Student mobilization challenges racism

Thanks in large part to a spontaneous Oct. 10 high school student walkout, the Ithaca, N.Y., school board voted unanimously on Oct. 23 to rescind its challenge of the state’s human rights law.

Students chant outside the administrative offices at Ithaca High School Oct. 8 to protest the way the Board of Education has dealt with recent racial incidents. Around 50 students attended the protest, which lasted about six hours. Photo: Andy Swift/The Ithacan

It all started two years ago when an African-American student in Ithaca, the home of Cornell University, suffered racial harassment, threats and physical abuse in her seventh-grade year. For example, one day she was told by white students on her school bus that there was a gun with her name on it; another day a white student held up a sign that said, “KKK I hate n——rs,” as she was getting off the bus.

Frustrated with the assistant principal’s inaction, the Black student’s mother, Amelia Kearney, sent an e-mail to each member of the board of education, but received no reply from any of the board’s nine members. She also contacted the local police. The racist harassers were arrested and had a restraining order placed on them. But the school, ignoring the restraining order, placed Kearney’s daughter in the same class with one of the harassers the following year.

Finally Kearney approached the state’s Division of Human Rights, which determined there was probable cause of racism, and brought suit against the Ithaca City School District on Kearney’s behalf.

But in late September, the ICSD obtained a temporary restraining order to halt the legal process, which had been scheduled to begin Oct. 1. The district argued that because of student privacy laws, the Division of Human Rights should not have jurisdiction over public education.

If this challenge had succeeded, public school students across the state of New York—in particular, students of color and LGBT students—would have no recourse to the state Division of Human Rights.

A public outcry ensued. During a lunchtime rally in front of the Board of Education office on Oct. 1, demonstrators stormed the office and staged a spontaneous sit-in, demanding a dialogue with the superintendent, Judith Pastel. She eventually agreed to talk with the demonstrators, on condition that the dialog take place outside.

Building on the momentum, community members and high school students voiced their outrage at a Board of Education meeting on Oct. 9. A motion was then made by the sole African-American member of the board, Seth Peacock, for the district to withdraw its human rights challenge and allow the Kearney hearing to take place. The board voted 5 to 3 to postpone a vote on Peacock’s motion, and then attempted to turn to other matters. The crowd objected vociferously, took to the stage and shut down the meeting.

On the morning of Oct. 10, a small group of irate Ithaca High School students refused to attend classes. They staged an impromptu march through the school and the board office next door, swelling their ranks as they protested. The principal, Joe Wilson, promptly locked the demonstrators out of the school building and locked the rest of the students in their classrooms.

Wilson then sent the district’s sole African-American administrator, Assistant Superintendent Leslie Myers, to talk to the students. She tried the “divide and conquer” tactic by inviting the students to send a “delegation” to sit down and talk with her, but the students would have none of it. They insisted that if she wanted to dialog, she would have to dialog with all of them.

Myers eventually agreed and the students aired their grievances, citing systemic racism in the Ithaca schools, with the Kearney case being just the tip of the iceberg. They gave numerous examples of white students and Black students receiving different punishments for the same infraction, with a white student often receiving a two-day suspension, or no suspension, and a Black student receiving a two-week, four-week, or even a six-week suspension.

This double standard helps to explain why only half of Ithaca’s students of color graduate from high school.

Principal Wilson eventually showed up at the meeting and, under pressure from the students, agreed to hold an open forum where the student body and the community could learn about racism in the ICSD. He promised to hold the forum within seven school days.

Demonstrators returned to class, but made it clear over the next week that they meant to hold Wilson to his promise. They distributed “Seven Countdown to Equity” flyers and wore a designated color each day to represent an aspect of their struggle.

In the ensuing week, Pastel and Wilson tried to use “racial tensions” and “safety concerns” as a smokescreen to distract the community from student grievances. Wilson did not keep his word about holding an open forum. On the sixth day, Oct. 18, he held two closed meetings, one for downtown students of color and one for rural, white students, and denied entrance to parents and community members.

On the weekend of Oct. 20-21, the district called in the New York State Center for School Safety and the Department of Justice to bolster the local police presence in the high school. District administrators spent the weekend harassing students and parents with phone calls to prevent students from holding another rally.

But the students’ voices had been heard loud and clear by the Board of Education. On Oct. 23, before a crowd of 200 people, the board voted unanimously to accept Seth Peacock’s motion to rescind the human rights challenge and allow the Kearney case to be heard.

After the revote, according to the Ithaca Journal, “Peacock thanked Lambda Legal, a legal advocacy group that focuses on gay rights, for alerting the board that its challenge would remove the only effective legal protection for LGBT students. ‘I want to thank Lambda for their involvement in this case,’ Peacock said. ‘Their letter, I think, allowed many of us to look at this issue differently.’ ”

Building on this victory, the movement for equity in Ithaca is continuing to call for the ouster of Pastel and Wilson and an apology from the district to Amelia Kearney and her daughter. Students and parents want to see more ethnic studies courses at the high school—currently there is only one; a clear policy for dealing with racist acts in school and on school buses; and equitable and positive disciplinary methods, as an alternative to the draconian suspensions of students of color.