"Students consider legal action against professors"

WSU College Republicans Pro-Fence Demonstration


Due to censorship, YouTube video is no longer available. See video below:



From today's Moscow-Pullman Daily News:

Shouting matches erupted at event organized by the WSU College Republicans

By Erin Madison, Daily News staff writer

A Nov. 2 demonstration at Washington State University has caused some heightened tension across campus.

Members of the WSU College Republicans are considering taking legal action against two professors who made strong comments to the students, said Dan Ryder, a WSU student and College Republicans executive.

The College Republicans held the demonstration to show their support for a proposed fence or wall along portions of the U.S./Mexico border. They erected a chain-link fence on the Glenn Terrell Mall to illustrate their stance on the matter.

Various student groups held a counter-protest. They set up an altar for the Dia de los Muertos — Day of the Dead — and both groups handed out information about immigration.

A number of yelling matches broke out between the College Republicans and the counter-protestors.

At one point, John Streamas, assistant professor of comparative ethnic studies, allegedly called Ryder “a white sh--bag.”

Ryder is considering taking action against Streamas. He’s still deciding if he’ll pursue it within WSU’s legal system or with external authorities.

Streamas admits to using the phrase, but it has to be taken in context, he said.

Streamas said when he first arrived at the demonstration site, someone connected with the university said something “extremely racist” to him and left. He was angry, but didn’t direct the comment at any particular student, he said.

“They took that so personally,” Streamas said.

Streamas said the College Republicans didn’t consider how much the fence would offend the WSU community.

The College Republicans claimed they wanted to open a dialogue, Streamas said, but most of the people on campus who are “pro-immigrant” saw the fence as restricting dialogue.

“I don’t think they understood how insulting that fence was,” he said.

Streamas likened the fence to a confederate flag or a swastika. Anti-immigration policies usually overlap with racism, he said. As an example, he used the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882, which excluded all Chinese laborers from immigrating to the United States for 10 years.

Raul Sanchez, director of WSU’s Office of Human Rights, said Ryder’s case may come before his office because the professor allegedly used a racial expletive.

About 10 minutes of the demonstration can be viewed on YouTube.com.

The clip shows someone who claims to be a professor get angry with the student who is recording the video and demanding to see his student identification card.

Daniel Schanze, political action chairman of the College Republicans, turned the video camera off at that point. He said he wasn’t sure if he had to show the man his ID card.

Schanze also intends to take action against the professor.

Sanchez didn’t believe Schanze’s case would come to his office because it didn’t involve racism, but he said he’d have to hear the facts from one of the people involved before he offered an opinion.

“I know that tensions were high down there, or at least emotions were high,” Sanchez said.

If anyone is feeling harassed on the basis of race, ethnicity or gender, Sanchez said he would like to talk to them.

I don't have much to add to this. There is A LOT of activity going on, some of which will become public, some that won't. More video will be posted soon. I suspect this story will soon garner regional/national media attention.

Meanwhile, where is Pullman's "paper of record," the Daily Watermelon? This is the SECOND story the Daily News has done on the border fence brouhaha, as well as an editorial. The Watermelon only published one desultory story that wasn't even posted on their online version. The editor may not want to publish the rantings of a old-fogey townie about Wal-Mart, but my gosh, this is a big story directly involving WSU students and faculty. I imagine they were hoping the story would disappear, and now that it hasn't, I'll bet they are concocting a smear piece on the CR's.