A Virtual Experience Through Student Struggles at the University of Michigan

Student groups prepared questions, thousands paused to hear the improvised speech, and the university even raised the curfew for women—yes, you read that right, there was a curfew for women students back then. All normal campus life halted for this historic visit to hear JFK speak on the Peace Corps. JFK had not planned to speak at all but saw the students waiting in anticipation and knew he couldn’t ignore their signs and calls. As we will see, U-M students have a way of gaining the attention of authorities. At this moment in his campaign, JFK introduced the Peace Corps, questioning students how they would serve others in their future careers. For context, the Peace Corps is a US governmental program that trains and deploys volunteers to provide development assistance abroad. Kennedy noted that U-M did not “... merely … help its graduates have an economic advantage in the life struggle,” implying that Michigan graduates do more with their newfound knowledge and careers. As Michigan students, we have a “greater purpose” to fulfill. Weeks after the Ann Arbor visit, students greeted JFK with a petition signed by over one thousand students “... willing to serve abroad.” Carloads of students drove to meet JFK at the Toledo airport with this petition just two days before the election and many students did go on to donate their service as they promised years prior. Although JFK was inspired by U-M students and their enthusiasm to help others—evident in the Peace Corps founding soon after his visit—this counters a common U-M narrative. The university and the students themselves did not directly cause the Peace Corps founding, as some say. In reality, U-M is a campus full of students dedicated to making a difference through activism, but major credit is unfortunately not due to the university. However, the student support for JFK’s progressive action calls and eagerness to serve demonstrates the timeless activism at our university. I’m sure that at the least, the student enthusiasm inspired JFK.Since the Peace Corps founding about a year after the Union speech, nearly 2,700 U-M graduates have served in the program, working in over 60 countries in a variety of fields. Michigan is currently the number 4 university of total Peace Corps volunteers and ranks 4th on the Peace Corps’s Top Volunteer-Producing Colleges and Universities list. U-M now has a Peace Corps Office to “... help students prepare for … service,” continuing the legacy of JFK and the 1960 student body into the present.

On October 14, 1960, John F. Kennedy stood on the steps at the Michigan Union, delivering a swift yet impactful speech at a campaign stop for the 1960 presidential election. While JFK flew in late intending to get some sleep, ten thousand students gathered at 1:40am, flooding State Street in anticipation of what their future president would say.

JFK on the steps of the Michigan Union, 1960

Michigan Union

At the same time in the 90s, anti-sweatshop activism was gaining traction across the US. The United States signed on to global free trade agreements, which led to companies increasingly using overseas factories to produce their goods. Disputes over the free trade agreements sparked media attention, often exposing working conditions in these factories to the public. On campus, SOLE led the anti-sweatshop activism movement. They called on the university to take responsibility for where and how it got its gear. SOLE pinpointed the athletic department, establishing a “Just Don’t Do It” campaign against its Nike contract. Still, students felt there was more to be done. With inspiration from Duke University students, SOLE held a sit-in right here, in the Fleming Building, where President Lee Bollinger’s office sat. SOLE sent their “No-Sweat 30” into Bollinger’s office on St. Patrick’s Day, 1999. Throughout their 51-hour sit-in, the students talked strategy, held press interactions (TIME magazine included), and did team-bonding activities. Yes, they even had a dance party while protesting. They were also one of the first groups to use cell phones during a sit-in at Michigan. From inside, students phoned the media and kept in touch with supporters. Both groups proved helpful during the more-than-two day protest. Faculty and students brought protestors food; people wrote messages of solidarity on the cube; and the United Auto Workers announced their support. SOLE was largely white, which likely affected how much media attention they garnered. Even The Michigan Daily favored SOLE, at least by number of articles, over the Students of Color Coalition, which earlier that year occupied the Michigan Union in a protest against the secret society Michigamua—which you’ll hear about later in the tour. Despite the support, SOLE faced counter-protestors: a student group called “SPEED” marched around the Cube in favor of free trade. Media and cause popularity drove SOLE to a win. Negotiations brought updates to the university’s purchasing code of conduct and established a labor standards committee, more or less replacing SOLE over the next few years. The organization had their last stint in 2007 when they occupied President Mary Sue Coleman’s office, but their legacy certainly lives on. SOLE proved the university wrong in a few ways, notably by showing that the Fleming Building, was not, as it had been claimed to be, “protester resistant.”

