Ever since a University of Vermont staffer went on a hunger strike in support of the Black Lives Matter group last week, things have been less than tranquil at the picturesque campus, set in the city of Burlington some 50 miles from the United States-Canada border.
On Friday, February 16, John Mejia, assistant director for the Office of Student and Community Relations — and, in all likelihood, still drawing a salary from UVM — issued a list of nine demands, as reported by Seven Days, an alternative weekly newspaper, including:
- The installation of a fourth flagpole at the Davis Center to permanently fly a Black Lives Matter flag
- UVM’s Board of Trustees’ announcing its endorsement of the movement for the Black Lives Matter platform as an institutional supporter
- Ongoing and 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
“I will be on a hunger strike until UVM and the city meet my demands, or I perish,” he told Seven Days.
UVM communications director Enrique Corredera has confirmed that Mejia is still employed by the college, which counts 12,000 undergraduates among its student population, including 1,544 students of color.
He also said that none of Mejia’s demands have been met.
Emily Howe, who — like Mejia — works in the Office of Student and Community Relations, noted that Mejia is now staging his hunger strike off campus at an unspecified location, after his tent was removed by campus police on February 17.
“Mejia’s demands are by now a perfectly standard eruption of academic victimology. The only minor twist is that he is a staffer, not a student. Students are being taught from elementary school onwards to think of themselves as victims of a nationwide racist conspiracy to silence and oppress females and underrepresented minorities,” Heather Mac Donald, the author of “The War on Cops: How the New Attack on Law and Order Makes Everyone Less Safe,” told LifeZette.
Despite the prevailing narrative perpetuated by academia and the mainstream media, Mac Donald, who is also the Thomas W. Smith Fellow at the Manhattan Institute in New York, rejects the premise of the Black Lives Matter movement altogether.
“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 said. “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.”
She added, “A massive bureaucracy on college campuses and, increasingly, in high schools promotes such self-pitying and self-destructive thinking. It is in the interest of the bureaucracy to promote such specious protests.”
On Tuesday of this week, a UVM group called No Names for Justice held a rally in support of Mejia and his demands for racial equality, according to Campus Reform.
In response to the protest, UVM President Tom Sullivan issued a statement. It reads 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 communicate frequently with concerned and impacted members of our community. 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. We are offering John health assistance and support as John makes personal choices regarding these issues.”
To be expected in this era of victimization — some are now calling for Sullivan’s resignation.
“I would advise President Sullivan to reject all of the demands,” said Mac Donald. “I am certain that there is no discrimination going on at UVM. On the contrary, the school is undoubtedly bending over backwards to admit and hire as many underrepresented minorities as possible.”
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As public university funded by taxpayers, UVM has an obligation to educate students, not merely churn out activists.
“To end the destructive ideology of victimization, college presidents and faculty need to start telling the truth about their own environment,” said Mac Donald. “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. From there, they can extend the analysis to the rest of American society.”
Mac Donald also noted, “If the adults on campus are not even willing to speak the truth about their own reality, there is little hope for reason and rationality when it comes to analyzing the world at large. Identity politics is going to rip this country apart and result in ever deepening racial divisions.”
Elizabeth Economou is a former CNBC staff writer and adjunct professor. Follow her on Twitter.
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