This past Thursday, hundreds of Ithaca College students made a passionate and powerful statement in response to recent grand jury decisions in Ferguson, Missouri, and Staten Island, New York. By filling the Campus Center and then the atrium of the Peggy Ryan Williams Center, they made their sentiments known with their voices and their bodies.
I applaud these students for their activism and their engagement. As I said in my remarks to them, they have taken on the role of leaders of their generation both in condemning racial injustice and in vowing to create change.
Police brutality should never be tolerated, and I join with all fair-minded people in condemning any abuse of power and authority.
In the course of the demonstration, a demand was articulated to establish a Native American Studies minor. Although I do not have the authority to create fields of study at IC, I stated that I would advocate for the establishment of this program. Following up later that day, I learned that we already have a Native American Studies minor in the School of Humanities and Sciences, with four faculty members listed in connection with the program and with courses available that draw on seven different academic departments. I will advocate for the strength and vitality of this program.
Ithaca College is at its best when our community is engaged in critical analysis and action on issues that matter. I was privileged last week to witness the strong current of activism for racial justice that exists on our campus. As a scholar of social movement activism, I applaud the work of the demonstration organizers and of all who participated. Sixteen years ago I concluded my book on the process of cultural transformation with the following two sentences: “The twentieth-century development of [the tools of social movement protest] has helped to embed in our culture the idea that change is eternal, powerful, and (taken in the aggregate) for the better. It remains for the inhabitants of the twenty-first century to put those tools to good use.”
I can state with confidence—and a great deal of pride—that our students are, indeed, putting these tools to good use.
Tom Rochon
President
https://www.ithaca.edu/intercom/article.php/20141207210802468