Student Group At Hamilton College Makes Big Demands

The group is somewhat anonymous; but, their demands are out in the open and they're actually enormous.

The group is called The Movement and their sweeping changes at the elite private college include a requirement that would make the next college president a 'person of color' among many other major changes. The group recently sent their 'demands by Hamilton College' to the college president and following a demonstration, the story was picked up by the national online publication, The Daily Beast.

The Daily Beast was by no means kind to the activist group.

Limiting freedom of speech; discouraging white faculty from leading departments; hiring of financial advisers to solely work with students of color; allocating student government seats specifically for “marginalized and underrepresented groups;” and erecting a statue in honor of the Oneida Native Americans are all among the demands. -Daily Beast

Here's a list of some of their demands (the Daily Beast humorously noted that the word 'Demand' was used 83 times in their nearly four page declaration):

• The Office of the President releases an official statement without clause acknowledging that Black Lives Matter. We also demand a statement professing the validity of these demands and the beginning of discussion to implement infrastructure to meet these demands within the next twenty-four hours.
• We demand a President of Color for the twentieth President of Hamilton College.
• We demand the immediate promise of the Board of Trustees to release a statement dedicating themselves to diversity and inclusion.
• All Faculty, Administrators, and Staff who support these list of Demands will remain unthreatened. Threats to their positions will result in an escalation of our response.
• The acknowledgment of the instrumental role of Oneida Native Americans in the College’s history. We demand the erection of a statue honoring these people on our campus. We also demand for talks about fostering connections with the Oneida tribe that begin with an acknowledgement of their exclusion from their land and our shared history.

Read all of the demands here.

In all, there are 39 demands that the author of The Daily Beast, Emily Shire describes as, 'comical' - "Some of the demands reflect a hypersensitivity that would be almost comical if these undergraduates didn’t take them so seriously."

Shire also pays careful attention to the fact that the student demands completely fail to acknowledge the principles of Free Speech and Free Elections which serve as a rather important foundation for the America designed by our Forefathers.

According to the story on The Daily Beast, Hamilton President Joan Hinde Stewart will be meeting with the student group in the near future.  Until then, she's chosen to limit her comments.

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