Students Expose Columbia’s Racism

NEW YORK CITY, March 7—PLP has been fighting to smash racism at Columbia University, organizing and forming study groups within the Student Worker Solidarity (SWS) club, which currently is fighting for a $15 minimum wage on campus.
SWS’s fight is an antiracist one for low-income, mainly Black and Latin student workers here, who earn most of their living expenses via work-study programs. Often, they cannot afford food or books on their pitiful salary.
The college often fails to pay students for months after their work is done. Graduate students, who do much of the undergraduate teaching, are attempting to unionize to guarantee themselves a livable wage.
This while the school sits on a $9.6 billion endowment! But what does capitalism care if it leaves these students out to hang, while bosses steal the profits?
Last Thursday, 40 militant SWS students again marched to the administrators’ offices of Columbia and Barnard after rallying and dropping a banner on the main university quadrangle.
They plan to hold these marches every two weeks. Students from other groups joined them, reflecting the recently formed coalition of all activist students. They’ve approached faculty members to garner support, and two departments, sociology and history, have agreed to their demand. Two other small administrative units have also acceded to a higher wage.
Many faculty members are sympathetic but too intimidated to voice their support, fearful of losing their jobs. Indeed, the University has been threatening disciplinary action against undergraduate activists.
Columbia’s wealth is devoted to educating the U.S. financial and political elite. However, the massive student strike of 1968 and the civil rights movement forced them to admit more Black, Latin, immigrant and working-class students, and they now brag about their diversity and of accepting of students regardless of financial need—as if they’ve suddenly turned anti-racist.
In addition to the $15/hour demand, SWS is also pressing the campus to pay volunteers.
Impoverished student volunteers can’t participate in volunteer programs, which may involve working in the community, making ties with future employers or providing medical services. One pre-med student was interested in the emergency medical service, but could not afford it as not only are volunteers unpaid, but they are expected to pay $3,000 for training.
This group of students, and many more at Columbia, are engaged in fighting racism in the community as well.
Columbia is in the process of building a new campus on 35 acres of land they’ve taken over in west Harlem, displacing Black and Latin residents and businesses and helping gentrify the area. Students participated in a sleep-in on the streets of Harlem several years ago and have also allied with the struggles against police brutality and evictions.
Increasingly, they are realizing that poverty, racism unemployment and war cannot be solved under capitalism and that eventually the system must be overthrown. Many who have been long-time intellectual opponents of capitalism are realizing that to overthrow capitalism one must belong to and organize with a party with a long-term outlook, vision of the future, and program of fightback. With consistent struggle, we can raise class-consciousness and destroy racism through organized communist revolution.