Citing racist policies, students shut down the Massachusetts Daily Collegian
The Massachusetts Daily Collegian came under fire this year [1991] after students, who gathered to protest an innocent verdict in the case of four White Los Angeles police who were videotaped beating Black Los Angeles motorist Rodney King, turned their attention to their own campus. After a rally, 150 protestors occupied the third floor of Whitmore Administration Building, demanding more hirings of faculty of color.
The eight-hour takeover ended when administrators agreed to hire 10 people of color over the next three years at an estimated cost of $350,000.
Protestors then went to the Collegian office to demand better representation for communities of color on the pages of the paper as well as on its staff.
The protesters, a number of whom were Collegian staffers, said the Collegian's practice of selecting editors for the Black, Multicultural, and Third World affairs pages by the largely white staff was racist. They demanded that only minority staffers be allowed to select those editors, and they demanded an end to what they said was the frequent printing of racist editorials and cartoons on the pages of the Collegian.
Protesters broke a window and damaged furniture in the office, frightening staffers who were there. When protestors returned two days later to discuss their demands at a meeting of Collegian editors, they found that some staffers had moved the paper's operations to a secret off-campus location.
Editor-in-Chief Marc Elliott said he made the move because of rumors that protestors wanted to shut down the paper. "The Collegian has nothing against making changes, but while we are doing it we would like to keep printing," he said.
Protesters accused Elliott of manufacturing those rumors, but they called for a shutdown of the paper and removed from distribution boxes many of the 19,000 copies that were printed the next day. The conflict further escalated when protesters held a rally and Elliott called a press conference to air their sides.
Administration officials refused to get involved in the conflict or to make sure the paper was distributed. The next day, Collegian staffers stood in the Campus Center handing out papers to students.
The conflict seemed to quiet down when staffers on both sides of the issue agreed to negotiate. But following the second negotiation session, which administrators insisted be public, members of the crowd stormed the Collegian office, further escalating the controversy.
Though no injuries were reported, Collegian staffers reported being threatened, thrown to the ground, and cornered by members of the audience. Negotiators for the protesters said one member of their team was also attacked by a member of the other team.
One week after protesters first brought their demands to Collegian offices, editors agreed to a list of five demands. They were:
- Editors for minority, women's, and Third World affairs pages will be elected by their own staff;
- The women's issues page and the minority women's co-editor position will both be restored;
- The position of minority co-editor will be established, to share equal power with the editor in chief. The person will be selected by minority staff members;
- Four minority editors will sit on the paper's executive committee, its highest governing body. These include Third World, Black, and Multicultural affairs editors, and the Women's Issues of Color Coordinator;
- Collegian staffers will be required to attend a racism workshop.
Elliott and other staffers said they gave in to demands because they feared that violence would spill over at the Annual Spring Concert. They also said the administration had pressured them to accede to protesters' demands to quell violence, but interim Chancellor Richard O'Brien denied that any administrators had put pressure on the Collegian staff.
Though the agreement was signed before the week of final exams, students were not able to iron out the workings of the agreement by the end of the semester. Most fell behind in their classes during the tense week of negotiations, and spent the rest of the semester making up for that time.
Two journalism professors, David G. DuBois and Howard M. Ziff, called on students to work together and resolve the conflicts between them. But both men worried that the conflict threatened the Collegian's future.
"It's quite serious," DuBois said.
Collegian Managing Editor Dan Wetzel confirmed that many staffers were considering leaving the paper or starting their own paper off campus. Wetzel said he hoped that students could honor DuBois' and Ziffs request, but he said he was not sure staffers could forget events of the past week.
Administrators also expressed concern that the two sides would not be able to work together.
"People need to talk before they get the paper going," said Grant Ingle, director of the University's Office of Human Relations. "There's some real painful stuff that has to be healed."