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'Hear Ye, Hear Ye, All Negroes'

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By Candyce Phoenix • November 4, 2005 at 10:00 AM

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Sitting in class at Howard University last Thursday, we all expected the campus to be abuzz with word of George and Laura Bush visiting Howard's student center for their bogus "Helping America's Youth" conference. What we didn't expect was to have a woman come into our classroom and warn that the Secret Service "keeps calling over because the snipers can still see in the windows. They said to close all the windows and blinds. Stay away from the windows because if they see you they might shoot."
What? Stay away from the windows or get shot? What a nice way to tell us that Bush was ecstatic to be able to visit the Negroes on such an important occasion.
Needless to say, Bush was not well received, which was to be expected given his recent two percent approval rating among African Americans. One of my classmates said it best when she complained that having Bush on campus was "like inviting the master to the slave cabins for dinner."
An administration that has attacked affirmative action, which is overwhelmingly supported by African Americans, and promoted a problem-ridden and ineffective No Child Left Behind program that does little to help inner city schools, was coming to a black campus to discuss how to uplift disadvantaged youth. How ironic.
Perhaps he could have gotten away with his visit were it not for the veritable lock-down of campus and exclusion of Howard students from the conference. Anyone who has been at Columbia the past few years will remember notables such as Bill Clinton and Vladimir Putin visiting campus. Correct me if I'm wrong, but I don't remember anything more than a few more cops being posted. There were snipers, but as I looked out the window of my dorm on the 12th floor of John Jay, none of them pointed their guns at me or sent threatening messages.
Not so at Howard. The main student center, including the only cafeteria on the main campus that takes the meal plan, was off limits for breakfast and lunch, while an elaborate luncheon catered to the visitors. All main entrances to campus buildings surrounding the student center were closed off and guarded by armed guards. Students and professors had to go in the back and side entrances, forced to walk all the way down the long hill and up five or six flights of stairs just to get to a library whose main entrance stood just 30 feet away from where we were allowed to stand. As another classmate of mine walked to the back entrance of the building, a policeman pulled up beside her to tell her, "cease your walking." They told her to stay put because a motorcade might be coming through in the next 15 to 20 minutes, making her late for her midterm.
But this is just security as usual for a sitting president, right? Not quite. Talking to other students and faculty, it was clear that no such security measures were taken when Bill Clinton or Al Gore visited campus during their terms in office. And I don't remember the entrances to Hamilton, Lerner, Butler, or any other buildings near Low being completely shut off when political leaders spoke at Columbia. In fact, if security at Columbia would have been as tight as at Howard, no one would have been able to get on the main campus at all.
The irony of it all is that only days after the passing of Rosa Parks, students could not sit at their own lunch counter or enter through the main entrance of their own buildings while a conference with mostly white attendees gathered in their student center. One professor posted a sign on her door that said it best:
"Hear ye, hear ye, All Negroes: Use the back door for entrance and egress, until further notice."
On top of it all, only two out of thousands of Howard students were allowed to attend, by invitation only.
I'm happy to say that we didn't take it lying down. Enraged by the lock-down of their own campus when they had done nothing wrong, sympathetic campus officers allowed over 200 people to peacefully protest outside of the student center. Politicians and conference attendees were laughing and smiling on the balcony as they watched us. As we stood, administrators warned, "the police are on their way." The vice provost of student affairs proclaimed, "I am not worried about you going to jail, I am worried about what else [the Secret Service] will do to you." As police arrived, the majority of students stood firm. The campus buzzed with word that a man had pointed what looked like an AK-47 at the crowd as Laura Bush was driven away.
Who said times had changed?

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