Matt Mitgang | Student Life

Six black students who were not allowed into a bar during their senior class trip speak during a town hall-style discussion about diversity.

The year began with the opening of the new South Forty House, which not only included sophomore housing, but also a wide selection of new dining options, including new grill items, comfort food station and kosher station. Construction on the South 40 proceeded around the Swamp to finish building several new modern dorms.

Despite the construction on both the South 40 and the Danforth Campus—focusing on new engineering buildings—the University had budget cuts in other areas. The lower endowment prompted the decision to close the Center for the Study of Ethics & Human Values by the end of the year.

At the same time, adjunct professor Jeff Smith resigned from his Missouri State Senate seat and dropped his course for the semester after he was charged with allegations of obstruction of justice.

But students still took an active role in the community life. WU/FUSED (Washington University for Undergraduate Socioeconomic Diversity) was founded on campus to increase socioeconomic diversity. By the end of the year, it was expanded to become a part of U/FUSED (United for Undergraduate Socioeconomic Diversity) because it had expanded to other universities.

As the year continued, many seniors attended their class trip to Chicago, where they felt that Original Mothers Bar discriminated against several of their black classmates by not allowing them into the bar. The seniors responded with a protest the next morning outside the establishment. After much discussion back on campus, the senior class decided to take a stand against discrimination and involve national anti-discrimination organizations. The bar agreed to publicly apologize to the seniors and to sponsor diversity training for its employees.

Student Union established the Diversity Affairs Council to provide students with a resource to deal with issues of diversity.

On another note, Bon Appétit stopped providing tomatoes to the University community from November to March. Dining Services decided to take a stand against Florida tomato farms not paying their tomato pickers enough money. By springtime, they were able to purchase tomatoes from other states whose farms upheld worker standards, and tomatoes returned to campus.

Coal was another hotly debated issue on campus throughout the year. The University established the Consortium for Clean Coal Utilization at to reduce the usage of coal, but the University continued its dependence on coal companies. The school year ended with the restoration of Metro services as Proposition A passed. Chancellor Wrighton, in support of this bill, was even featured in commercials to encourage its success. The increased taxes provided more Metro services, such as more bus routes and more frequent trains, over the following year.

A year ago, six black students were denied entry to the Original Mothers Bar under the pretext that their jeans were too baggy. After a shorter white student was allowed in wearing the same jeans, the students rightly called the incident a case of unjust racial discrimination.

Seniors on the trip held a protest the next day, and upon returning to Washington University, then-senior class president Fernando Cutz and the six affected students held a town hall forum and consulted legal counsel on how to respond to the incident. The students reached a contract with the bar, and—after a few appropriate modifications—Mothers upheld its promises.

Our thoughts

What happened at Mothers Bar that night did more than just expose the reality of racism in America today. It also appropriately unleashed a wave of student action and energy rarely witnessed on this campus.

We find a statement from one of the students’ legal representatives particularly fitting: “Both sides were able to take a negative incident and make something positive come of it. The students demonstrated leadership, maturity and strength of character as they stood up for important principles, and I believe that the Mothers organization worked with the students in good faith to help combat racial discrimination.”

While nothing can fully erase what happened, we applaud Mothers’ steps to rectify some of the damage done. We also have praise for the student body, student leaders such as Cutz and the six men who endured the brunt of it all.

But though an anniversary has come and gone, it would be unreasonable for us to suggest everything is done and great. What happened at Mothers was not an isolated incident. Combating racism requires sustained passion and commitment.

Cutz says he hopes “that something’s changed…because of everything that we did last year and everything that we went through.” In our assessment, it seems little has changed. This is not to say that last year’s work was in vain; Mothers had to be held accountable. But despite the formation of the Diversity Affairs Council, our attention to diversity and discrimination has suffered. Today’s student body lacks the same vigor to attack racism that had our campus so electrified last fall.

Moving forward

It may seem inevitable that most of us have fallen into the trap of complacency again, distracted by the more recent Gulf oil spill, midterm exams and an upcoming election. Nevertheless, as students, we need to take a stronger interest in making a difference at Wash. U. and in the broader St. Louis community.

Students in an isolated, academic and relatively politically correct environment—especially those who do not experience racism firsthand—have a tendency to forget the importance of dialogue and consideration.

