Distribute, avoid, and discourage. That’s not how USF treats students

Forty years ago, undergraduate students occupied one of the signature buildings of the prestigious Brown University, the John Carter Brown Library. No one shed tears. A change has occurred. Student behavior and management response stands as lessons in our own extremist moments.

Brown activists, an organised organization of African people, laid out the demands that today it appears to be rational and even mainstream. They wanted more faculties of colour. Multicultural curriculum. Diverse admissions and financial commitments to build a wider student body. Construction of the African American Studies Division and the Campus Third World Center.

They chose the best place to occupy. The JCB (as referred to as this respected institution itself) pushes down the corner of the central academic green on campus. This viewer art Hilltop Temple features one of the incredible collections in the world spanning everything from North and South America, purchased from molasses and remaining residues from the slave trade. Inside, the JCB reading room feels more like a library than a gentleman’s study. Long oak table with a giant fireplace hanging green shaded lamp, muffling carpet, chandelier, lead glass window and golden portrait of John Carter Brown.

Brown’s administrators were in a pinch, along with the drama. Chasing with financially conservative graduates who pressured them to sell financially from apartheid South Africa, Howard Swearerer’s president is at odds with financially conservative graduates. (This was Ronald Reagan’s second term.) The hunger striker was hungry for the university’s chapel. Frat Boys drew national headlines by holding scorecards to female pedestrians. Activist Amy Carter faced a famous expulsion.

When the undergraduate took over the JCB, the administration first threatened arrest. But the savvy protesters brought homework and called college bluffs. They asked – they asked – arrest students studying in the library?

The administrator then did something amazing. They listened.

And for their trust, managers adopted plans of change. Brown has assembled the “Blue Ribbon” alumni panels. He visited campus several times the following year and published a heartfelt report on “American University and Pluralist Ideals.” The committee’s 17 recommendations included a more diverse curriculum (points that met early faculty resistance), ethnic studies programs and labs, exchange programs, and calls to the expanded Third World Center.

During my two summers of Blissful Research Fellowship, I learned about this chapter in my university life. Back in the 1980s, when I applied to university, I myself was not a brown substance. (Low SAT and mediocre performance.) But 35 years later, I was impressed by the student’s strong organization as well as the response. Have this idea in your head. The university president, putting pressure on all sides, did the right thing.

I’ve seen my University of South Florida fall into rockstep with right-wing extremism. USF works “before the curve” in compliance, just like one colleague struggles. The university rubs words like “fair” and “climate change” from its website. The general education curriculum has been disinfected. The textbook orders soon come with a pledge of “affirmation,” and feel like medieval censorship, without asserting the politics of identity. Last spring, campus police joined the national trend of tear gasping Gaza War protesters. The trans students in my class must go to another building to pee.

Friends, colleagues, and sometimes media ask: How about teaching in Ron DeSantis’s Florida? I say, “Living in a hail.” Who knows that the hardened ball of hatred will rain next? Each of us has a breaking point.

My patience was carved into a small problem: the campus flag. For several years, our student center had exhibited banners for the countries of the Central Atrium, including several “identity” markers (#BlackLivesMatter, rainbow, etc.).

Our students loved the flag. African American and queer undergraduates stated how the exhibition shaped the decision to participate in USF. They collected petitions (signed to 300 students) and published “Zine, “Students for Students.” Mandy, one of my English majors, asked the campus Prime Minister about the flag during the open forum.

Management tactics? Obfuscation and avoidance. Mandy is spoken thoughtfully and gently. Despite her nose ring, it’s not something I would take on to anything radical. When she asked about the flag at the community forum, the prime minister responded with a folk anecdote. “My father said that if you fight pigs, you’ll just filthy.” After that, our campus leaders cited the laws that pass Tallahassee, repeatedly arguing how USF should comply with state laws. But friction: Florida didn’t ban anything hanging from the Student Center, and Senate Bill 100 (“Displaying Flags by Government Agency”) never passed.

The decision to remove the flag actually came internally. This is an example of “predictive compliance” born out of a bureaucratic maze, meaning that we could not expect to be able to solve (without decades of experience in higher education).

I did a small part of me through teacher mentoring. After the follow-up letter, Mandy and I met Dean, a principled political scientist who heard the students. Two weeks later, I met personally with the Prime Minister, who, in line with the statewide universities, had destroyed the decisions of the institutional-wide. The measure ultimately came from lawyers who were becoming creative in their attempts to arrange Senate Bill 100 on squared bill 100 using USF Policy 6.028, “Public Space Activities, Signs, and Use.” The resulting policy imposed more convenience than logic and principles, but was cast as if they received facts.

Those who challenged the points risked losing their jobs.

I thanked the Prime Minister for his honesty and handed the students an explanation. Students for free expression will never see the flag again. Perhaps colleges win through attrition. Undergraduates will not be able to connect this academic game for the first semester, at least while she is protecting her GPA.

So, what are we telling our students? After submitting legitimate concerns, they acquire the maxim and the misdirection, a phantom policy that wrote paper on university letterheads. The SB 100 died before the bill reached the governor’s desk, but our university was compliant anyway. What lessons have we tried to convey? Don’t pay attention to our campus community, don’t expect real answers to your questions – why fight pigs?

Think about the difference between 1985 and today. The undergraduate who occupied the John Carter Brown Library went on an incredible career. They speak of their occupation as a sense of long history, as knowledge of “vignetting” and with an obvious sense of camaraderie of each other. “It made me feel like I’m part of a moment,” explains co-organizer Richard Gray. “But it was really part of something bigger than that.” They are now doctors, lawyers, professors and performers with busy IMDB pages. By attending Ivy League College, they were already on the path to success. But I would like to believe that they are also true beneficiaries of education. The Brown administration in the spring of 1985 recognized the importance of taking students seriously. They listened to requests, listened to students’ opinions, and made a difference.

Like universities across the country, my own universities send another message. Regardless of principle, follow before being asked. Stop tear gas protests, not dialogue. If a student speaks up, speed up the decision to close doors. Distributed, avoided, diffuse, abused.

We are failing generations.

Thomas Hallock is a professor of English and Florida studies at the University of South Florida, teaching primarily on the St. Petersburg campus. In the summer of 2023 he was a fellow John Carter Brown Library, where he studied (coming soon) poetry from the colonial Florida poetry.