HUNDREDS URGE RPI TO ‘SAVE THE UNION’
Protesters ignore fence set up to keep them away from black-tie alumni gala
TROY, N.Y. » If officials at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute had their way Friday, alumni entering a black-tie gala hosted by college President Shirley Ann Jackson to kick off a new capital campaign may not have been able to see protesters simultaneously demonstrating on campus, but hundreds of demonstrators refused to let a makeshift fence keep them from letting guests at the event hear them call on Jackson and the college administration to abandon what they see as the latest attempt to take control of the student-run Rensselaer Union.
With chants such as “Build bridges, not fences” and “Save our union,” demonstrators broke through the fence and took their protest onto the quadrangle leading down to the Curtis R. Priem Experimental Media and Performing Arts Center and the Richard G. Folsom Library. Under the watchful eye of campus and private security, augmented by Troy police, students and alumni one-by-one exhorted Jackson and her administration to abandon what they claim is a nearly two-year effort to take control of the student union away from students for the first time in its 127-year
history.
“I don’t know about you, but I’m pretty angry,” said Bryan Johns, one of the organizers of the protest, to raucous applause at the beginning of the protest.
Johns was also the student whose application to have Friday’s protest was rejected by college administrators, citing security concerns. He and other organizers, however, implored demonstrators to remain both peaceful and respectful.
“We want to make sure [the protest] is respectful, so they don’t have anything to hold against us,” Michael Gardner, another of the protest’s organizers, urged the crowd. “We want to have a clear message about keeping our union.”
But after about 20 minutes of speeches by students and alumni, protesters simply moved aside the waisthigh fence and poured into the middle of the quadrangle, with security doing little more than observing as they continued their chants and speeches while darkness fell over the campus. Graduate student Lee Nelson directly challenged alumni to join students in taking a stand against Jackson and her heavyhanded control over the college.
“Thank you for not donating money to RPI,” he said, “and for recognizing it is not your role to make up for the administration’s bad management of institutional funds and blatant disregard for the wishes and health of the student body and the student union. Thank you for realizing that to love RPI is to persist in your protest of the administration’s behavior in whatever way you can.”
Nelson’s message was not lost on Raymond Parker, a 1987 RPI graduate who said he served on the college’s Executive Board and Graduate Student Council. Parker, who said he was recognized in the past as a member of the college’s Patroon Society for his donations, said he no longer gives money to the school and will only donate directly to a studentrun union.
“I’m here to let you know that we see that winter is here,” Parker said. “We need to stand up and make sure that we stand by our position. This way, we can make sure we save the union.”
The latest protest also targeted college trustees, who came out in support of Jackson’s most recent claim that she should have final authority over the hiring of a union director, issuing a memo Sept. 27 in which it said ultimate control over the Rensselaer Union should sit with Jackson and her administration.
After college administrators initially denied permission for the group to protest outside Friday’s alumnionly, black-tie event, organizers circumvented the ruling — as they did for a similar protest in March 2016 — by enlisting the help of Bill Puka, a tenured faculty member in the college’s Cognitive Science Department whose areas of teaching and research include moral-political philosophy and democracy and anarchism. Puka again agreed to host a “lab class” at the same time and place as the planned protest. In response this time, though, the college encircled the entire plaza leading down from the main campus to EMPAC and the Folsom Library, a move college officials claimed was simply a safety precaution but that protest organizers say was done to keep protesters out of view of partygoers.
The protest and its organizers also had the support of the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education, a Philadelphia-based nonprofit group dedicated to
defending civil liberties on campus. That group called on the college in a letter Monday to reverse a campuswide ban on demonstrations this weekend, which is RPI’s annual Reunion & Homecoming weekend.
The foundation specifically monitors how colleges from coast to coast adhere to constitutional guarantees of free speech, offering individual ratings of colleges on its website, www.thefire.org. RPI was given its worst rating, being proclaimed a “red light institution” because it has currently in effect “at least one policy that both clearly and substantially restricts freedom of speech.” group will also have the support of a nonprofit group.
Friday’s protest came nearly two years after RPI administrators abruptly fired the student-hired
union director, Joe Cassidy, in December 2015, setting in motion what Save the Union and its supporters believe is a plan to take control of the lucrative facility, which has been run by students since it was formed in 1890. Save the Union claims that move, followed by what it sees as several subsequent attempts to fill the position with a college appointee, is aimed at helping Jackson to attain complete control over all aspects of the college, as well as to dip into the union’s revenue, which comes from student services such as a bookstore, meeting rooms and other spaces for clubs and other organizations to meet, as well as entertainment, performing arts and fitness facilities.
The college’s finances have been in question in recent years, with Standard &
Poor’s, a leading credit rating agency, lowering RPI’s long-term bond rating at the beginning of 2017 from A- to BBB+, citing the college’s high debt burden and low available resources. BBB is the lowest score for which a bond would be considered investment-grade, according to S&P.
College officials similarly denied permission for the March 30, 2016, protest outside EMPAC during Jackson’s annual Spring Town Meeting, after students learned the college had included the duties of the union director in a new position of vice president of student services and dean of students. Just as on Friday, however, Puka scheduled a “lab class” that drew hundreds of students, faculty, staff and alumni who surrounded the walkway leading to EMPAC.