Dialogue and awareness on campus is important not only in the present, but in the future. In exposing us to a wide variety of people with 18 to 22 years of life experiences different from our own, college enables us to learn the social skills that we will carry with us into futures in business and the public service—among them the ability to listen to and genuinely appreciate diverse values and experiences. Wash. U. at large may be more politically correct than the broader world, but—as last year’s incident proved—influence can start with us. We hope that the lessons of the Mothers Men are not lost on this campus.

The 25 or so students who attended the roundtable split into committees devoted to specific areas of campus life, including Washington University Police Department (WUPD) affairs, on-campus student awareness, Residential Life, student group interaction and off-campus affairs.

Students in the taskforce on WUPD affairs debated whether some students’ allegations that WUPD officers approach black students more than white ones means the officers are guilty of racial profiling.

While the group did not reach a conclusion, group members agreed that reports of suspicious activity filed by students against other students are a major contributor to WUPD stopping black students more often.

Members of the group said they would like to initiate dialogue between WUPD and students regarding methods of identifying suspicious persons, and also explored the idea of a “walk in your shoes” orientation program in which students would learn about the differences that race makes in daily life.

The “on-campus awareness” taskforce was primarily concerned with the issue of self-segregation in the student body. Group members said they hoped to break down what they termed the “fishbowl” phenomenon: a tendency for important conversations about race issues to remain confined to racially or ethnically homogenous groups.

“I know that as an African American male I have particular conversations with other African American males on campus that pretty much we keep amongst ourselves,” said senior Regis Murayi, one of the six black students rejected from Mothers bar.

The task force proposed mediating conversations about self-segregation on freshman floors. Members of the group also plan to develop initiatives to draw a greater and more diverse body of students to events like Monday night’s roundtable to engage students who might otherwise be uninvolved in the dialogue about diversity issues.

Like the on-campus awareness task force, the ResLife committee offered a plan to spur more diversity dialogue on freshman floors by designing special programming to be led by residential advisors. Group members also planned a conference with Residential Life about making ethnic and racial diversity a priority when forming freshman floors.

The student group interaction taskforce envisioned working with Student Union to create an incentive program that rewards collaboration between student groups. It also proposed the development of a multicultural retreat in which students from diverse backgrounds would bond over a variety of recreational and discussion-based activities.

Members of the off-campus taskforce expressed a desire to raise awareness of racial and class implications of policy decisions behind recent MetroLink service cuts. The taskforce hopes to launch a visual campaign to make the faces of St. Louis residents affected by the service cuts more visible to students.

Senior De Nichols, co-president of Connect 4, said her group would facilitate further meetings of the taskforces created at Monday night’s roundtable to lay out more concrete action steps. The organization hopes that this event will be a first step in empowering passionate students to turn thoughts into action.

Said junior Wanda Savala, Connect 4’s other co-president, “[Students] will start something but they don’t really feel supported. We need to rally those students who are doing something, who have ideas.”

The turnout for the roundtable was short of Connect 4’s expectations, paling in comparison to the more than 300 students who filled Lab Sciences 300 for the town hall meeting.

The large gap in the turnout between the town hall meeting and Monday’s roundtable elicited concerns from some that the enthusiasm exhibited by the general student body in recent weeks will not last as the Mothers bar incident fades into the past.

“[The turnout] kind of made me question how passionate, how committed students are to affecting change in this area,” Nichols said.

Nonetheless, she said she was confident that a smaller group of students would continue to converse and act on race and diversity issues.

“Quite honestly, I am a very optimistic, faithful person,” she said. “The rational side of me says that people are gonna let this die, but I think we have a committed body of students who won’t let this die out.”

“[We] worked for a while with the city of Chicago so that they could do it in the streets, and that was not working out,” Cutz wrote.

Cutz said that students could not find a location for the rally after 12 days of searching. Students planning the event originally wanted the rally to be in the streets, but a street rally would have taken over four weeks for Chicago authorities to approve and would also have required insurance. Students also looked into hosting the rally in Grant Park, but encountered similar prohibitive regulations.

Students then considered hosting the rally at a private venue and worked with Northwestern University’s student body vice president to accomplish this. But these plans were cancelled when Northwestern reallocated the event’s funding to another event addressing the issue of two Northwestern students who dressed up in blackface for Halloween.

Cutz emphasized that the rally’s cancellation does not mean that students are giving up or taking less of a stand on issues of race discrimination.

“It is very disappointing [that the rally is not happening], but at the same time, I hope that our efforts will continue,” Cutz said in an interview. “We have done a phenomenal job of promoting a dialogue not only with the University community but also with the St. Louis and the Chicago communities and really across the nation [and] across the world.”

