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Students at the University of Oklahoma are staging a sit-in outside of administrative offices following multiple instances of professors using racial slurs in the classroom. The latest incident came from Peter Gade, who is a professor at OU’s Gaylord College of Journalism and Mass Communication.
During a discussion in class, Gade compared using “okay, boomer” to calling someone the n-word.
Now, members of the school’s Black Emergency Response Team (BERT) are calling for Provost Kyle Harper’s resignation. As a result, members of BERT are holding their sit-in with the hope of forcing the University of Oklahoma’s hand.
“We’re simply tired of not being treated as human beings on this campus,” BERT’s co-director, Miles Francisco, said, via the New York Post. “BERT will continue its efforts to disrupt oppression on this campus just as faculty continue to use offensive, harmful and traumatizing speech in the classroom for quote-unquote educational purposes.”
OU Interim President Joseph Harroz Jr. has responded to the comments and requests from students with a statement of his own.
Unfortunately for the students doing the sit-in, it doesn’t seem like they will get their wish.
“I have told them I will not meet this demand. My reasons are based on principle, fairness, and precedent,” a statement read. “As a matter of practice, we do not discuss personnel evaluations of employees in this public manner. We can never allow our desire for expediency to deter us from being fair in our evaluations.”
We will have to see what happens on campus to bring a resolution to the tensions.
