#orangefriends

Now our loyal readers will remember #DATmovementSU. It started with a rally, then a sit-in, an occupation. Then it became a movement. Check out our twitter timeline for a live unfolding of the events, the hashtags, and @Thegeneralbody. Do you remember the beginning? When Kent thought that he could keep sending us his blog posts without mentioning #DATmovementSU?!

  Here's a little reminder that Kent is still trying to control the narrative. On his "Orange Bleeders" blog, <image> where every single email he has sent out to the community – including the one about the deer or bear poll – is there. Something is missing. None of the emails that he sent out about #DATmovementSU are there. <image> (Don't worry, we've kept an archive. And our loyal writers have been responding to him all along.)

  But first, here's a little timeline, a reminder of the "important" things that Kent emailed us about during #DATMovementSU

  Nov 3rd:

  Rally and Occupation of Crouse Hinds begins!

  Meanwhile, in Kentland (http://chancellor.syr.edu/messages/m/family-weekend.html)......

    La La La... I can't hear anything!! I don't see any protest!! Wasn't that Family weekend fun, kids?! Go Orange! (Just don't go to Crouse-Hinds, mmkay?) Maybe if I just re-play this song over and over again, this will stop. http://youtu.be/c6bEic1Jrok 

       November 11th,

  Students' rights restricted, policed and surveilled by DPS, locked in on weekends, fenced in. Multiple departments have signed letters of support. Faculty have been doing teach-ins since Day 1.

  Meanwhile, in Kentland (http://chancellor.syr.edu/messages/m/november-11.html).....

    LA LA LA. I STILL can't hear anything! Maybe if I put up an opaque fence to keep the public support from them, they'll see how transparent I am! (Transparently anti-student activism or involvement). By the way, did you guys know it's Veteran's Day?! Just a reminder you may want to leave C-H to celebrate, don't want to miss all those sales honoring all those vets at Destiny USA!!! No, you'll totally be allowed back in, feel free to go to the mall, seriously. I hear Penny's is having a sale!

       November 17th

  Day 14 of the Sit-in. Students keep getting national press, working hard for concrete changes, Kent keeps ignoring them, students protest IN FRONT OF KENT"S HOUSE.

  Meanwhile, in Kentland (http://chancellor.syr.edu/messages/m/many-dimensions.html).....

    LA LA LA LA LA. "RUTH WILL YOU TURN THAT DAMN MUSIC UP!?! Guests will be hear any minute for the party and I don't want them seeing those unwashed, protesting riff-raff. Have Jeeves bring everyone in the back entrance." LA LA LA LA...no no, rich donor who only gives to the football program, those aren't protesting students out my window, they are snowmen! The kids here love having a jolly good time. Have I showed you the lovely Fall Wreath Ruth ordered from Williams Sonoma? It's artisanal! [RUTH, HAVE THE MAID SHUT THE DAMN DRAPES, WOMAN! I'M TRYING TO RAISE MONEY HERE!] "Here Ruth, show Chad your wreath!" Kent dashes to the phone: "Operator, get me the legal department, pronto!... I don't care who you have to call up to drive in the snow in for, go give those students some legal intimidation, damnit! Fuck them and their demands! We don't want our Thanksgiving ruined, see! Betty and Don Draper are coming over and we need to impress!"

          November 24th,

  Students have been denied legal representation, have been intimidated by college counsel, DPS, and everyone else. They decide to end this portion of their protest and begin the next phase in the Spring! Final rally in front of Hendricks Chapel.

  Meanwhile, in Kentland (http://chancellor.syr.edu/messages/m/orange-teamwork.html)..............

Kent, 

  You say you care about memory, but everything you've done since you've arrived at Syracuse has ignored the memory of our students. Funny how lawyers have a way of forgetting history. Kent, I'm a Remembrance Scholar. And I learned a lot about my student and the time period in which they attended SU. I'd like to think that living in that time, they cared about pressing social issues, like AIDS and the war on poverty. I don't think they would want their deaths used to obscure the social problems facing us today.

  There ARE urgent challenges that require our attention: well-documented micro-aggressions that occur in class and on campus; endemic racism, classism, ableism, hetero-patriarchy; vicious sexual assaults and no resources afforded to survivors, just a bro-tastic campus that breeds rape culture, struggles for diversity that are about numbers but so much more;

  Kent, we want to assure that your memory of our students is long--of their accomplishments long before you arrived, of the accumulated education debt anchored in legacies of chattel slavery, share cropping, and Jim Crow laws, of the gender disparities and violences women, queer students, and trans* students face on campus. If we are to memorialize the loss of those killed on Pan Am Flight 103, we must also face Syracuse's deeper, albeit tarnished, history. Cutting programs like POSSE or The Advocacy Center merely push these histories, and their memories, under the rug; it is a shameful history Syracuse chooses to ignore or, more accurately, erase. We refuse this erasure. Memory-work, after all, compels us to face all histories, not through the perspectives of those in power. 

