Last week LifeZette reported that University of Vermont staffer John Mejia had gone on a hunger strike in support of the Black Lives Matter group.
Burlington-based Seven Days, an alternative weekly newspaper, is now reporting that Mejia has ended his all-water diet.
“I started this hunger strike because I wanted people who are supposedly our leaders to care. I wanted them to stop for a second, and they haven’t,” Mejia told a group of students at UVM’s Davis Center late Friday morning, where protesters were staging a sit-in.
It turns out, though, that “caring” is a one-way street for UVM activists.
On Thursday, the night before, caring was the last thing on their minds when they blocked intersections during rush hour, creating 15-minute delays for ambulances that were headed to the hospital — while escalating their demands, including an audience with UVM President Tom Sullivan to discuss racism on campus, according to Campus Reform.
Friday’s sit-in was planned to coincide with a day of visitations by students who have been admitted to UVM for the class of 2021, the Burlington Free Press reported. Activists apparently took over the university’s Twitter hashtag for the occasion, #uvmsaidyes, to express their complaints.
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And at 1:30 p.m. President Sullivan addressed the protesters: “I have a commitment — the administration has a commitment to make sure we have processes, conversations and discussions and timelines and goals in place to move the conversation forward,” he said.
In light of Mejia’s hunger strike, which began on February 16, Sullivan had issued a statement.
It read in part: “The University of Vermont has a strong, visible, and ongoing commitment to diversity, racial equality, and inclusion. We consistently speak out against racism, injustice and bigotry on our campus … And we know that the work around these important issues is far from done. We appreciate John Mejia’s passion for racial equality both on campus and in the city of Burlington. We are concerned for John’s health and well-being …”
Among Mejia’s demands were the following:
- intensive training of UVM police in anti-racism and implicit bias on a semester basis
- the permanent installation of a Black Lives Matter flag installed at UVM police headquarters
- increased funding for anti-racist events on campus from all sources
- installation of a fourth flagpole at the Davis Center to permanently fly a Black Lives Matter flag
Sadly, the divisive Black Lives Matter narrative continues to gain traction on college campuses nationwide, spewing anger and hate — and sullying the once-hallowed halls of academia.
As Heather Mac Donald, author of “The War on Cops: How the New Attack on Law and Order Makes Everyone Less Safe,” told LifeZette recently, “Black Lives Matter is a movement based on lies about the police. It has resulted in an additional 2,700 blacks being murdered in 2015 and 2016 compared to 2014, as officers back off of the constitutional, proactive policing that interrupts crime and saves lives.”
She added, “Even if the Black Lives Matter narrative were not demonstrably false, however, it is a form of highly partisan politics that has no place in the official proceedings of a college.”
Mac Donald, also the Thomas W. Smith fellow at the Manhattan Institute in New York, added, “To end the destructive ideology of victimization, college presidents and faculty need to start telling the truth about their own environment. They need to start telling students that not only are they not oppressed by being on their campus, [but] they are among the most privileged individuals in human history …”
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She also offered a few words of counsel to UVM’s president. “I would advise President Sullivan to reject all of the demands. I am certain that there is no discrimination going on at UVM. On the contrary, the school is undoubtedly bending over backward to admit and hire as many underrepresented minorities as possible.”
UVM communications director Enrique Corredera did not respond to LifeZette’s inquiries prior to publication.
Elizabeth Economou is a former CNBC staff writer and adjunct professor. Follow her on Twitter.
(photo credit, homepage image: UVM Old Mill Building, CC BY-SA 2.0, by Jared C. Benedict; photo credit, article image: University of Vermont Panorama, CC BY-SA 3.0, by AlexiusHoratius)
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