Cutz also encouraged students to continue the dialogue about race discrimination that has been started on campus.

“We should take it upon ourselves as individuals to keep this dialogue going [and] to keep this dialogue going to keep these issues on the forefront of our minds and to really address social justice issues and diversity and discrimination issues the best that we can as individuals,“ Cutz said.

The ADL contacted the group of six black students three days after the original incident to offer them access to the organization’s infrastructure and advocacy from the group. This was unusual, as most people with a complaint need to contact the ADL before it will consider a case.

In this case, however, a parent of a University student was an ADL board member in Houston, and according to ADL Chicago regional director Lonnie Nasatir, “it kind of came through the ranks.”

For the students from Washington University, the support came as a welcome surprise.

“I was surprised because I hadn’t contacted them,” said Fernando Cutz, senior class president. “I was just really grateful they reached out.”

The ADL first asked the students if they would be interested in the organization writing a coalition letter to be circulated among civil rights groups in Chicago. The organization then hand-delivered a letter to the bar last Friday. This prompted the first response from Mothers. According to Cutz, the ADL “was certainly a major part in that reaction.” The group also helped the students find free legal counsel.

The Anti-Defamation League is a non-profit organization focused on fighting anti-Semitism and other forms of bigotry.

“It goes back to that notion that if one minority group is targeted, we all are targeted, and that we can really be much more effective in a broad way than if we just sort of stick within our own communities,” said Karen Aroesty, the St. Louis regional director of the Anti-Defamation League.

Student Life, along with many newspapers around the country, has already covered this story in detail, and I will not go into detail here in my column. However, I would like to point out that racism still exists in our society, even (as some commentators have called it) in the Age of Obama. It is quite astounding to find out that in the 21st century, discrimination based on race continues to shape our societal perceptions of America and challenge the ideals that this country supposedly stands for.

According to a 2003 study conducted by Dean Karland and Marianne Bertrand, from MIT and the University of Chicago, respectively, widespread discrimination still existed in the workplace against applicants whose names were simply perceived as “sounding black.” Furthermore, these applicants were 50 percent less likely to receive a follow-up telephone call than applicants with names perceived as white.

A survey conducted by CNN in December 2006, prior to the Obama election, found that while Americans, white and black, see racism as a lingering problem in society, they disagree on how serious racial bias is. For example, 49 percent of black respondents said that racism is still a “very serious” problem, while only 18 percent of whites shared that view. Interestingly, 43 percent of whites and 48 percent of blacks said that they knew someone who was racist, but only 13 percent of whites and 12 percent of blacks consider themselves racially biased.

On the question of whether or not whites and blacks dislike each other’s races, there was a similar disagreement. Asked how many whites dislike blacks, 40 percent of black respondents said “all” or “many,” while 26 percent of whites agreed with that assessment. With the converse question of how many blacks dislike whites, 38 percent of whites agreed with an interesting 33 percent of blacks concurring with that statement. With a five percent margin of error, statistically speaking they are equal.

University of Connecticut professor Jack Dovidio, who has researched racism for close to 35 years, estimates that up to 80 percent of white Americans may have racist feelings, of which they are consciously unaware. He points out, for example, that racism in the 21st century is manifested differently than in the 20th century, as “contemporary racism is not conscious, and it is not accompanied by dislike, so it gets expressed in indirect, subtle ways.”

In the end, racism is still a problem in the United States, but this country has come extremely far in improving race relations, with Obama’s election being the ultimate proof. However, we still have a way to go before we reach our founders’ vision of a more perfect union, one fulfilling the promise that “all men are created equal…[and] are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights…life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.”

Isaac is a sophomore in Arts & Sciences. He can be reached via e-mail at iamon@artsci.wustl.edu.

Senior Class Treasurer Regis Murayi speaks at a news conference Wednesday held in the DUC. Murayi, along with Senior Class President Fernando Cutz and the five other students alleging racial descrimation, announced an agreement with the Original Mothers bar. (Matt Mitgang | Student Life)

Senior Class President Fernando Cutz, along with the six black students who allege they were racially discriminated against by the Original Mothers bar in Chicago, said on Wednesday that they will not be pressing charges against Mothers, as part of a legal agreement between the two sides.

Cutz announced that Mothers will issue a public apology to the students, and managers at the bar will undergo diversity sensitivity and awareness training led by members of the Anti-Defamation League.

