This kind of shit really annoys me.

Back in the '80s, I was involved in student government at IUPUI. In the early '90s, I worked in Student Affairs in a low-level clerical position while I was in grad school.

And I can tell you that there's absolutely no call for this.

Black students at IUPUI set new deadline
Demands include campus center and African-American studies

Black students issued a new deadline Sunday for university officials at IUPUI to answer their call to improve race relations on campus.

Which university officials should -- but won't -- ignore.

At a town hall forum Sunday night, black student leaders said the administration so far has responded inadequately to requests made 10 days ago.

Those demands -- including a campus center for black students, an African-American studies program and $78,000 for black groups -- must now be met by 5 p.m. Wednesday.

Sure, we'll take that to the Trustees for discussion...you're only talking about a cool few million and a complete change to whatever roadmap is already in place for IUPUI, and you want it by Wednesday? Good luck. (I think what the students are doing is called "grandstanding".)

If the university misses the deadline, the students will call for the resignation of certain administration and campus staff members. The black student leaders would not say who those officials might be or comment about their earlier threats to sue.

Real revolutionaries, you lot.

"It is unclear as to why the administration didn't adequately comply with the demands,"

Um...maybe because you made demands instead of requests?

said Jocellyn Ford, 21, one of three student panelists at the forum. "IUPUI administrators, you did not listen, and this is your official public wake-up call."

Ms. Ford, you're a student. Shouldn't you be studying? Or going to class?

Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis Chancellor Charles Bantz attended the three-hour meeting with at least five other administrators. He said he was impressed with the presentation but concerned by accounts of discrimination.

"I am optimistic at the same time that we have the ability to work through many of these issues," he said after the forum.

He expects to have a response by Wednesday but said he's not sure whether he'll have an answer for every demand.

"Some of these are things we can't fix in three days," he said.

Some of them are things you won't ever be able to fix. Some of them exist only in the fevered minds of your campus revolutionaries -- most of whom will be gone in less than four years. (That's why it took 30 years to get a student center built, for instance, even after the accreditation people told you three times that you needed one and after students spent 30 years agitating for one.)

During the forum, student leaders detailed events during the past two years that led up to Nov. 2's "Black Thursday," when black students marched in protest of what they say is the university's false commitment to diversity.

It's the 1960's all over again! Man the barricades!

Some spoke of encounters with staff or police that smacked of discrimination,

Ah yes. P J. O'Rourke mentioned folks like you. I think he called them the Perpetually Indignant or something like that.

while panelists gave examples of black student groups denied funding for projects similar to those predominantly white groups received money for.

I remember this kind of thing. We usually asked groups that presented similar requests to consider doing a joint program, because it saved money for other projects. I guess the BSU is too good to consider that.

They initially gave the administration until Nov. 6 to respond.

The administration should have ignored them.

Karen Whitney, vice chancellor for student life and diversity, met the deadline, but her answers were too vague, said Dominic Dorsey, head of IUPUI's Black Student Union.

"No amount was mentioned, let alone $78,000," Dorsey said. "Completely unsatisfactory."

"Who do, who do you think you are? Mr. Big Stuff..."

In Whitney's response, she pledged to improve communication and respect and to increase funding for the student groups.

Oh, great. On the backs of students, because that is code for an increase in the student activity fee, which is already too high.

More than 200 people at the Madame Walker Theatre Center, 617 Indiana Ave., listened to student accounts of discrimination. During comments from the audience, some asked pointed questions about the request for $78,000 -- about $10,000 more than the student government's budget for all campus clubs.

Can you say, "extortion"?

Areeba Farooqi, president of the South Asian Student Association at IUPUI, asked why the groups acted aggressively and why no other minority groups were included in the process.

About 15 percent of the 30,000 students at IUPUI are minorities.

Farooqi, who launched an online debate on Facebook.com, began a petition against the black student groups' demands.

Good for him her.*

_______
* 20091028: Received an email from Ms. Farooqi, who besides thanking me for my support, and letting me know that the issue was resolved in their favor, let me know that she was not a him, but a her :) So, three years late, I'm making the correction :) Glad to hear that it all worked out.