Members of a radical leftist group at the University of Minnesota have demanded that the school confess that it “exists as a product of” colonial evil and must therefore “fundamentally” restructure to conform to their organizing principles.
The group – which calls itself “Whose Diversity?” – has chosen to remain unrecognized by the administration, it says, to avoid becoming “complicit in reproducing a homogenized notion of diversity.”
The comically lengthy list of demands is over 1,000 words longer than the Declaration of Independence.
The leftist group opposes “color-blind racism” and demands “an acknowledgement that the university exists as a product of colonialistic processes,” according to Campus Reform.
The underground group also wants the taxpayer-funded school in the Twin Cities to require that every student, regardless of major, take a class covering “gender non-conforming issues.” Members want “substantially more” courses about “marginalized peoples,” too.
There’s so much more.
The underground leftist group has given administrators just two years to hire no fewer than two “faculty members of color” in all departments. The group further demands that those professors can’t just do scholarly work that appeals to them. Instead, they must engage in “critical race and ethnic studies scholarship with a social justice emphasis.”
The University of Minnesota offers 186 majors. A few examples include astrophysics, electrical engineering and respiratory care.
In addition, the unchartered group wants gender-neutral bathrooms in all campus buildings and a “meditation and healing” room at all five branches of the University of Minnesota system.
The activists delve into considerable detail discussing exactly how these healing rooms must be decorated.
The group also wants a huge increase in the number of “non-white” students, a ban on mentioning the skin color of anyone who commits a campus crime and a halt to the construction of some new apartments because they “gentrify and displace local communities.”
Finally, “Whose Diversity?” demands that the school create a “centrally located” memorial displaying documents and photos as a testament to their demands and previous campus activism.
What will happen if the University of Minnesota fails to acquiesce to the 2,443-word list of demands? Group members don’t say, but they allude to Christopher Columbus and a 24-takeover of a campus building in 1969.
“We are continuing a conversation that began in 1492, and that was highly visible during the 1969 Morrill Hall Student Takeover,” the leftist group suggests.
The Morrill Hall takeover occurred when a group barricaded themselves in an administrative building to protest the segregation and unequal treatment of black students. It ended completely peacefully and resulted in the establishment of an advising program as well as what is now the African American and African studies department.
Since “Whose Diversity?” expounded its protracted list of demands this spring, over 700 students, administrators and faculty members have signed it.
At least two signatories – Jennifer Pierce and Rose Brewer – are professors at the University of Minnesota. Both work in departments that end in the word “studies.”
School administrators have said that members of the fringe group have rebuffed offers to discuss the demands.
“We don’t want to keep going back and forth, bantering in the media about some issues that are real, and I think are doable and solvable if we all can come together at a mutually agreed time and date and talk,” said Danita Brown Young, dean of students, according to Campus Reform.
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