The students’ comments came in a news conference Wednesday afternoon in the Danforth University Center.

Mothers will also hold four charity fundraisers, three at the bar in Chicago and one in St. Louis. The students will determine what charity will receive funds from these events. Senior Class Treasurer Regis Murayi, one of the six students rejected from the bar, said the money will likely go toward a charity that works to promote awareness of race-related issues.

Cutz also announced at the conference that the Senior Class Council will be leading a “massive demonstration” against racial discrimination. The demonstration will occur in Chicago in late November and will include both University students and representatives from Mothers. Mothers managers will speak at the event.

Cutz told Student Life that he has met with representatives from Student Union about funding transportation for the event and that SU has agreed to pay for buses for all students interested in attending.

The students at the conference stressed that they are not seeking financial compensation from the bar.

“Nothing in the plans had anything to do with us getting financial compensation,” said senior Chuka Chike-Obi, one of the six black students.

Murayi emphasized that the students’ primary goal in the agreement was to raise awareness about race-related issues.

“This isn’t about power, this isn’t about leverage, this isn’t about fighting, kicking and screaming,” Murayi said. “This is about really raising the issue about racial discrimination in America and really opening this issue moving forward.”

The students also announced at the conference that they are receiving free legal counsel from Covington and Burling LLP in their negotiations with Mothers.

According to Seth Tucker, the students’ attorney, the students and Mothers reached a settlement quickly. Negotiations lasted under 24 hours.

“I think it is a great result for both sides,” Tucker said. “It was a creative resolution. They have created a win-win settlement.”

If Mothers does not comply with the agreement, the students could still press charges. According to Tucker, this is an unlikely situation.

“I don’t expect them to break the agreement,” Tucker said. “They seem genuine and sincere.”
Mothers’ attorney, Brad Grayson of Strauss & Malk LLP said the bar is devoted to the agreement.

“My clients are very committed to going forward with the things we agreed upon with the students,” Grayson said.
Representatives from Mothers said in a statement that they are pleased with the agreement.

“We’re happy that it appears we have resolved differences with the students amicably and in a manner that promotes unity rather than division,” the statement said.

Cutz also said he is pleased with the agreement.

“Personally I’m satisfied with the way that things turned out,” Cutz said.

Although the six students are no longer pursuing litigation, city, state and federal investigations into the incident are still underway. According to Cutz, the agreement reached between the students and Mothers stipulated that the investigations would continue.

On Wednesday morning, U.S. Rep. William Lacy Clay Jr., D-St. Louis, sent a letter to U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder and to the Washington office and Chicago field office of the FBI requesting further investigation into the incident.

With additional reporting by Dan Woznica

In cases of racist activity, however, the wrong that must be rectified is not the act itself, but the sentiment behind it. The impetus behind wrongful acts such as turning customers away from an establishment because of their race begins long before these acts take place.

It is therefore necessary—and appropriate—that the settlement announced this Wednesday between the Original Mothers bar and the six Washington University seniors it turned away on the basis of race does not involve punitive financial damages but rather mandates direct participation in diversity awareness training for the employees of the bar. Because racist acts begin with ingrained prejudices, these prejudices must be removed—layer by layer—if the inherent wrongness of the action is to genuinely be rectified.

I am certain that some will criticize the settlement, saying that it is not harsh enough, that a lawsuit demanding punitive damages is justified, that Mothers bar ought to be put out of business because of its actions.

Such a lawsuit, though, would localize the incident and limit the dialogue that it has the potential to create. As members of our community discussed at the Town Hall meeting on Monday, and as several students have alluded to in comments on the Student Life Web site, the fact that students were turned away from a club because of their race was not surprising. The Mothers incident speaks to a larger problem—one that no amount of money could rectify, and one that putting a single nightclub out of business could hardly make a dent in.

The fact is that racism still exists in our society. It exists, however, in ingrained prejudices that cannot legally be manifested, thanks to the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and subsequent civil rights legislation.

The great civil rights battle of our generation will not be fought on legal grounds, but rather on social grounds; it is only when owners of nightclubs do not associate gang activity with race that justice will truly be served. This is perhaps a utopian vision, but I believe that it is a goal worth striving for.

By forcing the bar to sponsor fundraisers for socially just causes, and by forcing its employees to undergo diversity training, the settlement begins to rectify a larger social wrong than what happened to the “Mothers Men” last weekend.