Some students stay in town, but most go home, work summer jobs, or have summer internships only to return in the fall for another year of school and football. 1998 was a bit different than usual, however. A group of students who completed Union Summer internships with the AFL-CIO, the largest American labor union, started SOLE, Students Organizing for Labor and Economic Equality, upon their return to Ann Arbor.

Fleming Administration Building / The Cube

The Trotter Multicultural Center that stands today is a hub for students of color to engage with their communities and attend a wide variety of intercultural events such as orientation events, weekly luncheons, academic and career counseling, and much more. The building represents a deep history of Black activism at the University of Michigan, specifically regarding the Black Action Movements beginning in the 1970s. The Black Action Movements (BAMs) were a series of three main protests by Black students and allies against the university's poor treatment and recognition of Black students and faculty on campus. Their demands included increased Black student enrollment, more Black faculty, and a building set aside for Black student use.The last demand eventually became the Trotter House, and later, the Trotter Center. The buildings were named after William Monroe Trotter, a Black Harvard graduate, newspaper editor, and activist.While the establishment of the Trotter Multicultural Center was granted, the university administrators failed to fulfill many of the demands for equality on campus; their promise to reach at least 10% Black student enrollment by 1973 was never reached, and still has not been reached today in 2022. Through all three BAMs, administrators repeatedly ignored protestors, only paying them attention when they took action such as forcing libraries to close or entering Reagent's meetings.The Trotter Center used to be located on Washtenaw Avenue, a ten-minute walk from the Diag. In the fall of 2015, students formed what was called "A New Trotter Initiative" to push the administration to invest more in the multicultural center. This team along with the Black Student Union successfully negotiated the building's move to its current home on State Street where it is more physically prominent on campus.

A hub for students of color at the University of Michigan, the Trotter Center's modern architecture stands proudly on State Street, representing decades of Black student activism. It was only recently given its prominent home on campus in 2019, but has been a valuable resource for multicultural students since the 1970s.

Trotter Multicultural Center

In 1970, GEO first took shape when the then Teaching Fellows began to organize. When Political Science Teaching Fellows’ allocations were cut, they walked out of their discussion sections.  After years of continued efforts to organize (and opposition from the university administration), in April 1974, the university officially recognized GEO as a union—about five years after the first graduate student union was formed at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, in 1969. However, GEO and the university did not negotiate a contract until March 1975—and only after a month-long strike after the university refused to agree to binding arbitration after months of negotiations.The Faculty Senate asked the GEO to postpone the strike for as long as possible so the academic year would not be disrupted, but within the first few days of the strike, more than 50 percent of the students had joined the GSIs in support. The strike was successful, leading to contract agreements regarding affirmative action, non-discrimination, and economic matters.The fight for a liveable wage and health coverage began in 1993. The administration developed a health care plan called “GradCare,” and wanted all GSIs to switch to the plan. The plan increased out-of-pocket medical costs and moved GSIs to a package shared with faculty to one designed for students, despite being university employees. This is an important political distinction, as universities often base their resistance to graduate student labor unions based on the idea that graduate students are, first and foremost, students—and not workers.  Rallies and informational pickets were held by GEO members to combat this new benefit plan. 87 percent of the GEO voted in favor of striking if the issue was not resolved. GEO did not have to strike, winning better health benefits and modest, 3 percent raises each year of their three year contract—not the liveable wage they were seeking. That would come in 1999, after a two-day walkout. During 2020 in the midst of the pandemic, GEO went on strike for COVID-19 safety measures and working policies—as well as for significant reform to the university police. GEO’s “persistent negotiating and organizing” during this time was labeled as “screaming” by the former university President Mark Schlissel. While GEO made some gains, including guidelines for transparent COVID testing, greater support for international graduate students, and pandemic childcare options, the strike broke. The university took GEO to court and forced them back to work. Significant progress has been made, but the fight for workers rights on the University of Michigan campus is far from over.

