By Fa’Ttima Omran
In light of the growth of #BlackLivesMatter into a social justice movement that addresses visual and institutional inequality, it is concerning to see the lack of action taken by the University of Missouri to ensure the safety of Black students when they have been targeted by specific threats.
Despite the severity of online threats posted on the social media platform YikYak, which claimed that an unknown student would “stand there [sic] ground and shoot every Black person they see,” the amount of collective safety planning, beyond individual action, was minimal.
Exams were held as usual by many professors, many of whom, such as associate professor Dale Brigham, encouraged students to refuse to “give into bullies.”
This was the attitude even after University of Missouri (Mizzou) students reported being circled by an unlicensed blue monster pickup truck, while having KKK references screeched at them. Strangely, even this did not register with administration as an unnerving act of personal harassment. Students who felt uneasy had their requests for campus police escorts on and off campus denied because their situation lacked severity.
There is a marked difference in the ways that universities tend to respond to threats against the safety of their students.
In October 2015, Wilfrid Laurier University’s Waterloo campus underwent a lockdown, which suspended all classes and discouraged commutes to campus. This was in response to an online bomb threat that resulted in the arrest of 22 year-old U.K. resident Daniel Ransem. Ransem faces charges under the U.K.’s Malicious Communications Act of 1988, which applies to the sending of electronic messages that result in distress or anxiety with a maximum of an 18-month sentence.
At the University of Toronto (U of T), online threats were made under the Twitter hashtag #KillFeminists against students and staff of the school’s Department of Women and Gender Studies and the Department of Sociology. U of T has been criticized for their delayed efforts to contact the targeted departments, their subsequent investigation and the gradual increase of security presence at all three campuses.
There are eerie parallels between these threats and those acted out in the École Polytechnique Massacre over 25 years ago, with a similar sentiment expressed within Elliot Rodger’s chilling misogynist manifesto after the Isla Vista Massacre in 2014.
While U of T issued a newsletter that urged students and staff to “proceed with caution,” administration chose not to give any further details about the threats after consultation with the Toronto Police Service.
Professors at Mizzou and local law enforcement officials alike have chosen to dismiss the safety concerns of Black students. An email response from a professor stated that the University of Missouri is a big campus and students should not feel paralyzed by fear. Unfortunately, these unsympathetic responses may come down to the experience of power and privilege. Whose right to pursue an education is truly being valued in this kind of response? Had this been a threat to the entire student body, could we suspect more active precautions taken?
A generic threat always targets the stereotypical university student. The lives of white, cisgendered students from affluent backgrounds, in the above examples, seem to take precedence over the protection of women, self-identified feminists, or racialized students.
The vigilance given towards one demographic is met without questioning the legitimacy of their claims nor with any sympathizing with the offenders. Systematic oppression is always faulted by those impacted by epistemic violence, but not often by those inflicting it.
Discomfort is experienced when the privilege nexus is not fully interrogated. Classroom settings and communities can hold Eurocentric biases. Even by the most well-intended of allies, power imbalances can be maintained as status quo.
Consider whose history is set as the core curriculum and whose lived experience can only be pursued as a university minor or elective.
Even Disability Studies at Carleton University, after the advocacy required to bring it into the intellectual spectrum, is available as only a minor.
Which scholars are cited as the cutting edge of their field? Those with highly privileged backgrounds maintain their space in legitimacy but that space is continually being challenged by growth and resistance.
The politics of the Black Lives Matter movement are continually resonant in North America, whether in the stunning tributes to the Black trans community, as well as victims of police violence, that are viciously defaced, or in the politics of everyday life, which force a choice between personal safety and personal freedom. For lives to truly matter, these realities must be acknowledged and responded to with surrounding mobilization and support. Stating that all lives matter maintains hierarchical structures that treat the concerns of Black students as only paranoia, while generic threats to the entire student population are a pandemic.
This article first appeared in the Leveller Vol. 8 No. 3 (Nov/Dec 2015).
