CORPORATE PLANTATION: Political Repression and the Hampton Model

Corporate Plantation:
Political Repression and the Hampton Model

By John Robinson and Brandon King

On Wednesday November 2, 2005 at Hampton University, the progressive campus group affiliated with Amnesty International, United Students Against Sweatshops, and Campus Anti-War Network held a student walk-out on the issues of   New Orleans urban renewal, AIDS crisis, homophobia, the prison industrial complex, the war in Iraq, and the crisis in Sudan.  The lead organizers for the group had been planning the action for sometime, and we aggressively promoted and organized for it doing everything from radio announcements to mass postering the campus, and handing out fliers at campus group meetings.  The planned activities included informative

speeches about the aforementioned topics as well as chants, spoken word poetry, and musical performances. At twelve noon we quieted about 75-100 students in the student center as lead organizer Brandon King began to speak on the purpose of our assembling as well as what we had in store for the day.  We then handed out information on the Iraq war and the Katrina disaster as the speakers readied themselves.  Shortly thereafter, the entire action was sensationally quashed by the HU police. 

Earlier in the day they informed an international student, that she would be shadowed by a cop after she was subjected to intense interrogation by the Dean of Women.  But after the demonstration they became ruthlessly aggressive. The armed HU police booked several people just because they had on stickers and other paraphernalia that advertised the event.  They booked people who weren’t even wearing paraphernalia because they looked suspicious.  The police used hand-held camcorders to record the faces of the activists without their authorization.  They attempted to intimidate the onlooking students into inaction by their random targeting.  Brandon King, a sophomore activist and I were singled out as leaders and our students ID cards were confiscated by the armed HU police and the Dean of Men.  They were referred to the Dean of Students and then given back to us.  The next day, Brandon King was threatened with expulsion if he did not reveal the names of others in the group.  He was approached by a Hampton University Lieutenant Detective and told that if he did not cooperate and give the names of group members, despite the fact that he was a “hometown athlete,” that he would be expelled.

Now Brandon King, three sophomore activists, a junior activist, and a non-affiliated supporter have all been summoned to an administrative hearing for violating the code of student conduct by “actions to cajole or proselytize students”, “distributing and/or posting unauthorized information”, and “violating the administrative guidelines for student demonstrations”.  The students were given notice at 5:00 p.m. Friday, November 18 to appear at an administrative hearing at 10:00 a.m. Monday, November 21.  This severely impaired our ability to secure representation and mobilize support. Still the administration received enough calls and show of support that they postponed the hearings indefinitely.

Recently, the students met in a shopping center owned by the administration to be featured on the nightly news.  While they elucidated to the reporters the conditions they face at Hampton, their claims were flagrantly verified when a HU COP sent by the Dean of Students.  After pulling his squad car within inches of the camera man, the policeman cut the interview short by intentionally stepping in between the camera man and the student interviewee.  Even after the reporters retired the camera inside of the car, the police demanded that they leave the property.  The video footage of these events was shown on the nightly news.

Repressive Rules, Selective Enforcement

It is clear that the school seeks to quell all social activism by not only selective enforcement of the rules, but also the rules themselves.  “Actions to cajole and/or proselytize students” is an offense of which the vast majority of the student population is guilty everyday.  At the very least, every recognized club on campus to some extent attempts to persuade the students to a specific orientation.  This rule, seen in the Code of Student Conduct is tactically vague as to be easily manipulable by powerful interests.  However aside from the inference that the rule was made to be selectively enforced, the school’s concern about the actions of our group speaks to a much deeper issue.  The administration itself has long been guilty of attempts at cajoling and proselytizing black students by its strict assimilationist program.  The most profound contradiction with Hampton’s program is that it aims to make its black students ignorant of the existence of the racism which pervades our society, all the while fostering an elitist and individualist culture that ultimately works to the detriment of the Black community.  The accused students merely attempted to reverse the bourgeoisie indoctrination prevalent at Hampton and promote ideas more attuned to the interest of the community and humanity in general. 

The students also face charges of violating the guidelines set forth by the Administration on student demonstrations.  However it has been our experience that the provisions for student demonstrations delineated in the Student Handbook effectively prevent any expression of dissent, and therefore any semblance of democracy.  This is because any group wishing to demonstrate must first register with and be approved by the Chief of Police and Director of Student Activities.  It goes without saying that no group can do any of that without being recognized. The school has shown our group time and time again that it will not recognize, nor give any legitimacy to our organization nor our cause.  We have consistently been denied access to the democratic process through which groups can be evaluated and recognized, and to which as students we are entitled.  In refusing to acknowledge and recognize the groups that they suspect to be prone to protest and activism, the administration of Hampton, in effect, bans social activism on campus.  This is what has long been enforced at Hampton University…the violations outlined in the hearings summons were only technicalities.  And now the administration has informed the accused students that they can be expelled for these offenses.  By focusing on the leaders among the underclassmen, Hampton’s administration blatantly asserts their unequivocally non-tolerant position on campus dissent and protest.  However the students at HU feel, perhaps more resolutely, that their school’s disdain for democratic principles is unacceptable and must, at all costs, be resisted.

