Tag: Black student alliance

Categories
News

Breaking free: Cyntoia Brown-Long shares her story of redemption with UVA students

Sex-trafficking victim Cyntoia Brown-Long spoke to hundreds of UVA students last week at Old Cabell Hall. PC: John Robinson

“Fifteen years ago, at the age of 16, I was told that I’d spend the rest of my life behind bars,” activist Cyntoia Brown-Long told hundreds of UVA students February 6 at Old Cabell Hall.

As a teenager, Brown-Long was in an abusive relationship with a man known as Kut, who forced her into prostitution. She was found guilty of murder and sentenced to life in prison after shooting a 43-year-old client whom she feared was about to kill her. 

Brown-Long’s cause was taken up in a 2011 documentary and, later, by multiple celebrities on social media, who argued that Brown-Long was a victim of sex trafficking and had killed the client in self-defense. 

She was finally freed in August, after being granted clemency (with a 10-year parole) by Tennessee Governor Bill Haslam. Now a successful author and public speaker, Brown-Long shared her story of redemption at an event sponsored by the Black Student Alliance and University Programs Council. 

“Cyntoia’s case stands as a clear example of the U.S. justice system’s proclivity for both criminalizing victims while simultaneously allowing the perpetrators of violent sexual crimes to get off scot-free,” said Ciara Blackston, vice president of the Black Student Alliance. 

According to a 2016 report by the Vera Institute of Justice, 86 percent of incarcerated women have experienced abuse in their lifetime, while 77 percent have specifically experienced violence at the hands of a partner. 

In her speech, Brown-Long dove into her early childhood, sharing how she found out she was adopted and biracial on her first day of kindergarten, when students pointed out that she didn’t look like her dark-skinned parents. Feeling like an outcast, she got into trouble many times over the years, landing her in an alternative school and, eventually, juvenile detention.

By the time she was 13, Brown-Long had run away from home and was living on the streets with women much older than her, who taught her how to “use [her] body as a commodity,” as she was continuously raped and assaulted. At 16, she met 24-year-old Kut, who abused her and forced her into prostitution—but who she believed was the love of her life.

“He found me in a place where I was desperate to be wanted,” Brown-Long said. “But there was no dollar amount that made him love me, because what I didn’t know was that love was never on the table.”

Four years into her sentence, Brown-Long was tired of “feeling like a failure,” and signed up to take college courses, earning her associate and bachelor’s degrees with a 4.0 GPA. She also mentored other women in prison, and met with government officials about sex trafficking. And she developed a relationship with her now-husband Jaime Long, who helped restore her religious faith. Brown-Long says that gave her a renewed sense of hope and confidence that she would one day be released.

Now, “as a free woman,” she said, “I get to honor the covenant I made with God, travel the country, and tell anyone who will listen about what He did for me.” 

Brown-Long helps spread awareness about sex trafficking and abusive relationships through her advocacy program GLITTER (Grassroots Learning Initiative for Teen Trafficking, Exploitation, and Rape). 

She’s also working with Tennessee legislators to change the ways juveniles are sentenced. In the state, juveniles can be sentenced to life in prison, and are not considered for parole until after they’ve served 51 years—the longest mandatory minimum sentence in the nation.

Categories
News

Still active: Students work to change culture from the periphery

On the anniversary of the August 11, 2017, tiki-torch march through UVA Grounds, students refused to be corralled into a university-sanctioned demonstration area. Photo by Eze Amos

By Ben Hitchcock

At 10:30pm on May 4, 1970, approximately 1,500 UVA students gathered on the Lawn to protest the murder of four student activists at Kent State University earlier that day. On April 28, 1983, a group of 100 students marched up to the office of Student Affairs Vice President Ernest Ern and presented a list of demands, including the admission of more black students, the hiring of more black faculty, and an increase in the amount of financial aid for black students. In 1991, a Cavalier Daily opinion columnist wrote: “The world around us is buzzing with black political activism.”

The University of Virginia has a reputation as a hidebound and conservative place, where seersucker reigns supreme and change comes slowly. But progressive political activism has always been present on Grounds. For decades, UVA students have banded together to protest against all manner of injustices.

