Administrators, faculty and staff should address the recent student proposal that the University stop observing Columbus Day, the Brown University Community Council unanimously recommended yesterday.
The resolution came in response to a presentation by Reiko Koyama '11, Dana Eldridge '10 and Jerry Wolf Duff Sellers '09, who said that in future years Brown should not observe Columbus Day by cancelling all University exercises, and instead choose a different day off.
The students also proposed that the University designate a week in October as "Indigenous Week" for discussions, events and lectures about Native American history.
Nearly 20 supporters showed up to the meeting and held up signs with slogans like "Historical Accuracy is Important to Me" and "Hear Indigenous Voices" during the council's discussion of the proposal.
Observing Columbus Day, Koyama said in her presentation, is "in effect condoning the atrocities that (Columbus) was responsible for" and "at odds with Brown's reputation."
Brown and Harvard are the only Ivy League schools that currently recognize Columbus Day. But in discussion, council members raised concerns about where the line should be drawn between abolishing Columbus Day and doing away with other holidays that could be seen as honoring shameful points in history, such as Thanksgiving.
Provost David Kertzer '69 P'95 P'98 also addressed the "practical issues" of having a holiday calendar at odds with that of Providence's school district, where many children of faculty and staff attend school.
While the presenters recognized that the calendar change could be inconvenient for some community members, it would allow Brown to serve as a role model and set a precedent for local school districts, Koyama said.
"This is not a departure point of Brown from Columbus Day," Sellers said. "Increased dialogue is a cornerstone."
The council was hesitant to take action on the issue without first holding a broader community forum, but President Ruth Simmons urged members to make a statement of support in the face of what she warned could be "tremendous resentment" and "a lot of national attention directed at students for doing this."
"I think it would be important for us to have a sort of community statement about this," Simmons said.
Professor of Physics David Cutts then proposed a motion stating the council "feels there are important concerns associated with the holding of Columbus Day as well as with the honoring of Native American history, and these concerns should be addressed by the University faculty as well as the administrative bodies."
The motion was seconded and the word "staff" was added as another body that should address the issue. The council then voted unanimously in favor of the motion.
"I'm glad that they gave us the support to go forward," Koyama said. "I was kind of hoping for a more explicit endorsement but I guess given the circumstances, they just needed to know how the rest of the community and faculty perceived it."
In the remainder of the meeting, the council discussed the Amethyst Initiative, a petition that encourages debate and open discussion about lowering the federal drinking age.
About 130 college and university presidents have signed on, though Simmons has not.
The meeting also included a presentation by Brenda Allen, associate provost and director of institutional diversity, on the current status of the Diversity Action Plan and an update by Kertzer on the University's financial status in the face of the current economic crisis.