In her column this Wednesday, Eve Samborn wrote that we ought to take the response to this incident as a model for student activism. Knowing how the response has played out in legal terms, I’d like to take this prescription a step further: We ought to take the response to this incident as a model of how to resolve acts motivated by prejudice.

The apology to be issued by Mothers should retract the racist sentiments behind the bar’s action. The diversity awareness education programming should force its employees to formulate other, more appropriate, ways of thinking about the relationship between race and culture.

The six students who negotiated this settlement demonstrated an admirable capacity to look past the problem at hand and ensure that the incident creates a larger dialogue about race and social justice. Hearing Wednesday’s news made me proud to be a member of the Wash. U. community.

Kate is a junior in Arts & Sciences. She can be reached via e-mail at kate.gaertner@studlife.com.

The six black students who were allegedly denied entry to Mothers bar in Chicago due to their race. (Matt Mitgang | Student Life)

View a slideshow from the town hall event

Students expressed anger at the Original Mothers bar and demanded that the establishment issue an apology during a town hall forum Monday night.

“I’m flabbergasted that an apology hasn’t been given because the first step is admitting that you have a problem,” senior Jessica Strong said at the forum.

Almost 300 students showed up at the meeting, which was organized by the Association of Black Students, Connect 4 and the Senior Class Council.

The forum, held in Lab Sciences 300, was arranged to discuss an incident of alleged race discrimination by the Original Mothers bar in Chicago against six black male students on Oct. 17. Students have accused the bar of denying entry to the six because of their race.

Although the bar has not returned phone calls from Student Life, it released a statement saying it does not discriminate but will investigate the incident.

Students at the forum called for another student protest against the bar to follow up on the first one held by seniors in Chicago. Others demanded that the bar’s managers be fired or be given anti-discrimination training.

“We need to demand that they write an anti-discrimination policy, and they need to post it outside of their bar,” senior Nikki Spencer said at the forum.

Still other students suggested that the bar return the money that was spent there by seniors on the night of the incident.

“Our money is our vote,” senior Audrey King said. Another suggestion was made that Mothers should fund a scholarship for a University student.

The forum was intended to help the six black students and members of the Senior Class Council develop an official list of demands to give to the Original Mothers bar. The demands will be presented at a news conference held by the Senior Class Council at 3:30 p.m. Wednesday in Danforth University Center room 276.

Summary of the town hall

All six students who were denied entry to the bar were in attendance at the forum.

Senior Class President Fernando Cutz announced at the beginning of the event that the incident and the University’s response to it have prompted national and international media attention. CNN ran a TV spot on the story Sunday night, and The New Zealand Herald covered the story Monday.

Cutz also addressed questions about why students at the bar had not staged a walk-out from the establishment on the night of the incident.

Cutz took full responsibility for this and cited concerns he had on the night of the incident that people “weren’t level-headed and that it could escalate the situation.”

“The Senior Class Council and the six students who were involved were the only ones outside when it happened,” Cutz said in an interview. “The majority of students, I don’t believe they should be blamed for that decision. It wasn’t their decision to make.”

Karen Aroeste, St. Louis regional director for the Anti-Defamation League, also spoke at the event.

Aroeste said University students have the potential to use the incident to make a significant positive change.

“You do have an opportunity to turn lemons into a seriously large pitcher of lemonade,” Aroeste said.

Students react to Mothers,University-wide response

After the event, students shared their personal reactions.

Alex Cooper said he was unsurprised when he first heard about the incident at Mothers.

“I think the things that happened at Mothers bar were ridiculous but not too surprising just knowing how America is,” Cooper said.

Brandon Wilson, a sophomore and African-American studies major who is black, echoed Cooper’s sentiment that incidents of racism are common in America today.

“I’ve been called n—– and have racist comments directed towards me all the time,” Wilson said. “This [incident at Mothers] is really a microcosm of a bigger issue. We can get angry all day about six young men being rejected from a bar, but there’s 60,000 men being rejected from society in East St. Louis.”

Junior Wandalyn Savala, a member of Connect 4 who was involved in planning the event, said she felt students at the town hall were energized about the issue but fears they will not be for long.

“Everyone’s really fired up, and I’m excited about that,” Savala said. “But I know in a few weeks, people are going to be like, ‘Eh. Kinda don’t really have time. Kinda have a midterm.’”

Said junior Audrey Morrow, “I just really hope that when the spotlight goes away, that people still remember that we still have these problems to fix.”