About 30 students gathered in Schine Student Center’s Panasci Lounge on Wednesday to form a plan of action to remove JPMorgan Chase & Co. Chief Executive Officer Jamie Dimon as the 2010 commencement speaker.

“When we feel wronged, we have the idea that we can raise up,” said Ashley Owen, one of the meeting’s leaders and a senior magazine journalism and geography major, before the meeting. “We need to be shown that there’s a vehicle with which to do so.”

Suggestions for how to change the commencement speaker included staging a protest, contacting media outlets such as The New York Times for national publicity, writing a letter to Dimon asking him to step down, and contacting faculty and staff members who are also angry with the commencement speaker choice. The students broke into groups to work on each plan.

At Wednesday’s meeting, Owen and Mariel Fiedler, a fellow member of Students for a Democratic Society, announced a protest on the Quad on April 14 from 4 to 6 p.m. The protest will be in the form of a dance party called the “Take Back Commencement Rally.”

Since the March 25 announcement of Dimon as Syracuse University and the State University of New York College of Environmental Science and Forestry’s commencement speaker, a student-generated petition and a Facebook group titled “Take Back Commencement” have been created. The petition was created on April 2 and had 703 signatures as of Wednesday, and the group had 760 members.

The number of signatures stands at about one-fifth of SU’s senior class. The petition states the signees’ opposition to what they see as the use of the commencement to restore the banking industry’s image and “validate the anti-environmental and anti-humanitarian interests of JPMorgan Chase.” The petition demands a new speaker who does not fit this mold and is sensitive to the current global climate.

In response to the petition and student concerns, Senior Vice President for Public Affairs Kevin Quinn said the administration is aware of opposition and that there has been discontent with speakers in the past. Controversial speakers in the past include Rudolph Giuliani in 2002 and Malcolm Forbes in 1988, he said.

“While we understand and respect that every student is entitled to their own viewpoint, Mr. Dimon is the speaker for this year’s commencement,” Quinn said in an e-mail.

The student petition is currently only online, but each student at the meeting was encouraged to gather signatures in hard copy to compile and present to the university. John Crandall, president of Pride Union and a student present at the meeting, suggested making copies of the petitions before handing them over to the administration.

Adrienne Garcia spoke for the group focused on campus mobilization, including the Take Back Commencement rally. In addition to the rally, the group discussed acting in unison at least once a week until commencement. Other ideas included holding hands around the administration building when the chancellor and others are leaving work.

The group also suggested holding a vigil for all students struggling to pay for college. After the vigil, the group wants students to walk toward the administration building and snap wooden pencils on the ground.

“We want to have a vigil for everyone who had to drop out and everyone across America who is suffering from what JPMorgan represents,” Garcia said.

The group focused on finding a new speaker is considering finding someone who has been affected or wronged by JPMorgan, said Liz Quencer, a senior majoring in television, radio and film, political science and psychology. The group wants every student to post ideas for new speakers on the Facebook group wall, she said. Members want to remain careful of finding another speaker who is too polarizing, she said.

Audra Colombe spoke on behalf of the media relations group. The group compiled a list of media contacts, including people from The New York Times, The Huffington Post and perhaps The Daily Show. Its members plan to ask the contacts the best way to bring their concerns into the national spotlight, she said. The group also came up with the idea of creating a Twitter account and re-tweeting a single statement expressing the concerns to every tweet mentioning Dimon.

Another group focused on contacting department heads and other faculty members for support and suggestions on how to move forward.

Fiedler, one of the meeting’s organizers, worked on drafting a letter to Dimon directly during the meeting. She told the crowd the letter could say something like, “We respect your position in society, but we don’t want you here as the person pushing us out into the world.”

While the group may go around the administration and directly to Dimon, it plans to make the students’ discontent so well known that the administration cannot ignore it, she said.

“The idea is to cause so much of a ruckus that they’re embarrassed to have him speak here,” she said.

But for Owen and the rest of the students, having Dimon speak at commencement isn’t only disrespectful to the students walking at commencement, she said. It also matters to those who will not.

“A lot of people have had to drop out of school, and it’s a slap in the face to all of those students that won’t be walking with us at commencement,” she said. “It’s not Dimon personally, but more of the system that he represents.”

 

Published on April 7, 2010 at 12:00 pm