L
ast fall, roughly two dozen students gathered in front of Hendricks Chapel to protest Syracuse University’s handling of the Theta Tau controversy, almost five months after the fraternity was expelled. They held signs reading “all power to the students” and “fund scholarships not frats.”
The protestors also listed demands for the university: funding for advocacy and resource centers on campus, implicit bias training, a “cluster hire” of employees of diverse backgrounds. The demands were what was left of a longer list, and the protestors were what was left of a larger movement — Recognize Us.
Recognize Us emerged as a social movement at SU after the release of videos showing people in the Theta Tau fraternity’s house engaging in behavior that Chancellor Kent Syverud said was racist, anti-Semitic, homophobic, sexist and hostile to people with disabilities. The coalition advocated for minority students at SU and works to address systemic issues of race and discrimination at the college.
“Recognize Us took advantage of the uproar on Theta Tau and tried to push that towards social change,” said senior Quincy Nolan. “At the end of the day, it was aimed at any student concern that was voiced.”
In September 2018, Recognize Us led a protest from Chancellor Kent Syverud’s house to Hendricks Chapel.
Dan Lyon | Asst. Photo Editor
Recognize Us protested on April 20, 2018 to express their grievances over the university’s response to the fraternity’s video. They began with a two-hour sit-in at Schine Student Center, where the group presented a list of demands to Chancellor Kent Syverud directly – including that Theta Tau be expelled and the university hold a town hall with Syverud, the Board of Trustees, administrators and deans in attendance.
The day after the Schine protest, Syverud announced the fraternity’s permanent expulsion from SU in a video distributed through a campus-wide email. A town hall was held, where Recognize Us presented a second list of demands.
Junior Iris Guzman said that the energy felt “different” at the protest in the fall.
The initial popularity of Recognize Us was caused by the anger surrounding the Theta Tau incident, Guzman said. Once that anger subsided, the popularity did too.
“Some people see the hype of the moment and some people just want to be part of something that’s going on,” Guzman said. “When you see a massive crowd of students, you want to walk with them. This year it was literally like 10 of us. We were just being loud. But we’re still here.”
Only about two dozen people participated in the September protest, a small numbers compared to then more than 100 students who protested in April 2018.
Ally Moreo | Senior Staff Photographer
Now a year later, Recognize Us is inactive, said Nolan, who was one of the original participants in the movement.
“Being students, it gets tiring really quick,” Nolan said. “Activism work in general is completely unpaid, and it’s very emotionally taxing. We aren’t professional activists. We’re students. It was too exhausting.”
Nolan said that Recognize Us was not sustainable. Because it was a single entity representing many different students. It created disagreement internally and became a “problematic space,” they said.
Junior Raymond Perez said Recognize Us struggled to remain an entity representing many groups of students because activists cannot speak on behalf of groups that they do not identify with.
“You can only serve (those groups) by advocating for the spaces so that they can advocate for themselves,” Perez said.
First-year graduate student Sam Norton said they think the administration had predicted the momentum of Recognize Us would slow down.
“This is something that comes again and again with student activism,” Norton said. “They know that a lot of experienced organizers graduate, and people leave.”
The Recognize Us movement is currently inactive.
Paul Schlesinger
Despite a lack of Recognize Us protests, the momentum has not been lost said junior Elise Marlin. She said that due to the stress of college, it is hard to bring people together at all.
“When it comes down to it, it’s just an individual thing if you were moved by the movement,” Marlin said. “I know that I was, and my momentum hasn’t changed.”
Recognize Us brought a lot of attention to the work of individual advocacy groups on campus, Nolan said. They said that the movement should be remembered for the work of the students.
Nolan said Recognize Us opened up more discussions about topics that might have otherwise been ignored by the majority of the student body.
Many students who participated in Recognize Us are working on activist efforts within smaller groups on campus that existed prior to the movement, Nolan said. They said the individual efforts of the students in these smaller groups keep the mission of Recognize Us alive.
“There was a lot of good that came out of (Recognize Us). I just think I don’t know how sustainable any all-encompassing student movement is,” Nolan said. “It becomes more efficient, more beneficial and less oppressive to try and boost each other’s activist efforts.”
Published on April 17, 2019 at 10:34 pm
Contact Natalie: nrrubiol@syr.edu
