Editorial: Consider history of segregation and oppression in higher ed

Sept. 30 marked the 50-year anniversary of desegregation at the University of Mississippi, or…Sept. 30 marked the 50-year anniversary of desegregation at the University of Mississippi, or Ole Miss. On that day, an African-American student, James Meredith, attempted to enroll at the university, starting a riot in which two people were killed and hundreds were wounded. The next day, Meredith started his classes, and Ole Miss was officially an integrated campus.

According to an article in The New York Times, the university has put up a marker at the spot of the riot and has hosted a program of lectures, receptions, vigils and memorial walks to commemorate the anniversary. The Times article also stated that a history professor at Ole Miss named Charles W. Eagles has questioned the memorial events and wondered why the campus did not focus more on continuing to fight the “institutionalized racism” that caused segregation.

Although we applaud Ole Miss in its attempts to memorialize the historic desegregation of the college, we agree with Eagles that these events should focus more directly on learning the history of racism and oppression in the country so that we might be better prepared to fight it. While it is valuable to memorialize social progress, we must also seriously reflect on the history of the original problems.

Especially in light of Pitt’s upcoming 225th anniversary, students should reflect on our own University’s history of institutionalized discrimination in order to understand where we have come from and how oppression affects our campus climate today. Although segregation and riots have not been a part of Pitt’s history in the same way they were at Ole Miss, we think that it would be valuable for students to consider the history of people typically underrepresented in higher education.

Today Pitt is considered to have a diverse student body and varied academic offerings. But it has certainly not always been that way.

In 1969, according to a Pitt News article from the same year, a group of African-American students locked themselves in a computer room in the Cathedral for seven hours to pressure the University to enact the group’s demands. These demands included cancellation of classes on Martin Luther King Jr. Day, hiring of a recruiter for African-American students and the establishment of a Black Studies department, which is now known as the Africana Studies department.

Women, too, have been underrepresented in higher education and have a complicated history at Pitt. Women first enrolled at Pitt in 1895, but female enrollment remained relatively small until the early 1900s when the School of Education opened. According to a University Web page on the history of women at Pitt, female students contended with derisive comments about “co-eds,” intramural “play days” instead of athletic programs and sexist articles in the yearbook that the administration defended. Women were not uniformly included in sports until 1972 when federal law required that colleges offer equal athletic opportunities for men and women.

It’s sometimes easy to overlook the history of people who are underrepresented in higher education on our campus. It’s easy to take it for granted that we can enjoy a day off in honor of Martin Luther King Jr. and take courses in Africana and women’s studies. We urge students to consider the history of oppression in order to better recognize it and fight it today.