Today’s students are building on the activism of their forebears.

“Some of my friends were at the big bicentennial celebration on the Lawn, with a big banner that just says ‘200 years of white supremacy,’” says UVA student Corey Runkel, a member of the Living Wage Campaign at UVA. “We found an image from 1970, when they were trying to do co-education… They had a sign that said ‘150 years of white supremacy.’ It was interesting to see that history.”

Runkel, a third-year, has been a part of the Living Wage Campaign since shortly after his arrival at the school. Founded in the late ‘90s, the group has advocated for the rights of workers around Grounds, lobbying the administration to raise the minimum wage for the university’s employees. In 2006, 17 students occupied Madison Hall for four days before President John Casteen had them arrested.

The campaign scored a significant victory earlier this year, when President Jim Ryan announced that 1,400 full-time employees would receive $15 an hour by January 2020.

“When I was a first-year, people that didn’t know about Living Wage directly would never talk about it,” Runkel says. The group kept pushing, though, and managed to force the university into action.

Other students fight for different issues. The Virginia Student Environmental Coalition “engages in political advocacy, education, and direct action around environmental and social justice,” says leader Joyce Cheng. Recently, VSEC organized to slow down the Atlantic Coast Pipeline. Before that, the group lobbied the university administration to divest from fossil fuels.

“When the Atlantic Coast Pipeline opposition was really heightened, a couple semesters ago, we were really close with the people in Buckingham County,” Cheng says. “We have tried to strengthen the bonds between the university and the community.”

Many of UVA’s activist groups focus on issues beyond the university’s walls. Political Latinxs United for Movement and Action in Society concentrates on “having really close ties with the community,” says Diana Tinta, one of the group’s members. That could mean anything from hosting an open mic night to organizing dinners and donating profits to refugees in Charlottesville.

Recently, PLUMAS painted Beta Bridge to protest the Albermarle-Charlottesville Regional Jail’s relationship with ICE. Activities like painting the bridge can galvanize students, and “that’s given us a lot of momentum,” Tinta says.

The Living Wage Campaign, VSEC, and PLUMAS represent just a small sample of activist organizations at the university. UVA Students United has organized around a variety of social justice issues; the Queer Student Union advocates for UVA’s LGBTQ+ population; the Black Student Alliance has been a catalyst for political activism since its founding in the 1960s. The list of activist organizations at UVA goes on and on. The school is chock full of passionate and innovative students.

Nevertheless, UVA’s activists themselves remain generally pessimistic about the role of political activism in the university’s culture. Despite the long history of action and the proliferation of progressive groups, some organizers still feel like the stereotypes about UVA’s apathetic political climate hold more than a little truth.

“I think it’s probably apt to say that this is not a place that is known for political activism,” Runkel says. “We’ve found it a very difficult place to organize.”

Runkel ascribed this difficulty to the less-than-revolutionary politics of many UVA students. “Part of it is a sort of self-separation from the rest of UVA life. We’re fairly radical, relative to other groups.”

Cheng echoes Runkel’s lament. “[Mobilizing students] is something, to be honest, I think we struggle with, just because UVA students are so busy and so involved in all their different commitments,” she says. “UVA is very closed off to student activism.”

Tinta, too, believes most UVA students are insufficiently engaged. “I don’t think that students are active enough in advocating for issues, especially when it comes to advocating for the Charlottesville community,” she says. “There are a bunch of groups that do great work, but I think that all these works need more collaboration and more support, which I don’t think that UVA students really give.”

So while many groups are working hard for a wide variety of progressive causes, student activism continues to exist on the periphery of the school’s consciousness, and that relationship shows little sign of changing. As long as that remains true, UVA’s activists know they have more work to do.

Categories
News

Tarped: Students shroud Jefferson statue in black at Rotunda

Students shrouded a statue of UVA founder Thomas Jefferson in front of the Rotunda September 12. Photo Eze Amos

By Natalie Jacobsen

“No Nazis, no KKK, no racist UVA!” a parade of students crossing University Avenue chant.

“Louder!” shouts a woman with a megaphone.

