MSU Progressive Alliance DEMANDS a Sanctuary Campus, Money, Others
Updated: Oct 14, 2020
Author: Grant Layle
One of 10 demands include a required prerequisite course on “race, ethnicity, racism, and gender” by Fall 2020.
Other demands include registration as a sanctuary school, and mandatory sensitivity training for police, students, and faculty on culture, race, and religion. In addition, more Black and minority faculty and staff to represent national demographics.
The demands appeared on October 27, with several student groups publishing their "10 Point Plan for Diversity, Equity and Inclusion." This comes after several racial and alleged bias events on campus.
The Black Student Alliance recently published their own demands.
Created alongside other groups within the Council of Progressive Students (COPS) and Council of Racial and Ethnic Students (CORES), Muslim Student Association, and Black Student Alliance, the demands hope to create a more inclusive and diverse campus.
The 10 demands include:
A mandatory general education course for all students on "race, ethnicity, racism, and gender”
Cultural, racial, and religious sensitivity training for all faculty, staff, contractors, and police officers”
A staff race distribution in each department identical to the US population's "current national demographics”
For MSU to become registered as a sanctuary school
For a free standing multicultural building constructed on campus
To increase the number of gender inclusive housing options and restrooms on campus by 75%
That Student Affairs create a create a designated fund for the Council of Progressive Students
“Calling them ‘demands’ makes them look like little brats,” said MSU student Leslie Asman.
“They push the liberal agenda that universities refuse to admit they have,” she further told The Morning Watch. She is a senior studying Integrative Biology.
A different student supported the demands. “I agree with everything stated,” MSU student Catherine Davis told The Morning Watch, “I also think accurate and inclusive sexual education should be mandatory for all students.”
She is a junior majoring in Media and Information and Psychology.
Other groups within COPS include the Arab Cultural Society, Council of Students with Disabilities, Women's Council, and MSU Student Veterans of America. It is unconfirmed whether all these groups had participation in drafting the demands.
All 19 of these groups occupy their own seat on the student government’s general assembly. COPS receive upwards of $200K a year. In these demands it asks for a separate COPS fund.
The demand for registration as a sanctuary school, which would prohibit any ICE agent's presence on campus and deny the enforcement of immigration law. This comes weeks after a panic among many students that ICE agents were on campus. Without any hard evidence of the event, MSU's student government was still quick to pass a resolution that called ICE "detrimental and disruptive to students' health and safety."
The demand on a multicultural center did not include a cost, however there have been several talks among student groups and the student government on the project. University of Michigan's multicultural center, the Trotter Center, opened this spring and costed $10 million.
All ultimatums were specified to start next fall, ranging to December 2021.
The Morning Watch reached out to several CORES/COPS groups for comment, but received no comment in time for publication.
Contributor: Grant Layle