For a full transcript of the HPR’s interview with Sarah Cole, a sophomore and organizer of the demonstration pictured below, click here.
It’s 6:15pm on a Sunday, and over 40 Harvard students have taken up signs and formed three silent lines in the Science Center Plaza. Eleven students in the front row are wearing signs that together spell out “WE ARE HERE.”
“This university has done so much to make sure that it does have diversity on this campus,” Sarah Cole, a sophomore organizer of the Diversity Report told the HPR. “So we wanted to shift the conversation to: We are here, now what are you going to do with us? We felt the demonstration was necessary to really shift that conversation, to do something that people would notice in order to have that shift in conversation.”
Every minute, a student in the back row gives a cue, and the three lines all make a sharp, precise 180-degree turn, exposing the second part of the first row’s signs. On their backs are statements such as “The budget for the Harvard Foundation for Intercultural and Race Relations has not changed since 2006. Now what?” and “Only 2.1% of tenured FAS faculty is Latino. 3.7% is Black and 10.2% is Asian or Pacific Islander. Now what?”
About half an hour later, they pack up in silence and start towards the statue in the Yard. From there, upon the organizer’s call, they retrace their steps and turn towards Annenberg instead.
The idea behind the Diversity Report is to engage community members in conversations about what Harvard should be and can be doing for the diverse student body it has invited onto campus. The Diversity Report’s website features a “report card” where they have given Harvard a “diversity score” in areas that span from “Faculty and Staff Diversity” to “Programming and Policy,” along with specific details (and deadlines) on what the university can do to improve their “grade.”
Dennis Ojogho, a sophomore and a participant in the demonstration, told the HPR: “Coming to a place like Harvard is an incredible privilege, but at the same time, there is a lack of institutional support for the great amount of diversity that is here. So we feel that this is the right time to really address these issues and work with the administration to make sure that we leave this place a better, more inclusive, more diverse Harvard. This is just the beginning.”