This past week showed an excitement and vitality that arguably hasn’t existed on Brown’s campus since the struggle for need-blind admission in the 90s. Despite highs and lows and victories and frustrations, the feeling that something important is happening on this campus is undeniable.
This feeling is largely because of two important events on campus: the Corporation’s refusal to divest from coal and the protest against New York Police Commissioner Ray Kelly. The former clearly demonstrated that we students have no power in this University through the “proper channels,” no matter how many students support our cause. The latter showed us that the way for students to make a difference on this campus is through action.
What succeeded in the Kelly protest was the time-honored tactic of disruption, like that used in the protests against the Vietnam and Iraq wars, for instance. Similar to the government-sponsored forums and televised events that promoted these wars, the Kelly event was not going to be a place for equal discourse. Kelly was the one with the mic and the platform, and the other side had neither. We are kidding ourselves if we think the questions we asked would have been new to Kelly, who has spoken about these policies many times before — even if someone asked what we considered to be the perfect question.
The protest, on the other hand, succeeded in stopping our institution from giving Kelly a platform. It succeeded in allowing those who are never given this platform a chance to speak and be heard campus-wide, if not nation-wide. The mainly black and Latino students and community members who disrupted the events were heard, even if their statements about the policies had rarely been reported before. Finally, the protest disrupted Kelly’s ability to teach the Providence Police force — for whom the two front rows were reserved — how to implement these policies here in Providence.
We need student power at the University because we should play a role in deciding how it is run, along with faculty members and staff members. We should be able to decide what the University is invested in — after all, it is investing our money. We should also be able to decide how it is run: for instance, whether constant renovations are worth continual tuition hikes.
And because the University is a key center of knowledge production, we should have a say in whose voice our institution magnifies. Deciding to give the platform to Kelly or to those who have suffered from racist police policies — or both — is a political choice. Right now, this choice is made by whoever gives money for lectures. Money equals speech, not only in political campaigns, but also on this campus. Students, faculty members and staff members should decide whose voice we magnify with our institution, not money.
Universities for the past few decades, at Brown and across the country, have been characterized by increasing tuition but decreasing student power, decreasing pay and tenure rates for faculty members and decreasing pay and benefits for staffers. This money is being put toward more administrators with higher salaries and toward shiny new sports facilities and dorms. While some sports struggle to obtain funding and varsity status, others bring the University prestige and revenue from ticket sales. And dorms help attract wealthier students who can afford these higher tuition rates. The decisions of this University should be based on the priorities of those studying or working here, not on revenue maximization.
We should be fighting for greater say in the University, ways to directly influence the Corporation or greater faculty governance and tenure rates. But our main weapon as students is action.
The Kelly event showed this most recently, but we need only look to the struggles that created need-blind admission, the Africana Studies department or the Third World Center to see how students can change the campus: through protests, disruptions of events, sit-ins and walk-outs. In the coming weeks, we expect and hope to see struggles for student power on this campus, such as the upcoming action by Brown Divest Coal, and we encourage everyone to join them.
The Brown International Socialist Organization can be contacted at isoatbrown@gmail.com.
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