The Effects of Black Lives Matter On College Campuses

Black Lives Matter Has Seen Far-Reaching Impact

by Elias Atienza

Recently, Black Lives Matter has made headlines with protests at UCLA following a sorority’s Kanye West-themed party and an opinion piece at Wesleyan University for the newspaper Argus with a mildly critical tone of the movement. As such, the sorority at UCLA is under fire for the party and the newspaper has seen a sharp reduction in funding after the opinion piece was published.

The Daily Bruin chronicled the protests and the demands of the Afrikan Student Union in the protests that followed the party. Shouting “Black Bruins Matter,” they protested the racial demographics of the campus. According to the Fall 2014 quarter figures, there are 1,189 black students there, or around 4% of the student body. That is close to the racial demographics of California, with 6.5% of the population being black according to the Census.

In short, the protest was about racism and racial demographics in the campus, along with the party and what they see as appropriation of black culture. One of the students, Janay Williams, said that, “We hope the chancellor hears us, and the world hears us, because the truth is that UCLA is racist.” What? Let’s not address the fact that UCLA has become one of the most racially-diverse student bodies in California, with effectively over half of the students there being non-white. But no, let’s go on with the narrative that anything that remotely offends someone should not be allowed.

Was the sorority in the wrong? I don’t think so. It was obviously a party to make fun of Kanye West and his wife. The padded bottoms were not racist, but a parody of Kim Kardashian. The mustaches were in response to Kanye West. In respect to the Afrikan Student Union, maybe it did go down as racist, but I very much doubt it. The editorial board of the Daily Bruin published an editorial criticizing the party and calling it blatantly racist because they weren’t considerate of the black community’s viewpoint. What the black community wanted has no implication on what a fraternity or sorority does. The party was making fun of two pop-culture icons which half of America spends half of their time on. Time to move on and focus on actual issues. Censoring parties and other matters which may infringe on the sensitivity of a certain community would freeze all time and space, because there is always something out there which offends someone.

With the opinion piece at the Argus being critical of the Black Lives Matter movement resulting in protests against the newspaper and vowing to burn or destroy copies of it, the author, Bryan Stascavage, a white veteran who had enrolled following two tours in Iraq, and the Argus apologized for the piece and allowed for a Black Out issue of the Argus following the protests, and the student government moved to remove a part of the funding for the newspaper.

However, the faculty and the administration has stood firm behind Stascavage. They wrote a message standing behind the author and said what Salman Rushdie has been saying for years: “There is no right not to be offended.”
And that is the whole point of the the message here. There is no such thing as the right not to be offended. The whole concept of free speech is that despite dissenting opinions, regardless of what people might think, you have the right to say what you want without fear of being punished for it.

Does Black Lives Matter have merit? The simple answer is yes, they have merit in their protests. With draconian drug laws, civil forfeiture, and the drug war itself, we have created a culture of hostility and resentment towards police and the degradation of our constitutional rights to be free from searches and be secure in our persons and homes. We have seen a massive explosion in our prison population from 500,000 to 2.2 million in less than thirty-five years, which disproportionately affects blacks and Hispanics. Militarization of police and high-profile killings of black civilians such as Eric Garner and others have led to Black Lives Matter. The main problems are the consequences of failed big-government policies like the War on Drugs.

But burning down your cities and calling for the death of police scares away support. When Black Lives Matter supporters are calling for the death of police officers, riots destroying personal property and small businesses, yes, we can be critical of the movement. When Salon is saying that destroying private property is okay, then the movement can be criticized.

Calling for the stamping out of newspapers that critique your movement, protesting a party which had nothing to do with racism, and calling your campus racist (which quite frankly is stupid, unless you think that the other 19,000 students are out to be racist towards you and the administration is out to get you for some odd reason), and that other speech should be silenced is the very definition of fascism and why some people don’t take Black Lives Matter seriously.

Freedom of speech is essential to a free society. So is freedom of association.