Leftist student activists at Syracuse University are fighting for the right to select their roommates based on race. The university’s chancellor replied, “I’ve heard the concern and I validate it.”
According to a report from Campus Reform, student activists at Syracuse University are demanding the right to be assigned a non-white roommate. Broader unrest erupted at Syracuse after “racist grafitti” was found on campus. Now, students claim that they will call for the resignation of Chancellor Kent Syverud if he does not cave to a list of their demands.
During a sit-in protest against Syverud, students rattled off a list of demands. “The general consensus is that black students, and we’re talking specifically on behalf of Black students, may feel safer and better rooming with other Black students rather than saying the same race has an implementation of a profile system or a portal system. That includes interests as well as race,” one student said during the sit-in.
Syracuse Chancellor Kent Syverud, who attended the sit-in event, said that the student’s concern about roommate selection is valid.
“I am trying to learn about how the roommate process works at Syracuse and how it can work better. I haven’t had much time to work on this one so I don’t know,” Syverud told the students. “All I can do at this point on this one [demand] is say I’ve heard the concern and I validate it. It seems to me, we could improve the process on roommate selection. We need the experts on it to also work on the details so there aren’t unintended consequences.”
Syracuse spent $5 million on a “social justice center” in 2018 that was designed to provide resources to progressive campus activists. A press release from 2018 claimed that the center “will support innovative and multidisciplinary research of contemporary social problems while providing proactive and concrete approaches and solutions.”
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