  We ask you, Kent, to "Act Forward," maybe taking a cue from #DATmovementSU??

http://chancellor.syr.edu/messages/m/orange-central.html 

    Dear Orange Friends (seriously, we're still using this line? I guess it's better than that colonial "Orange Bleeders" line he had goin'),

  I'm sure Trustee Laurie Taishoff is a great person, but I'm fairly certain that the Alumni Association Board is filled with white, rich alumni who are also sports fanatics. How about an Alumni Board that represents our ACTUAL alumni? We know that Kent is working hard to reduce the number of students of color and students who qualify for Pell Grants, but we are here, and we are graduating even as you cut POSSE programs. We are Syracuse Alums. 

  How about that student who works long hours at Graham Dining Hall to make ends meet while paying Syracuse's exorbitant tuition? She surely receives those letters, phone calls, and emails requesting she "give back" to her University by giving a monetary donation. While Kent celebrates the lush donations of rich alumni, I'm infuriated by the demand to "give back." And what about the University's responsibilities to its students? To fleece students of their tuition dollars and then to demand they donate more? What about an alumni association made up of those who cannot, or do not, donate financial means to the University? 

  I noticed that no Arents Awards went to School of Education alums. Is that because their wallets are too thin? Their commitments to social justice too thick?

  While I'm here, can we also talk about that whole Homecoming Court thing? I mean, we're still doing that? Can you say hetero-patriarchy anyone? I haven't seen such a heteronormative performance since my small-town, small-time prom. And you actually gave crowns?

  "Tradition" isn't always worth holding onto. Sometimes "traditions" need to be remade. 

  Becca

Dear Chancellor Kent, 

  As a proud EEE (Entrepreneurship and Emerging Enterprises) Major, I was very disappointed in your attempts to discredit the Princeton Review by calling it a “for-profit corporation with no connection to Princeton University." To that I say, thank God. Because  this country was built on the backs of entrepreneurs and amazing, for-profit corporations who realize that the most important thing is responsibility to profits and one's shareholders, not to society or anything else. (Thank you EEE Intro course! I have gotten all As in my EEE classes, so you can trust my knowledge). In fact, I would trust the survey results from a for-profit corporation over the bullshit coming out of the liberal-biased ivory tower any day. And that's why I plan to go into consulting and then start my own firm after graduation, because we all know that consulting firms, like the illustrious Bain, all use much more rigorous statistical methods than any of the pansy-assed stuff you find in the liberal arts, humanities, or the bastions of liberal anti-patriotism that is college in this country. So please, don't try to discredit the Princeton Review--no one complains when Harvard and Yale are at the top of the list of best schools. Being the #1 Party school is nothing to be embarrassed about! In fact, it's something to be PROUD of. Did you know most of us EEE majors are frat brothers? And did you know that entrepreneurial culture is full of parties?!? Have you *seen* the Wolf of Wall Street? I'm gonna be living it high in NYC after I graduate, working for Goldman or JPMorgan, drinking and making money day in day out. Becasue we are the #4 school in the nation in Entrepreneurism. So now that we are officially #1 in Partying, we will for sure become #1 in Entrepreneur-ing too! I know you have an entrebroneurial heart, so I know you will heed my advice.

  Best,

Chad Jefferson Williams III

EEE Major

Dear Kent,

  As with other faculty and students, I am not surprised to learn that the Princeton Review ranked SU as the top party school in the US. The students I TA say they party most nights - Two for Tuesdays, Wednesday Flip Night, Thirsty Thursdays, and Friday night happy hour and then it's the weekend! And the ones in my summer class thought our ranking was awesome and your email hilarious. They say their best friends are Chuck, Maggie, Harry, Lucy, and DJ - yep, all Marshall Street bars. The frat/bro-culture encouraged here certainly participates in the party scene--not to mention the sexual assaults that often occur at frat parties, at bars, and in the dorms. It is this hyper-masculinized culture that necessitates the services and resources of a place like the Advocacy Center. But, yes, as a top entrepreneurial school, we recognize your desire to "centralize" resources even if that means cutting the programs that effectively reach students. (Also, nice touch on "centralizing" the AC to the health center....placing "help" on frat row is not problematic at all.) Also, if you care so much about SU's impression on the "world" (seriously, because people in Gaza and Iraq give a shit about that right now, or ever), maybe you can listen when over 10,000 people sign a petition rejecting your closure of the AC and we are covered on national news.

