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MMI students attend FBLA conference

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<p>ANN ARBOR, Mich. &#8212; A student organization at the University of Michigan has attracted a firestorm of criticism after it demanded that administrators create a space for students of color to organize.</p><p>Some have called the action by the Students4Justice racist and an effort to facilitate segregation on campus by creating an area unwelcoming of white students.</p><p>Members, however, said critics have misinterpreted the group&#8217;s intention. They said the demand, along with a few others, was the result of what they believe was the university&#8217;s lackluster response to recent incidents of racism on campus.</p><p>&#8220;I think it&#8217;s just been a really interesting firestorm. Because we asked for a space for students of color, people automatically assumed that no white students would be allowed, whereas that&#8217;s never explicit in the language,&#8221; Vikrant Garg, one of the group&#8217;s organizers, told The Washington Post. &#8220;That was never an agreement, never anything that we thought about.&#8221;</p><p>The group wrote a letter with a list of demands to university officials in September, after white supremacist fliers were found at the university.</p><p>The specific demand that has attracted criticism calls on university officials to create a designated space for students of color &#8220;to organize and do social justice work.&#8221; The members said in the letter that they want a space separate from the multicultural center that already exists on campus &#8220;because we want a space solely dedicated to community organizing and social justice work specifically for people of color.&#8221;</p><p>The idea of designated or safe spaces for specific groups of people has been the subject of debate.</p><p>While some see it as a way for traditionally underrepresented students to feel a sense of belongingness, others believe that even if well-intentioned, it&#8217;s a regressive step to segregation.</p><p>A fellow student, Cole Carnick, slammed Students4Justice in a column in the Michigan Review, a campus publication, calling the demand &#8220;unprincipled.&#8221;</p><p>Similar efforts to create these spaces at other schools have attracted controversy. The University of Connecticut, for instance, announced a living community specifically for black male students. Moraine Valley Community College outside Chicago announced a course specifically for black students and later walked back its plans.</p><p>Students4Justice was formed last year as a response to racially charged fliers found at the University of Michigan&#8217;s campus.</p><p>One urged &#8220;Euro-Americans&#8221; to stop apologizing and denying their heritage, The Post&#8217;s Susan Svrluga reported. Another advised white women not to date black men, saying, &#8220;Your kids probably wouldn&#8217;t be smart.&#8221;</p><p>More racially offensive incidents targeting minorities happened in early February, prompting the group to repeat its list of demands to the university and to organize a sit-in protest on campus Feb. 9.</p><p>Racist and anti-Semitic emails were sent to engineering and computer science students and appeared to have been sent by a professor. The professor has denied doing so and said the emails were the work of a hacker.</p><p>According to the Michigan Daily, one of the emails read: &#8220;Hi n&#8212;&#8212;, I just wanted to say that I plan to kill you. White power! The KKK has returned!!! Heil Trump!!!!&#8221;</p><p>The university has released statements condemning the acts, but members of Students4Justice said they feel the response has been timid.</p><p>University spokesman Rick Fitzgerald said administration officials and have been in &#8220;ongoing discussions&#8221; with Students4Life to better understand their concerns.</p><p>&#8220;We fully understand at this moment that they&#8217;re not asking for space that is exclusionary in any way, that they want to do social justice work in the university,&#8221; Fitzgerald said of the group&#8217;s demands. &#8220;That&#8217;s one of the many things that we&#8217;re continuing to work on.&#8221;</p><p>The university has responded to the group&#8217;s list of demands by releasing a lengthy document last month outlining existing policies on bias-related incidents and steps that officials said they&#8217;ve taken to address racism on campus.</p><p>Members of the group, however, said the document failed to address their demands, which also includes sanctioning students who &#8220;engage in any form of oppressive speech,&#8221; and creating a protocol for the campus community to be informed of racial incidents when they happen.</p><style>
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<div class="metaInfo"><bylineMeta><p>Washington Post</p></bylineMeta></div>

Group demanding space for students of color is called racist