March results in success and failure

Marching through the IU campus, a group of about 400 people used Martin Luther King Jr. Day of 1997 as a time to call for action and social change. As other students sat in class, this group protested in a way not seen on the Bloomington campus since the 1960s and 1970s.\nAs the sun shone overhead and snow slowly melted on the streets and grass, more than 400 people marched to voice concerns about the state of diversity on the IU campus.\n"There had been a pretty long tradition of different ethnic groups and race-based organizations doing organizing or advocacy based on their own specific community's needs," said Ryan Pintado-Vertner, an alumnus and one of the march's organizers. "Each of these groups had their own agendas, and every year, they tried to make some progress. But it was pretty rare that they would come together with a single agreed-upon set of principles."\nThe march was organized by the Student Coalition, a group formed to improve campus life for students of different colors, ethnicities, genders and sexual orientations.\nBeginning at the Showalter Fountain and ending at the Sample Gates, the group highlighted seven specific goals to help improve campus diversity for all students.\nThese goals were intended to increase funding and support for existing diversity programming; to create new programs, such as an Asian Culture Center and a Latino Studies Department; to increase the numbers of non-white and female faculty members; and to begin a university-wide recognition of Martin Luther King Jr. Day.\nFive years ago, Pintado-Vertner and his wife, Lisa, marched in the protest, hoping to bring about change on campus. While Martin Luther King Jr. Day is now an official holiday for students and faculty, looking back at the experience is bittersweet for both. In the months and years after the march, both say many of their goals were not met. \nBut at the time of the march, as students chanted together and raised a banner reading "Heirs to the Revolution," Lisa said the group hoped it was seeing the beginning of something.\n"We hoped we would really have an impact, that people were actually feeling what we were doing and that we weren't alone in our frustration and desire to have things change," she said. \nAlthough recognition of the King holiday was important to the march as a unifying element for all of the different people involved, Ryan said it was not the group's main goal in having the march.\n"Really a holiday is not all that effective to make the University recognize racial justice," he said. "For most students, having a holiday is about having a long weekend. For us, having a long weekend was less important than having the University recognize the true principles Martin Luther King stood for."\nParticipating in the protest was "one of the defining moments in most of our lives," Ryan said.\nMost of the Student Coalition organizers had never even seen a similar march, let alone actually put one together from scratch.\n"I think it really shocked a lot of people on campus from the administration all the way through the student body," he said. "I think the general perception was that we would not be able to mobilize the numbers we promised to."\nThe weather also presented a challenge to the group. Ryan remembered that it was freezing cold and "snowing like crazy" the day before the march was scheduled. Although next day turned out to be unseasonably warm, another small crisis occurred when one student reported over a walkie-talkie saying a truck full of white supremacists were driving the streets looking for the march. Ultimately, the group did not appear at the protest.\n"Everything just sincerely fell together," Ryan said.\nAs the large group of protestors waited outside, the Indiana Daily Student reported that six organizers spent five hours with former Bloomington Chancellor Kenneth Gros Louis discussing the Coalition's seven demands. The next day, Gros Louis announced his support for all seven Coalition goals. \n"It was helpful to me that they were prepared to recognize others' requests and that financial resources are limited and one group might get less and others might get more," Gros Louis told the IDS.\nAt an IU Board of Trustees meeting four days after the protest, the board voted to recognize the holiday and call off classes that day. At the time, former trustee John Walda told the IDS that the decision had nothing to do with the protest.\nRyan said he thinks the Student Coalition succeeded in meeting its concrete goals, such as building an Asian Culture Center. But he said other demands fell apart or were not met in the way the group wanted. He also felt the University called the 20/20 diversity program an answer to the group's demands even though the Student Coalition did not necessarily support it.\nAlthough she also said the Student Coalition did not succeed in meeting all of its goals, Lisa said the experience taught her and the other members important lessons about organizing for social change.\n"We realized how hard it is trying to make an institution change," she said. "If you can make it change for one year, that's one thing, but if you can institute change in the long term, we learned how incredibly hard it is and how much constant organizing and pushing it takes."\nLisa said the Student Coalition also suffered from not having a clear idea of what it wanted to replace programs it thought weren't working.\nThe group also lacked leaders to continue the organization after the original core group graduated, Ryan said. \n"We were all new to organizing and building a constituency and building a leadership sustainable over a long period of time that can survive turnover and graduation and attrition," he said. "That was new to us, and it was new to the University, so I think that the way we built the Student Coalition it could not sustain itself in the long run. We didn't give it the tools to survive."\nThe Pintado-Vernters, who met while involved in student protests at IU, still keep in touch with other Student Coalition organizers. Although they look back on the march itself as a success, Ryan said his view of the best way to observe the Martin Luther King holiday has changed.\n"I think if you'd asked me back then, I would have told you we want people to use the day to advocate racial and social justice," he said. "But I think what's more clear to me now is that if there's not work being done throughout the year.\n"If organizations are not being built, if memberships are not being built, if the seeds of movement are not being planted, if that's not happening, what you do on Jan. 21st is of limited consequence"