  In fact, as you've "toured" Syracuse, visited with SU Ambulance, and explored our raucous Mayfest activities, you haven't mentioned concern over the masculinized party culture here. Because if you were able to send out an email to the entire campus about riding in the ambulance *on a weekend* and not mention the intoxicated students it regularly picks up, then you knew about the problem and were just ignoring it. It seems that only when an outside organization points out Syracuse's obvious reputation do you believe it's worth investigating. What you propose--more programming by RAs, more PR work by students and alums, and more "boundaries," simply does not get at the underlying sense of entitlement and privilege that foster Syracuse's party-culture. 

  Ultimately, Kent, those entitled and privileged students are laughing at your e-mail. And for those of us aware of Syracuse's party culture--which is INEXTRICABLE with its obsession with sports (and yes, the Dome sells beer)--we recognize that the "balancing act" you detail in your quest for creating "boundaries" is a patronizing effort that fails to address the real underlying issues with the university. The REAL issues are the university's capitalist, masculinist, racist, and sexist structures that enable this bro-party culture. And you writing with some outdated in loco parentis 1950s bullshit isn't going to change a thing. If you want to truly see the campus as a place for "educational excellence" and show your "commitment to enhancing it," you might want to start with spending less on sports, not allowing fraternities, and focusing money on TEACHING rather than administration. Since that is, you know, the whole point of college. 

    Cerina, Phd Student

http://chancellor.syr.edu/messages/m/boundaries.html

Yo #BroKent,

    Man, you frontin', right? For the parents, amirite?! Because, bro, there is NO WAY I can take your last email seriously! Like I *know* you are super proud of our #1 Status, bruh. What else is there to be number one at, BESIDES partying?! 

  Like, you rode the ambo, or as me and my bros call it, the puke-mobile! Weekends are all about the drinking! And everybody knows the weekend starts on Wednesday! Bro, cuz I know you were at the Castle Court Party during Mayfest, and that shit is WILD! And bro, it's been going since way before 2012. Like prolly since olden days and shit. So yah, I think Princeton University got it right on! They are the smart, dorky, math geeks, after all! We ARE #1!!! Say it loud and say it proud!! 

  But I gotcha bro, We will totes keep it cool and on the DL with our parents. Don't want them going overboard and sending us a real "you're grounded" email. I know you better than that, I know you were playing in yours!

  So yah, party on!! I'll see you at the next rager. Bring the kegs, man! 

http://chancellor.syr.edu/messages/m/glass-treasure.html

Dear Kent,

  I've been Sally's lab assistant for the past seventeen years. Never in my life has anyone had the AUDACITY to come into MY lab Sally's lab without a guided tour and at least one lab member present. The reason for this is quite simple. People who don't know anything about glass or glass blowing touch things they're not supposed to touch. I very distinctly remember having the beakers on the second shelf from the top near the bookcase. Now they're on the third shelf from the top. Why are you moving my beakers?? 

  Secondly, scientific glass blowing is not your artisanal make whatever you want Venetian "art" crap. We use diamond grinding, lapping machines, lasers and ultra-sonic mills. You have to take a 4-year certification class before you can use the ultra sonic mill and I know you were playing around with it because I had it turned OFF and YOU had it set to 20KHz and the cord pulled out from the wall. That's not the proper way to shut down the machine. Now I don't know how long you were in there, but my stash of orange colored glass was all rifled through. AND I found odd-shaped glass objects in the trash. I don't know what you were trying to make...a bong?? And lastly, one of my blow pipes is missing. If you could please return that to Sally or me, we'd be much obliged.

  Finally, I'd like to invite you, the administration and all members of the Syracuse community, to come in for a guided tour. We are NOT your buried treasure to discover.

  Cordially,

http://chancellor.syr.edu/messages/m/reflecting.html

  "have heard from students

faculty, staff of AC"

don't really give a shit

  "respect and value 

your passionately held views" 

still ignore them, ha

  "I do not intend 

 revert to the previous

structure:" suck it bitch.

  "appoint Chancellor’s 

Workgroup." save face while sticking

it to the masses

  "now services can 

integrate with new structure"

frat row location

   "we should be careful 

 before punish “annoying” 

speech" off my back, jerks

  "believer in free

speech, model that for future"

So shut up haters

  So in conclusion:

integration, alignment