Colleges across the country are grappling with protest rallies and marches. They've been sparked by concerns about race relations and accusations of systemic bias against black and Hispanic students.
The State University of New York at Plattsburgh has seen its own series of rallies and forums. They started in late October after a student newspaper published a cartoon widely viewed as offensive.
Many students now say that image revealed a deeper culture of prejudice and inequality on the campus.
When the Cardinal Points newspaper came out three weeks ago, it included an image of a grinning black man walking through a run-down, urban ghetto—a cartoon that a lot of people saw as racist and offensive. In the days since, the cartoon has triggered a wider movement on campus, opening big questions about race and fairness.
Students called the protest “Let’s Get Uncomfortable.”
Standing on a bench, Priscilla Burke addressed hundreds of other students at a rally on campus earlier this week. “What are you tired of, being discriminated against? Being hated for your race? For your color?” she said.
Campus officials have worked fast to try to contain the damage done here. SUNY Plattsburgh President John Ettling issued a statement scolding the editors of Cardinal Points.
“In my eleven, going on twelve years here, I have never seen such a spontaneous and widespread outpouring of anger and hurt as this cartoon has triggered,” Ettling said.
The newspaper staff has apologized and the art student who drew the image resigned from Cardinal Points. At a campus forum last week, Editor-in-Chief Maggie McVey, the student in charge of the paper who’s been on staff for more than three years, conceded she dropped the ball. She said her busy schedule and the pressure of the job meant the cartoon was published without proper review.
“Cardinal Points did mess up. There’s no way around that and we’re not going to deny it,” McVey said.
The school has commissioned an external review of the incident, led by a former editor of the Plattsburgh Press Republican. Cardinal Points will now hold diversity trainings each semester for its entire staff. And President Ettling has also formed a campus-wide diversity task force.
But a lot of people on campus say McVey and the paper’s other top editors need to step down. During the forum last week in one of the ballrooms on campus, Kalewold Kalewold, a student from Ethiopia, encouraged the crowd to sign his petition.
“They need to resign not because we are trying to punish them,” he said, “but because this is a failure of leadership. Kalewold said he’s collected over 700 signatures so far.
Looking beyond the cartoon
But the outrage has clearly shifted its focus to bigger questions about race relations at SUNY Plattsburgh.
“I don’t care about Cardinal Points at this point,” said Gennovva Pham, a member of the school’s black student union. “I don’t care about the person who released the graphic. You know why? If we focus on one person, what change is that going to bring?”
Other students agree that the issue is much bigger than one cartoon, and they’ve been sharing stories about the stereotypes they encountered before the image was published. Modi Conteh told the crowd this week that being black doesn’t mean he’s poor.
“Because I’m black that means maybe I’m smart. Maybe I can become a doctor or lawyer, but you don’t think that because the color of my skin determines what I am to you. That stops today. That has to stop today,” he said.
Omar Hoyos is a freshman who wore a black tie and vest to the rally. He said he’s had second thoughts about coming to this campus.
“I didn’t know what I got myself into. I have been addressed as a brain-dead Mexican. Someone has called me that.”
This is a time when protests at colleges across the country have put top campus officials on the defensive. At SUNY Plattsburgh, campus leaders are clearly scrambling to show they’re on the students’ side. Vice President for Student Affairs Bryan Hartman, wearing a pink shirt and a “no discrimination” button on his lapel, told the crowd this week he’s doing everything he can to make things right. \
“I am ashamed to admit that I have not personally and professionally done enough to create a safe space for students that deserve to come to college and not face discrimination,” he said.
While some students think the response to the cartoon isn’t going far enough, others think racial tension on campus just isn’t a major issue.
“I believe it was an inappropriate cover but I also think it was blown way out of proportion. I understand why they were upset but I think it was too much. It was not that big of a deal, to be honest,” said Marty Wilson, a junior nutrition major.
But SUNY Plattsburgh President John Ettling said the students who are protesting are right. He said the school has let them down.
“So I would say to people who think we’re making a mountain out of a molehill, listen to our students. They don’t think it’s a molehill,” Ettling said.
A cultural misunderstanding
There is one other twist complicating the debate over the Cardinal Points cartoon that sparked these protests. One of the editors being pressured to resign is Winta Mebrahti, herself a woman of color.
“I understand why people are upset about it. But there’s also people who take it – who see it in a different way, as in overcoming adversities,” Mebrahti said. “I think I took it that way when I first saw it.”
Mebrahti is black, but she’s not African-American. She grew up in Sweden. She said that’s why said she didn’t see any problems with the image.
“What the African-American people experience, I haven’t experienced that. I come from Sweden. And my experience is I get discriminated against because I’m an immigrant. Not necessarily because I’m black. There are incidents of black people being discriminated against in Sweden but not on the same level as Americans,” she said.”
Last month, SUNY Plattsburgh’s chief diversity officer J.W. Wiley said Mebrahti’s decision to let the cartoon go to print was a “mistake” caused by a cultural misunderstanding.
“I know her. I’ve read her papers. I know she cares about diversity and social justice.”
The student government here plans to reexamine its contract with the Cardinal Points newspaper next semester. Meanwhile, SUNY Plattsburgh has joined campuses across the United States trying to figure out how to include people of all races and backgrounds. While that process is underway, the students say they’ll keep protesting.
But after that, the top editors of Cardinal Points announced they’ll resign, according to the newspaper’s website.
"The decision is intended to allow healing and the focus to shift onto the issues we all agree so badly need attention," Editor in Chief Maggie McVey and Managing Editor Winta Mebrahti wrote in Friday’s issue of the paper.
"We painfully know that the printing of the grievous Oct. 23 front-page illustration occurred under our watch, and we deeply regret its publication," the editors wrote.
"The illustration does not reflect our own views, the views of Cardinal Points, nor the campus community."
McVey and Mebrahti said they’ll work on two more editions of the newspaper before they step down. Nearly 1,000 people had signed a petition asking them to leave Cardinal Points.