The administration was very clear in its opposition to our agenda from the very beginning.  When we put up the posters and fliers across campus at night, they would organize police teams during the day to march through the campus and snatch down every paper.  But the corporate elitist ethos cultivated by Hampton still had to be counteracted, so we put up more…and more.  The administrative response was always swift but never swift enough, each time more showy than before. To be sure, students and groups both recognized and non-recognized pass out fliers and put up advertisements on campus daily.  The advertisements are usually promoting parties, bars and other venues for alcoholic consumption.  But the activists at Hampton put up posters about a social justice-oriented student walk-out, and passed out information on the brutal, wildly unpopular War in Iraq, and they alone suffer the penalties outlined in the student handbook.  This selective enforcement of the rules reveals the true nature of Hampton’s administration. 

The Hampton Model as Apparatus of Exploitation

While most of the police were especially negligent of the rules that supposedly govern their action, even as they targeted us for the same thing, there were other cops who sided with us in theory but just “had to do their job”.  That these officers were only doing what their superiors commanded them to, isn’t hard to believe considering that their superiors include the University President Dr. William R. Harvey who is a Bush appointee to the Federal National Mortgage Association, and a Board of Trustees bounteous with Bush-Cheney campaign beneficiaries.  Students at Hampton University have become accustomed, although not content, to the school’s restraint of free thought and expression.  The issue has arisen publicly before with the Hampton school of journalism.  In 2003, a student writer for the supposedly “student-run” campus newspaper, “The Hampton Script”, wrote an article about the school cafeteria and its 100+ health code violations.  The administration wasn’t particularly enthused about how the information would affect the school’s image…so they seized all copies and destroyed them.  They also basically purged the staff, attempted to expel the student writer, and created a task force to “overlook” the creative process of the newspaper. This task force, chaired by the University’s Dean of Students who has no journalistic credentials, made several “recommendations” to the newspaper staff.  One worth mentioning here states that “Oversight and guidance from a faculty advisor (or advisors) with adequate journalistic knowledge and an appreciation and commitment to the Hampton Model are necessary.”  This model was used in the academic programs of other HBCUs.  And while the faces and tactics have changed, the underlying principle is nonetheless the same.

When providing an even closer look at the educational environment of historically black colleges and universities (HBCUs), one will gain a clearer understanding of its purpose in society and also its’ setting for which student resistance to its educational model originated.  William Watkins explained how with the creation of HBCU’s more specifically, Hampton Normal and Agricultural Institute (now Hampton University) “played no small role in creating a comprador class for the twentieth century.  Black compradors have anchored the Black South.  They have been pious, conservative, obedient, and loyal to the sociopolitical order.  They have supported gradualism, incrementalism, and non-violence over revolution.  They have provided a sometimes prosperous middle class without which the capitalist economy could not have stabilized. They have acted as a buffer in the South, providing business services, education, religion, fraternal orders, and hope to a people battered by slavery, sharecropping, violence and four centuries of oppression.” 

An avid proponent of this as an educational model that creates these pseudo-progressive results was the founder of Hampton Normal and Agricultural Institute, General Samuel Chapman Armstrong.  Armstrong’s true feelings of blacks should not go unmentioned due to how these beliefs guided him in administering education to blacks. Armstrong felt the black “does not see ‘the point’ of life clearly; he lacks foresight, judgment, and hard sense.  His main trouble is not ignorance, but deficiency of character; his grievances occupy him more than his deepest needs.  There is no lack of those who have mental capacity. The question with him is not one of brains, but of right instincts, of morals and of hard work.” Armstrong placed blacks in the category of “savage races” that were “mentally sluggish” and “indolent.” Character training was/is the only way blacks could be salvaged.  This is why Hampton University’s educational model is so significant.  It is not just schooling, but also it was/is, as Watkins puts it, “saving a race from itself.”

The most prominent black advocate for this model was Armstrong’s neophyte Booker T. Washington.  Because blacks faced oppression and political repression on a daily basis, W.E.B. Du Bois felt this reality should not go ignored.  He pleaded with Washington to address these realities by stating “It is wrong to encourage a man or a people in evil doing; it is wrong to aid and abet a national crime simply because it is unpopular not to do so… We have no right to sit silently by while the inevitable seeds are sown for a harvest of disaster to our children, black and white.”  In saying this, Du Bois draws the line between himself and supporters of Armstrong and Washington’s form of education and indoctrination.  When black students rebel against the existing social order, they are looked at as deviant because they buck an educational model that truly does not function in their favor.

