In light of today being Martin Luther King Jr. Day, I think it is appropriate to take a look at my latest long-going projects in the Archives: Racism at OSU.
My first tale begins in 1969 when the Great Pumpkin, Dee Andros, was the head football coach at Oregon State. As is a common practice among various sports teams (the New York Yankees are perhaps the most obvious example), Coach Andros had a strict policy of his players remaining clean-shaven. Most of the team stayed within compliance of his policy, but one day in 1969, black player Fred Milton decided to grow a beard anyways. Upon his first sighting by Coach Andros, Milton was told that the beard had to go, and rather than concede, Milton stubbornly refused. After his suspension, Milton cried foul, pulling out the race card, and the 160ish-strong Black Student Union organized protests and a boycott of classes. Not much really happened in the aftermath, except that Milton transferred and a couple other black students left the team. Andros went on to become the Athletic Director, but although the incident gained international attention (I read one account of a man's friend calling about it from Turkey!), no policy changes were enacted. At a glance, this case really seems silly. I mean, what is racist about asking him to shave his beard? All the white players had equal treatment! BUT, in the words of Lee Corso, "not so fast, my friend!" In digging deeper, I discovered that, while not an inherently racist event, it was the catalyst sparking an already-present mood around campus. My final impression: stupid people did stupid racist things, so later, a harmless event channelled the existing tension and sparked a fire.
Fast-forward to the fall of 1990. The coordinator for the Black Cultural Center on campus was walking near campus when a van drove by. A member of the van hurled racial slurs, and the van sped off. Some accounts say the van even forced him to move out of the way, though the van driver was eventually cleared of all wrong-doing. In protest, the coordinator closed the BCC that Wednesday. His protest brought attention to tensions on campus which had been a real problem. In fact, he even claimed that similar events had happened at least two times prior. Fortunately, support on campus was so overwhelming that the center reopened two days later. The event also proved to have lasting effects as the university acknowledged a student request for a new educational requirement, the Difference, Power, and Discrimination portion of the Baccalaureate Core. While I personally bemoan the requirement as yet another annoying hurdle unrelated to my major (math, science, and DPD are not too separated on my interest scale), I do appreciate its importance and view its addition as a step in the right direction.
Skip ahead to 1996. Two students hurled racial slurs and attempted to urinate on a black student from an upper floor of their dorm. Coupled with the defacing of a political poster (a black student running for ASOSU President), the event sparked outrage, and led by the Black Cultural Center, the All OSU Boycott was organized. Between 1400 and 2000 (depending on the source) students participated in a silent march through campus, ending in the Quad with speeches. The two students were charged and convicted with hate crimes, and again, the tensions on campus were brought to the forefront. State-wide media covered the event, and letters to the editor at the Daily Barometer were in abundance for months. The poster-defacer was also banned from student housing for two terms. It is worth note that the victim of the urination was also the victim of another event in 1999, although no charges were filed.
As I am fairly observant of the fine line between either dwelling on the past to a fault or forgetting the past, I think revisiting events like these are healthy to do, especially on days like this which focus on such revolutionaries as Martin Luther King Jr. and the dream for which he fought. As I walk on campus in 2012, reading about past racism at OSU is shocking to me as the culture I have witnessed is vastly different from even 1996. Hopefully I am not blind about events on campus, but it seems to me that the last 15-16 years has seen great improvement at OSU.
No comments:
Post a Comment