Black Lives Matter Group Makes Demands at Northwestern

The Black Lives Matter student group at Northwestern University released a list of 19 demands to the school and President Morton Schapiro in a Thanksgiving weekend Facebook post.

Among them are that the University increase its black student population and significantly increase the percentage of Native Americans who attend the school.

“We demand that the University increase the Black student population to 10% and the Native American student population to at least 5% by the academic school year of 2020 and continuously seek ways of retaining and improving the representation of students of color on campus,” was listed about midway down the group’s list.

According to Evanston Now, Native Americans right now make up less than 0.1 percent of the school’s degree-seeking students, and only account for 0.7 percent of all Americans. So the student manifesto calls for Native Americans to be over-represented at the school by 7 times their share of the nation’s population. Their 10 percent goal for blacks would still leave that demographic 14 percent under-represented.

A total of 19 demands were listed. Among them were:

“We demand that the Black House be the focus of expanded efforts to improve the Black Student Experience, including the creation of a resource center and technology hub tailored to Black students.

We demand that the University publicly acknowledge national and international tragedies within communities of color that have a traumatic impact on the students of color within this campus in a timely manner.

We demand that any spaces and positions that bears and honors the names of figures which include but are not limited to the names of John Evans (who, later in life, defended a massacre of Indians) and Frances Willard be removed immediately, and are instead replaced by influential people of color in Northwestern and Evanston’s history such as Ricky Byrdsong.”

“We are prepared to have a series of meetings to follow up with this list of demands to ensure that all our needs are met and heard,” is how the post, dated Nov. 27, concluded.