racism, the systemic racism that we go through.”
More than making slow progress, the university also must actively commit to being an anti-racist organization. TJ Shaw | Staff Photographer
Smith recalled when head men’s basketball coach Jim Boeheim visited the Barnes Center sit-in. When Boeheim came to the protest, he told organizers they can’t blame the racist acts of a few rogue students on the university. His statement angered many in attendance.
Boeheim later visited the building with pizza, and protesters rejected it.
To Smith, Boeheim’s visit demonstrated a glaring blindspot among white decision-makers at SU and in the administration concerning what white privilege is and how it impacts Black people and people of color.
“I think (moments such as Boeheim’s visit) opens up a larger conversation of ‘how does Syracuse University see the humanity of students, and does that change when we’re talking about Black students?’” Smith said. “Does it change when we’re talking about Asian students? Does it change when we’re talking about trans students or queer students? It’s clear that it does. And what is Syracuse University going to do to change and combat that?”
Sarah Jimenez Miles | Design Editor
For some members of #NotAgainSU, the racist incidents on campus in the 2019-20 academic year felt like a continuation of racism they had witnessed during their entire time at SU.
SU’s chapter of the Theta Tau fraternity was suspended in April 2018 after the university confirmed it was involved in the creation of online videos showing fraternity members engaging in behaviors that were “extremely racist, anti-Semitic, homophobic, sexist, and hostile to people with disabilities.” The video sparked protests on SU’s campus.
Many students who took part in the #NotAgainSU movement also witnessed the Theta Tau video and participated in the protests that followed.
Smith, who was an undergraduate student at SU when the Theta Tau videos surfaced, said she was infuriated to witness so many racist incidents at the university.
“Syracuse continues to let things like this fly, which is why then you go into classrooms as a Black student and you have your white classmates making ignorant comments or thinking it’s appropriate to use the N-word in their classroom assignments,” she said. “Things like that happen because Syracuse doesn’t handle these problems.”
If Myree didn’t participate in the Theta Tau protests, she wouldn’t have participated in #NotAgainSU. She said the Theta Tau video tarnished her view of SU and made her realize how prevalent systemic racism is on campus.
Both Smith and Myree wish students wouldn’t have to protest to enact change on campus. Many #NotAgainSU organizers said they’re still experiencing trauma related to the university’s harsh response to the Crouse-Hinds occupation.
“I genuinely hope the university gets better so that no one ever has to deal with what happened in Crouse-Hinds,” Myree said.
But Smith doesn’t think students will be able to stop protesting until SU commits to being anti-racist.
The #NotAgainSU movement and the fight against racism at SU are far from over, Egbo said.
“I truly believe that, as long as there are Black students on this campus or just any students that can be impacted by this, that there will always be organizing,” Egbo said. “It’s just a matter of when and what triggers it.”
CORRECTION: In a previous version of this post, the time since Gaelyn Smith had returned to campus and her role in NotAgainSU’s occupation of Crouse-Hinds Hall was misstated. The Daily Orange regrets these errors.
Published on November 16, 2020 at 12:29 am
Contact Maggie: mehicks@syr.edu | @maggie_hickss
