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'Your silence is deafening': Members of OU black community march in solidarity, call for institutional change

Better Together

Members of the OU community march towards Evans Hall as part of the Better Together March Jan. 24.

 Caitlyn Epes/The Daily

“Better! Together!”

Those two words were chanted over and over Thursday afternoon as OU‘s black community and its allies marched to the president’s office to hand over a list of demands they hope will bring change to campus.

With hundreds standing outside of Evans Hall, Black Student Association members Miles Francisco, Taylor Wilson and Jamelia Reed entered the building to hand over their statement to OU President James Gallogly. When they came out, they announced they had to give it to his assistant and Provost Kyle Harper.

“President Gallogly is conveniently not here today,” Francisco said. “President Gallogly had someone ask if they could give a statement on his behalf, we denied. This march was for us, to be united, for our visibility, so we want to make sure that we’re keeping it central.”

In less than a week, OU experienced two separate incidents of people in blackface. A video of a then-OU student in blackface surfaced Jan. 18 and on Jan. 23 an unknown individual walked around campus in blackface as well. There was a rally held Tuesday to address the first incident, and this march came to fruition after the Jan. 23 occurrence.

Leaders of BSA said they were thankful that the march had such a large turnout when it was announced less than 24 hours before the the event started.

“To see the community come together, to see allies here, white allies, Hispanic allies, Latinx allies, Indigenous allies, all here together, it meant a lot,” Francisco said. “It was beautiful.”

Francisco also asked the crowd to remember those who weren’t participating.

“People sitting in the union, quietly, peacefully, happy as day,” Francisco said. “People who don’t feel like they have any stake in this. People who don’t feel like this is for them. Like it doesn't really matter for them. To all the allies out here, we appreciate y’all being here.”

Francisco said it’s on white allies to “dismantle the system” and call out their fellow white people.

“We’re tired, but we will not stop fighting,” Francisco said. “Your silence is deafening — we hear it loud and clear. If you’re not speaking up right now, when your students of color don’t feel safe on this campus, we have a problem. It is on you. Your silence is deafening.”

Francisco said “Better Together” means every person and every group is working together. He said only together can the momentum continue. If it does, he said, “we will not lose.”

As far as Gallogly goes, Francisco said he is “a tool of whiteness,” and that diversity and inclusion initiatives need to start from the top with the administration and the Board of Regents.

“It’s on (Gallogly) to use his privilege, to use his power, his voice to bring a little bit of change but … it’s also on the rest of the administration … to embark this real systemic change,” Francisco said.

Destinee Dickson, BSA member and political science and women’s and gender studies junior, said she was notified an hour before the march that Gallogly would not be in his office due to meetings at the Health Sciences Center in Oklahoma City.

“I think (Gallogly changing his schedule) would’ve meant to us that he cares and he’s ready to make a change on our campus and university,” Dickson said. “I think he still wants to make a change on our campus but I don’t think he is wanting to do it as immediately as we are wanting.”

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Kristen Partridge, interim vice president for student affairs and dean of students, said it’s important for administrators to remember that they need to be invited to events organized by multicultural communities. Gallogly was not invited, and Partridge said she believes he kept his schedule in order to stay out of the students way, knowing the march was not about him.

Partridge said she and members of the Campus Event Response Team were at the march to ensure that students were safe and to show their solidarity and support, but said that they cannot completely “create a safe space.”

“I know that is the goal and should be our goal, but mostly we try to make sure that students at least feel like they have someplace to go, a person they can talk to, a place where they feel included and welcomed just as they are,” Partridge said. “As public property, we’re open to all kinds of people, even people who could harm us and so I think it’s even more important that something like CERT exists so we can be present in those spaces and provide at least the infrastructure that we can.”

Francisco said Gallogly not being on campus a day after a man walked around in blackface was not a good sign to the black community.

“A day after this incident comes you would think that your leader would be here, to be there for the community,” Francisco said. “Not to speak but to listen, to see this huge turnout, to see that students of color don’t feel safe, to see that students of color will fight for what they believe in.”

Francisco’s most important priority is enacting change to make campus a place where all students feel safe, he said.

Near the end of the event, it was announced that a town hall will take place Sunday at Dale Hall. The time and room is to be determined. Dickson said they will go over some things that need to be done and how community members can help. There are many students that want to get involved, they just need to be told what to do, she said.

“(The town hall will be) a place where people know what our demands and actions are and how they can help and be a support system and ally as we work with the administration,” Dickson said.

At the end of the march, the group of hundreds stood holding hands outside the Oklahoma Memorial Union. BSA member Cornelius Woodard led the gathered in singing the black national anthem, “Lift Ev’ry Voice and Sing."

“Lift every voice and sing,

Till earth and heaven ring,

Ring with the harmonies of Liberty;

Let our rejoicing rise

High as the listening skies,

Let it resound loud as the rolling sea.

Sing a song full of the faith that the dark past has taught us,

Sing a song full of the hope that the present has brought us,

Facing the rising sun of our new day begun,

Let us march on till victory is won.”

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