This is the Rackham Graduate School building, housing the university’s graduate school headquarters. Most U-M students have been taught by a Graduate Student Instructor, or GSI. They are likely a member of GEO, the Graduate Employees’ Organization. GSIs form the front line of many courses here, doing a significant amount of the university’s undergraduate teaching.

Rackham Graduate School

In the 1920s, women were not allowed to enter the Union unless they used a side door and were accompanied by a male, so a group known as the Women’s League convinced the Regents to raise $1 million for a community space for women’s activities. Though women were finally allowed to enter the Union in 1956, structural sexism persisted.One issue that continued to plague female students was oppressive lifestyle mandates dictated by Deborah Bacon, the university’s Dean of Women. Bacon’s administration was infamous for its conservative views of female sexuality, and she enforced strict curfews, dress codes, and punished girls who were caught kissing in public spaces.In 1952, male students rebelled against conservative PDA rules by storming into the female dorms on the Hill. They surged through stairwells, climbed up walls, and seized women’s lingerie as souvenirs while the women poured buckets of water on them from the windows. The women countered by attacking the Union, where they scandalously entered through the front door and stampeded into the all-male West Quad. The pandemonium finally ended when Bacon appeared, who intimidated the women into returning home before curfew. This eventful evening would come to be known as the nation’s first “Panty Raid.”Bacon’s conservative opinion of sexuality was also racially motivated, as she did not believe that white women should date Black men. If she discovered a female student spending significant amounts of time with a Black man, she would call the female student’s parents. This conflict escalated into the women on campus demanding liberation by submitting testimonies of discrimination at the hands of Bacon to reporters at the Michigan Daily, who took this information to the Board of Regents. By 1961, Bacon recognized her conservative views no longer fit the social developments on campus and resigned. Unfair treatment was not limited to students, as female faculty members faced their own share of struggles. The 1970s were critical for many issues: female faculty made up only 4.8 percent of all professors, and of this 4.8 percent nearly all were white women. For the small group of women who secured a professorship, one of the most glaring issues was the wage gap. In 1970—100 years after women were first admitted to the university—women with 10-20 years of work experience earned only 64 percent of men’s salaries.Jean King, a lawyer who worked at the university, sought to remedy this. She filed a case using a Civil Rights-related executive order that prohibited federal contractors—such as universities—from discriminating on the basis of gender. Along with a network of friends and staffers, King copied and compiled sensitive university documents that supported her legal case, while a women’s rights group called FOCUS posted notices inside women’s bathrooms on campus to quietly gain support for the movement. The university eventually caved under pressure from activists such as King and created a Commission for Women in the late 1970s. Women’s salaries that were more than 10 percent under the average male salary were subjected to immediate readjustment. From salaries to sexuality to community spaces, women on our campus have fought—and continue to fight—fiercely for liberation.

“Friendship” and “character.” The cornerstone of the historically female Michigan League, laid in 1928, is said to represent these two traits, while the historically male-only Union—which was brought up earlier—has statues said to represent “athleticism” and “scholarship.” Though this difference in language may seem minute, it emphasizes a long history of female oppression at the university level.