Student Resistance Through the Years

At Hampton University in 2005, this student resistance has been more intense perhaps than ever before.  In the wake of such social atrocities as the Katrina disaster, black students have achieved a much higher degree of political consciousness than in previous years.  The student activist group at Hampton, whose members are now being threatened with expulsion, has worked tirelessly for years promoting consciousness on social issues and providing ways for students to become involved.

In the Fall of 2002, students attempted to get Dr. Taye Wolde-Semayat, a former political prisoner from and President of the Ethiopian Teachers Association, to speak on campus.  He was released following a five-year campaign by Amnesty International, the National Union of Teachers, and teachers’ unions around the world.  Hampton University refused to allow him to speak on campus.  The Vice President of Student Affairs, Dr. Bennie McMorris, signed a letter which would allow for Dr. Taye to speak on campus but swiftly renounced his signature and took the University’s original position of refusing to allow the event to take place on campus. The students got a local church as a venue for Dr. Taye to speak.  These students also organized massive carpooling for students to attend the event.  Over 200 people, including community and church members, students, and faculty attended the event which was a couple miles away from campus. 

After this event, the student activist organization continued to fight to be a recognized organization on campus.  We were met with an administration that repudiated the idea of recognizing an organization, which sees as its mission, advocating, promoting, and mobilizing people to fight for human rights.  Each year, we would apply for recognition and have been consistently denied access to the democratic process to which we are entitled.  Not only has our organization been denied recognition, but other socially conscious and politically aware groups have also been denied.

Securing The Future

That has not stopped us from organizing.  We’ve managed to have our meetings in random classrooms on campus through developing really good relationships with campus workers.  Many students see the need to address social justice issues through activism and education. Even though the University does not provide a conducive environment for activism nor allocates any resources to our group, we’ve managed not only to function, but to grow.  Our membership has increased exponentially and the members are as passionate as ever.  The administration is now attempting to stifle this growth by singling out the next generation of activists and trying to scare them into committing themselves to the Hampton Model. 

Upon being crushed by the HU police and administration a lot of the members of our group felt completely demoralized. We had initially felt that because many of the onlooking students were intimidated into non-participation and several members faced official disciplinary measures, we had surely failed.  But seeing how energized the campus became after the incident made us change the way we saw the entire situation.  Although the police prevented us from making the point that we intended to make, the students ultimately were made conscious in a much deeper way that could not have been achieved through our speeches and poetry. The students saw what their school’s administration was really for by seeing what it was really against.  Students saw first hand what happens when students stand up for human rights and social justice.  So many students openly express their anger with the way Hampton handled the situation.  Students have been very supportive and sympathetic with what we are doing at Hampton.  Students who wouldn’t have normally been involved are now compelled to be active after watching their school show its “true colors”.  These recent events have exposed the true nature of Hampton University, its educational model, how it fits into the rest of society, and above all else, why it should be resisted.

It is imperative that we send a message to Hampton’s officials that they cannot get away with this.  We have gotten so much support from students on campus, as well as individual and groups outside the school who share our passion and recognize the interconnectedness of our plights.  However we still need a lot more.  By singling out the younger activists, the school figures it can “nip activism in the bud” and it is thus our duty to make it clear that they can do no such thing.  It is vital that African Americans are able to express their concern about the issues that so uniquely and disproportionately affect our community.  This remains true despite the large sums of money the university receives from the military and other places for maintaining a docile student body.  We aim to act not defensively, but counter-offensively in our resistance.  It is not enough to just ask the administration to leave us alone in this one instance.  We intend to use this as an opportunity to illuminate problems that have perennially plagued the campus of Hampton and we therefore DEMAND that Hampton University drop all charges against the five students and change its general policy toward social justice-oriented groups on campus.  We will not accept this scoffing of democratic procedure, nor the school’s unscrupulous betrayal of the black community.  We are black students and we will no longer be cajoled by the flattery of a dishonest administration nor proselytized to the ways of the corporate elite.  Fight not for us, but with us because the actions of Hampton’s Administration and the increasingly frequent campus repression happening nationally, ultimately threaten us all. 

John Robinson is an organizer at Hampton University. He is a senior sociology major from Washington D.C.

Brandon King is also an organizer at Hampton U. He is one of the students charged in violation of the Hampton University Student Code of Conduct.  He is a senior sociology major and a native of Chesapeake VA.

For updates on the situation unfolding at Hampton University go to www.campusantiwar.net , www.studentsagainstsweatshops.org , www.worldcantwait.org

And for support send email to hamptonsolidarity@yahoo.com