U. acknowledges BJL demands, no set deadline for final decisions

Although several actions were taken by the administrators in order to address the agreement between University President Christopher Eisgruber ’83 and the Black Justice League, there is no set deadline for final decisions regarding the demands of the BJL, Eisgruber said.

According to Eisgruber, the modified demands of the BJL have been delegated to key administrators and departments who will ultimately assess the issues at hand and consult the greater University community to determine a concrete course of action.

He added that the administration has established multiple platforms intended to facilitate conversation between University members representing different interests, including open meetings with the Task Force on General Education, a committee on the legacy of Woodrow Wilson, Class of 1879, and meetings between him and student groups.

Members of the BJL declined or did not respond to requests for comment.

Eisgruber explained that he wrote to Chair of the University Board of Trustees Katie Hall ’80, Head of Wilson College Eduardo Cadava and Dean of Faculty Deborah Prentice the evening that the protests ended.

“What we have done in response to the protests is to take the requests and proposals that the BJL wanted to discuss and put them in processes where the community has the chance to deliberate about them and decide fairly, and that’s what we're going to do with these requests and requests coming from other groups,” Eisgruber said.

According to Associate Dean and the Director of Programs for Access and Inclusion Khristina Gonzalez, the Office of the Dean of the College has invited members of the BJL, Latinx, the Princeton Open Campus Coalition and other student groups to participate in a Task Force on General Education meeting that discussed the value of a diversity requirement.

She added that three different curricular conversations have been held in each of the residential colleges during which all students were invited to discuss the goals and values of the proposed diversity requirement and what the requirement would look like.

Gonzalez noted that the three open conversations saw a full house of a diverse array of students, who appeared to be taking advantage of the provided resources to express their opinions.

She explained that the Office of the Dean of the College will continue holding conversations on campus climate through the next semester. Ultimately, the Task Force will write a report and make recommendations on the curriculum at the end of next semester, she explained.

Eisgruber said a committee of members of the University’s Board of Trustees has been created to consider Wilson's legacy at the university and to determine what changes should be made in reaction to these findings.

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The committee has created a website to collect observations and opinions about Wilson and share these findings with the greater Princeton community.

Eisgruber added that he sent a letter to Cadava, encouraging him to wait until the committee collects all of this information before deciding whether to remove the mural of Wilson from the Wilcox dining hall.

“In my own personal view, the mural’s current location is problematic because it dominates a space that is intended to be a site of community for all students in the College," Eisgruber wrote in his email to Cadava. "If there are students who find the mural offensive because of Wilson’s views about race, that objection is, in my opinion, a good reason to change the decoration of the dining hall to make it feel more inclusive.”

However, Eisgruber noted that Cadava has not replied yet.

Prentice said that she has arranged a meeting to talk to representatives of the BJL about cultural competency training, but has not taken any other actions.

Prentice declined to provide further comments.

Director of Counseling and Psychological Services Calvin Chin noted that Executive Director of University Health Services John Kolligian has spoken to Vice President W. Rochelle Calhoun about enhancing cultural competency training for CPS staff members.

Kolligian deferred comment to Chin.

Chin noted that CPS staff has already received Cultural Competency training for the past three years, as a focal point of the CPS annual retreats that have discussed the institutional causes of racism and understanding privilege.

Chin added that he expects anybody who works in on-campus counseling to be skilled in handling patients of different backgrounds.

“You won’t be able to get a job here unless you have some training in cultural competency, diversity and inclusion," he explained.

In terms of responding directly to the protesters, Chin said that he has tried to get in contact with members of the BJL through Gonzalez to see if he could support them through the issues that they have been going through and to hear their concerns about what can be further done.

However, he noted that nobody from the BJL has reached out to him to discuss how CPS resources could be available for students facing cases of microaggressions and institutionalized racism.

In addition to sparking changes on campus, the discussion on the BJL protests has also brought in a number of different voices, including Republican presidential candidate Ted Cruz '92, Wilson School alumna and writer for the Washington Post Christine Emba '10 and members of student groups from other institutions such as Harvard.

A number of University groups have come together to express their opinions. The African American studies department has written a support letter championing the demands of the BJL. In contrast, Josh Zuckerman ’16 and Evan Draim ’16 have released a student petition opposing these very same demands, and Darren Geist ’05 has similarly written an alumni petition expressing concerns about the negotiations.

One such voice is the newly formed Princeton Open Campus Coalition that wrote a letter to Eisgruber denouncing the actions taken by the Black Justice League, stressing “the importance of preserving an intellectual culture in which all members of the Princeton community feel free to engage in civil discussion and to express their convictions without fear of being subjected to intimidation or abuse.”

POCC member Andy Loo ’16 said that the group of 10 students gathered in response to the protests and wrote the letter asking to meet with Eisgruber because they collectively believed that many students did not speak out against the protests for fear they would be criticized for their opinions.

“We had a fruitful meeting and I’m confident that Princeton will uphold academic freedom and freedom of speech," he noted.

However, Loo said that he cannot share the exact details of the meeting with Eisgruber since both parties agreed that the conversation would stay off-the-record.

According to Loo, many currently supported ideas — such as the earth's roundness, gender equality and the abolition of slavery — used to be politically incorrect, so politically incorrect thoughts must be expressed to continue the advancement of society.

POCC member Allie Burton ’17 said POCC members come from diverse backgrounds, including Jewish, black, Hispanic and LGBT ones. They are not what some people have accused them of being, namely "a bunch of privileged white kids," speaking out because they feel threatened, she said.

She explained that while no formal conversation between the BJL and the POCC has been facilitated, the two groups have come to direct confrontation during a discussion in philosophy professor Peter Singer’s Practical Ethics class on Dec. 9.

"When I was up there [during Peter Singer’s class] talking, they accused me of having internalized oppression, and that’s why I was disagreeing,” Burton said. “I feel like those kind of comments are not constructive to finding a solution that’s best for the campus.”

When asked about the tension between the perspectives of the student groups presented, Eisgruber noted, “You have a lot of people expressing views back and forth, and that is what should happen on a college campus.”