Ingalls Mall and the Michigan League

Over 1,000 survivors came forward and more than 2,000 allegations were brought against Anderson’s employment at the university in a class action lawsuit. The case was settled for $490 million in January of this year, but after the settlement, the university removed the protestors from the president's house. To this, John Vaughn, the leader of the Hail to the Victims movement, responded: “All I’ve done in my entire time is fight for safety on campus, I’ve told the truth, so I can’t understand why I’m being treated less than a human being and vilified by an institution that I helped build. A day of reckoning is coming, because you can only treat people so bad [for] so long.”  After his removal, Vaughn chained himself in front of the house in protest for 17-and-a-half hours, one minute for each survivor to represent how the university continued to fail survivors. The administration also failed to significantly change its sexual assault prevention policy, upsetting past and current students. In fact, one student, Zachariah Farah, who attended the Regent’s meeting on February 17—the 100th day of protest and a month after the settlement—said, “they just patted themselves on the back about their accomplishment and didn't talk about what the students are worried about which is why the university is not properly responding to potentially the biggest sexual assault case in our history.” While Dr. Robert Anderson died in 2008, sexual violence on campus continues. In 2021 Josephine Graham, a U-M junior, filed a lawsuit against university administration, commanding it to create new policies in order to prevent sexual violence on campus. Graham argued that, in relation to the Dr. Anderson case, the university’s failure to have or enforce appropriate policies preventing sexual violence creates an environment in which current and future students face a real, immediate, and direct threat of sexual violence. This lawsuit was settled with the creation of the Coordinated Community Response Team, designed to increase the overall protection of students from sexual misconduct.

Here you can see the University of Michigan's President’s house. Living here seems pretty nice right?Last year, Jon Vaughn and protestors of the Hail to the Victims movement lived here on the street in a camper and tents for 150 days. Beginning on October 21, 2021, through March 7, 2022, they stayed through winter storms and freezing days to protest the university’s poor handling and lack of response to the sexual assault allegations against Dr. Robert Anderson, a physician who was employed by the school for over 40 years.

President's House

Also in 1970, alongside the Gay Liberation Front and Radical Lesbians organizations, Toy requested to hold a statewide conference at the University of Michigan. Robben Wright Flemming, the U-M president at the time, rejected this request, arguing that homosexual activity was illegal, and the conference was not an appropriate use of university space. Enter student government leader Jerry DeGrieck. DeGrieck eventually became one of the first openly gay elected officials in the US as an Ann Arbor City Council member. But at the time, he was a closeted gay man. DeGrieck gave Jim Toy the keys to the Student Activities Building, and this act of rebellion allowed the conference to be held. After persistent pressure from U-M students and the Gay Liberation Front, the university eventually funded the opening of a humble one-room office dedicated to addressing campus LGBT-related issues. The Human Sexuality Office—later renamed Spectrum Center—was the first office aiming to open educational opportunities and serve the LGBT population on a university campus. Jim Toy and lesbian activist Cindy Gair headed the office, where they worked to enact rules that would—ideally—prevent people from suffering discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation. Since its founding, Spectrum Center has expanded its outreach to offer services to anyone in the LGBT community, including opportunities specifically for people of color. Jim Toy and Cindy Gair—along with student activists—paved the way to make the Spectrum Center what it is today. These activists should be largely credited for immense improvements on campus, such as expanding to support issues regarding transgender rights in 1990, and successfully pushing the Regents to amend university bylaws to protect sexual orientation from discrimination in employment and academic settings in 1993.Today, Spectrum Center is a prominent hub for student services. Hosting more than 80 seminars a year, it holds the same values and principles to provide proper aid to the LGBT community. But, Spectrum Center would not be what it is today if student and community activists decided to abide by the university’s wishes 50 years ago.

Jim Toy was raised in a small rural Ohio town in the 1930s and 1940s, and he recalled feelings of isolation related to having to hide his identity as a gay man—and deal with widespread anti-Asian sentiment. At the age of 40, he became what is believed to be the first person in Michigan to publicly come out as gay during a speech at an anti-Vietnam War demonstration in 1970 Detroit. Toy also cofounded Gay Liberation Front organizations in Detroit and Ann Arbor.

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