“I was just trying to walk home.”
Weinberg senior Tonantzin Carmona was headed back to her dorm just before midnight on Jan. 12. She heard a crowd of giggling girls walking behind her, many of whom she said appeared intoxicated. Carmona ignored them, but as she got closer to her dorm, the group became more belligerent, making disparaging remarks about her ethnicity.
“Why are you being so rude?” they yelled. “What, no hablas ingles?”
Exactly one week later, roughly 150 Northwestern students attended a forum titled Caucus Against Racial Prejudice on Campus, organized by Carmona and a few other students. The event was organized in the wake of a letter Carmona posted on Facebook, in which she detailed the event in question.
“I thought that it was necessary for me to just vent, so I told my friends the story and then they got riled up,” Carmona said. “And that’s when their own stories started to come up.”
John Marquez, assistant professor of African American and Latino/a Studies, moderated the forum along with Valeria Jimenez, a third-year doctoral student. Students were encouraged both to share similar stories of racial discrimination and to recommend strategies for dealing with the issue on campus.
Over the course of the evening, Marquez stressed the importance of actively opposing harassment on campus and lauded the event as an example of NU students’ refusal to accept discrimination.
“Is this something we are just going to teach ourselves to become numb to?” he asked. “I would like to think we are better than that. That numbness is not a remedy to feeling violated or even threatened.”
Marquez also encouraged the students to affect change from the bottom up, arguing that those in power are rarely the first to act on issues of harassment. Many speakers throughout the night stressed that NU officials had not done enough to combat racial issues on campus, some even demanding action from the president of the University.
“Schapiro needs to write something that says, ‘Go meet the g-ddamn people in your community who aren’t the same color as you,” Weinberg junior Jeziel Jones said.
Tyris Jones, coordinator of For Members Only, also suggested that racial harassment was a University issue. He referenced the fact that only 81 black freshmen were enrolled in the Class of 2012, and said NU officials had failed to confront institutional issues of discrimination.
“Those are the people we are trusting to take care of what is going on,” Jones said.
Responding to the strongly worded demands after the meeting, Dean of Students Burgwell Howard said while administrators sympathized with those in attendance, it was difficult to respond to events of racism at NU, especially when they were spread across campus and often limited to peer-to-peer interactions.
In addition to faulting the administration, some students were quick to voice their concern that racism was also a community problem, and brought forth numerous anecdotes in which students and faculty members were guilty of racial discrimination.
“I want to apologize on behalf of the student body because that was not the community I signed up to represent,” said ASG President and Weinberg senior Austin Young. “We need to instill and develop a culture of appreciation and engagement on campus.”
Near the end of the forum, speakers proposed plans to combat racism on campus, including the insertion of a “cultural competency” requirement into the Weinberg distribution requirements.
Communication senior Amin Elsaeed elicited some of the loudest applause of the evening when he proposed that speakers tell their stories in public places throughout campus.
“I’ve had enough. The ignorance is ridiculous,” he said. “And if the administration won’t listen, then we’ll head down to Clark Street with our microphones and tell them our stories.”
Editor’s note: This article incorrectly stated who organized the event. The article has since been updated to reflect the correction.