Just after sundown around 8pm Tuesday night, as the rain fell, more than 100 students gathered in front of the Rotunda and surrounded the Thomas Jefferson statue. Two students drummed a beat on a pair of buckets while a mixture of graduate and current University of Virginia students held banners and chanted familiar Black Lives Matter phrases:

“What do we want?” asks one student.

“Justice!” others respond.

“When do we want it?”

“Now!”

Within moments of reaching the statue, three students were hoisted by peers and climbed atop. One climbed up Jefferson himself and draped a black tarp over the university founder’s head and raised his fist to cheers.

An unidentified student explained they were “here to reclaim [their] Lawn and grounds,” referring to the August 11 torchlight rally, led by UVA alum/white nationalist Richard Spencer, that took place at the foot of the same statue. “Ten months ago, Donald Trump was elected president, and rolled in a new wave of white supremacy across the nation. But each day, there has been an unparalleled response and resistance that says…‘no’ to all forms of aggressive suppression.”

One by one, students took turns using the megaphone to express concerns, share anecdotes and state the demands of the Black Student Alliance: Relocate Confederate plaques to a museum, explicitly ban hate groups from campus and require all students to be educated on white supremacy, colonization, slavery, the university and the city of Charlottesville. The Student Council acknowledged and endorsed BSA in a public statement on August 21.

Kevin, one of the BSA leaders who organized the event and who asked that his last name not be used, says “[this event] is us telling the administration that we’re here to stay and will do anything it takes if they are unwilling to do anything about it.”

Three students made an amendment and added their own demands, reflecting recent news about DACA and local Dreamers. “UVA needs to protect and house children of undocumented immigrants and continue to provide them education,” says one, identified only as Danielle.

Speeches were made over the course of almost four hours as the three students who ascended the statue continued wrapping it in black tarp, pausing to tear and tape it down as they went along. Occasionally, they would hold up signs passed up to them by the students: “TJ is racist and a rapist” and “Hate has had a place here for over 200 years.”

Several students echoed sentiments that the University of Virginia administration has not “denounced anybody” or “taken [enough] action” in response to what students say felt like a “series of personal attacks” over the past year. About 20 faculty members, dressed in their PhD robes of their own alma maters, looked on from a few feet away. None were willing to comment.

Throughout the event, which Kevin described as “positive and peaceful,” dozens of onlookers stopped to listen and photograph the event. An unidentified female BSA member shouted into the megaphone, “We are your community, and you need to stand with your community,” directing the message at students on the periphery. “There is only one right side,” she says.

A handful of opposition members raised their voices to counter the students’ reasoning for draping his statue. De-escalation team members, unaffiliated with the protesters,  were there to approach and intervene, while four UVA policemen stood around the perimeter of the square. There were no physical altercations.

Around midnight, as the crowd dispersed, Brian Lambert, a self-proclaimed member of the alt-right, according to his Facebook page, and affiliate of Jason Kessler, was arrested for public intoxication near the statue. Police say Lambert was openly—and legally—carrying a gun.

UVA released a statement on Wednesday saying the tarp was removed an hour after the event ended, and that it was already gone when university staff arrived to do so.

On Facebook, veterans activist John Miska, who attempted to remove the tarp covering General Robert E. Lee shortly after it was installed August 23, says it was “patriots” and students “in the face of Communist aggression” who removed the Jefferson shroud.

In a message to the university community, President Teresa Sullivan says, “ I strongly disagree with the protestors’ decision to cover the Jefferson statue.” She adds that she recognizes their right to express their emotions and opinions.

In a separate missive to alumni, Sullivan says the shrouding desecrated “ground that many of us consider sacred.”

“If they’re not going to take action on our demands, we are going to shroud every statue on the grounds,” says Kevin.

Updated 10:42am with the addition of John Miska’s information on the removal of the covering.

 

Categories
News

Scarlet letters: Dean responds to BSA’s ‘shaming narrative’

Dean of the Office of African-American Affairs Maurice Apprey fires back at the Black Student Alliance president for an open letter he calls unprofessional. Photo by Jack Looney

In a scathing open letter e-mailed to UVA’s Office of African-American Affairs and later posted on Facebook, the university’s Black Student Alliance attacked the office’s strategic outcomes for the upcoming year for wording the group felt painted black students as a problem.

