Black groups stage protest on the Green

Speakers are the protest expressed their discontent with the way the University treats the black community. Waving signs reading "What happened to the number of black students at Penn?" and "Where are the tenured black faculty?" a crowd of about 100 black students, faculty, administrators and community members demonstrated Monday afternoon on College Green. The group gathered at the W.E.B. DuBois College House for a noon march through Superblock, across the 38th Street Bridge and down Locust Walk. Some of the demonstrators beat on drums and bells, while others shouted "We're fired up, we're not gonna take it anymore" and "No justice, no peace." The energized crowd assembled behind a podium near the peace sign in front of Van Pelt Library to hear speakers charge the University with mistreating the black community. African American Association Tri-Chairperson Jim Gray said the demonstration -- which was in the discussion stages for over a year -- was intended to "empower the African American community at Penn and in surrounding communities, and express our overall discontent regarding the way African Americans are treated at the University." Former Black Student League President and College senior Obinna Adibe greeted the crowd with a brief history of the relationship between University administrators and the black community. He said former University President Sheldon Hackney led a campaign to raise $35 million between 1988 and 1994 to increase black presence on campus. But Adibe explained that last April, University President Judith Rodin -- who was in the audience along with Provost Stanley Chodorow -- told the BSL that she didn't know what happened to the money. Hearing this, demonstrators chanted, "Show me the money." Former BSL Vice President and College senior Sean Coleman then presented several demands on the "Black Student Initiative." He called for the University to invest $100 million over 15 years to improve health, housing and education services in the surrounding community and offer scholarships to local students. And he said the African American Studies Program must be given departmental status by 2000 in order to increase its credibility. Additionally, he demanded that the University contract to provide more financial aid for black students and increase the number of blacks it accepts and retains each year. Coleman also called for the creation of an advisory board to monitor allocations for minority programs and an endowment for the DuBois House. Medicine Professor Jerry Johnson said the University works at keeping the number of black faculty members up, but many only stay for a few years because "the environment is not conducive, productive or supportive intellectually, mentally or spiritually." He added that there is a lack of interest in the research most important to the black community and that black faculty members often spend countless hours working on committees and with students, which doesn't count in the tenure process. Black Graduate and Professional Student Association President Vincena Allen, a graduate student in the School of Social Work, addressed the lack of black graduate students and the need for these graduate students to mentor black undergraduates. She said she was shocked that there are only two black graduate students in the Annenberg School of Communication. "Do not tolerate us," she said. "Want us and respect us." Daily Pennsylvanian reporter Lindsay Faber contributed to this article.

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