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Martin Walsh
[Full Interview] [Topic Top]
The students were upset, not only about that incident but the most
important issue was that they referenced a number of racial problems in the past which the
University had promised to address -- not this chancellor but others -- and the students said that
they were never carried out. There was the whole distrust element that we always talk about as a
critical community dynamic that leads to racial disorders. There was a history of the lack of
confidence in the redress system that led to the very tense situation on the campus.
Martin Walsh
[Full Interview] [Topic Top]
Yes. It was the major concern to
everyone -- what was happening, what could be done in order to deal with the safety of the
students, basically students of color, and how do you prevent this stuff from occurring. Everyone
had said to us, "You have a bad environment here. The kids are isolated. Complaints come in
about how they're dealt with by the administrators from financial aid people to others at the
university. New students coming in, we have white kids coming in from farming areas who've
never dealt with blacks and they don't go through any type of a program of orientation." At that
time there were some good programs available. Harvard had an interesting one for getting new
students together. So that was the type of environment in our preliminary talks that we tried to
get the people to start looking at, even before they got into mediation. "What do you really want
to see happen here? What are you doing? What are the problems here?" One of the problems
was the university had run into fiscal problems over the last several years. As a result, the
administration had stopped a lot of the training. There were a number of training programs that
had been eliminated because of the budget crunch. The administration admitted that when we
asked them, "What are you doing here?" A number of the training programs that they wanted to
conduct were no longer being held.
Martin Walsh
[Full Interview] [Topic Top]
One of the community
demands was that during these other investigations the state attorney general hire an independent
prosecutor to look into this shooting.
Stephen Thom
[Full Interview] [Topic Top]
Some
of the issues were: we want to have the right to come into the town and handle arrest of our own
people. That the town police should not conduct any arrests of Native American people. They
were talking about issues like the Native Americans have a different tribal system, different jails.
There were some negotiations as to, if they do incarcerate any individuals, where do they go and
how do they do that. So there are a lot of details in that case with regards to arrests, procedures,
trials, courts, the whole adjudication process for Native Americans who were being prosecuted
by the town. So those were the kinds of issues that were outlined. But behind all those issues
was really a total distrust of the town law enforcement, that their whole attitude was, "We're in
control and if you don't do what we say, we're going to press you until you do it, and if we have
to kill you, we kill you." There was just that attitude that seemed to prevail. And the Native
Americans totally distrusted them. Although we went into negotiations on these processes, there
really was a bottom line of, how do we restore the trust, and how does the town council get
control of its own police department, and change that attitude.
Stephen Thom
[Full Interview] [Topic Top]
I think he, we, all under-estimated the Korean community.
Being of Asian-American ancestry, I don't think the Chinese and other demonstrators had the
kind of vigor that the Korean community had. But I think people never realized the loss the
Korean community suffered. There were families that were devastated. What most people never
understood about the Korean community is that people who had come here had pooled their
money together as families, and bought businesses, and had an obligation to pay back to that
family, organization, or friends. Then they took the collateral from their business and bought
another place. So they were spread very thin in a lot of situations. Once one place burned down
or was damaged it had a significant effect. It has this domino effect on many of the families in
the Korean community. It was really devastating. We had a number of Koreans leave the
country and say, 'Forget it, I'm out of here, I'm going back to Korea.' They just could not ever
dream of becoming whole. So when you face that kind of devastation, there is definitely a sense
of hopelessness and in some ways, it was therapeutic to march and demonstrate. They didn't
have any problems getting people out because at least it gave them a focus and a direction and
some hope. So these demonstrations were vigorous. They didn't stop.
| Martin Walsh
[Full Interview] [Topic Top]
The underlying issue was that, "You
promised so many things in the past and these never had taken place. We don't believe you. We
don't trust you." And the new president said, "I'm new, not even a year here. Give me a chance.
We can change it. I'm committed,"
Martin Walsh
[Full Interview] [Topic Top]
For example, one of the demands was for an Upward Bound program
to recruit minority students to the campuses. They had just lost their federal Upward Bound
grant, so this was a big issue. The University had come up with an alternative and had gotten
money for it. Basically, it was the same numbers, but the university wanted to change some of
the people who were involved because they didn't think the Upward Bound people were as
effective in recruiting as they could have been. The administration came up with their own plan
and money, but the students wanted to look at it and meet with the people related to it to see if it
would live up to their expectations. One of the major concerns was who was going to be hired,
fired and matters like that. The students were concerned about some of the people who were
being fired, or laid off, because of the change of the program.
Stephen Thom
[Full Interview] [Topic Top]
We
had a list of issues that we anticipated the Native Americans would ask, and a couple of things
that had already come up. One, they wanted all of the remains. They wanted them to be buried
in a certain location, and they wanted that location to be concealed. Two, they wanted to identify
any of the artifacts that were related to what they called funerary objects to be returned with those
remains, and to be tracked, and to go through and contact the professors to see whether anybody
had, unintentionally or intentionally, borrowed any of the artifacts. So those were some of the
types of demands or requests -- that would be brought to the table for discussions.
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