Of particular offense to the BSA was the following statement: “The new director of the Luther P. Jackson Black Cultural Center will oversee the negotiation of spheres of influence among student leaders that threatens to wreak havoc on climate at the university.”

The BSA’s open letter denounced this phrase, saying it was an attempt to limit the power of black student groups. “Black students do not ‘wreak havoc’ by exercising our First Amendment rights of assembly and free speech when we speak out against injustices,” says the letter. “Black students and our concerns are not to be swatted away, our leaders are not to be subdued, and our voices are not to be silenced.”

Dean of the Office of African-American Affairs Maurice Apprey, who wrote the line that set off the BSA, expresses a deep frustration with the way the situation was handled and says the students misunderstood the meaning of his words and failed to ask him privately for clarification.

“They take those words and boom! They explode,” Apprey says. “Is this what I think of them as students? That they’re going to wreak havoc all over the place? No. It’s the lack of negotiation of these spheres of influence that could wreak havoc, not the students themselves.”

With the outrage over the letter, “I suddenly became a slave master that had to watch over them so they didn’t wreak havoc,” he says.

Apprey, who has worked at the university for 35 years, says that before this event, he had a relatively close relationship with the BSA. For the past eight years, he has frequently mentored leaders of the student group and even offered funding for some of the group’s projects, the latter of which he now regrets.

“They should not have a line in my budget or even space in my office and it was my mistake for giving them that,” Apprey says.

Not only did Apprey find the BSA’s letter unprofessional, he also found it offensive. In a private letter to BSA President Aryn Frazier, Apprey calls the letter a “shaming narrative” and questions why she aired her concerns in the public arena rather than in private.

“In the two years you have been here,” Apprey writes, “I know of no reason why you would grant yourself a single reason to mistrust me.”

Despite agreeing to an interview, Frazier did not follow up with responses to C-VILLE’s questions.

Now three weeks since the October 7 letter was released, Apprey says he has received multiple apologies from student groups whose signatures were attached. Darius Carter, president of UVA’s chapter of the National Society of Black Engineers, issued a public apology to the OAAA.

“While NSBE appeared as a co-signer for the open letter,” Carter writes, “we were not in full agreement as an organization, nor were we aware of the intentions to distribute the letter.”

In addition to the engineering group, One Way Christian Fellowship apologized for “prematurely” sponsoring a letter it did not fully understand, and Imani Nichols says that the executive board for the Black Oasis for Learning and Development did not give consent to have its signature used.

At an October 19 town hall meeting to address the concerns of black student groups, an unwanted limelight fell on the BSA, says Apprey. A student at the meeting boldly asked who else had ever felt encroached upon by the BSA, resulting in an overwhelming response.

“Everybody’s hands went up,” Apprey says. “They had not anticipated that at the town hall meeting. What looked like a conflict between OAAA and BSA turned out to be a latent conflict between BSA and other…umbrella black student groups.”

Apprey notes that this discord among black student groups is exactly what he sought to improve in his strategic outcomes, writing in a public letter to Frazier that the BSA “…sees itself as an overarching authority for all black organizations.” Apprey says the BSA’s dominant role prevents smaller black student groups from growing comfortably.

Apprey adds, “The silver lining in the cloud is that it’s very clear that there are other umbrella black student groups. They exist, they all want to be counted, they all want to be heard. So now they have to negotiate the very thing I was talking about, the spheres of influence.”

Frazier’s open letter also names grievances unrelated to the office’s function, namely the lack of black faculty members at UVA.

Noting that the OAAA is not responsible for hiring faculty, Apprey directed Frazier to the provost. “Even though this is out of our domain, we advocate continuously for diversifying our faculty and staff. More to point, we, every dean at OAAA, contribute to teaching at this university.”

The office has revised the wording of its strategic outcomes, emphasizing instead the director’s responsibility to “foster shared leadership” between black student groups.

Apprey remains supportive of the Black Student Alliance as well as all other black student groups on Grounds, but notes the incident could not go unaddressed.

“Some people have objected to the way I have gone after the president,” Apprey says. “The answer is very simple—the venom that was speared was just too much to ignore.”