Standing up for what you believe in isn’t always easy, especially when it means standing up to those in control of your education.
There is a long and untold history of student activism at Kennesaw State, one that has culminated to form grassroots movements like TakeAKneeKSU.
TakeAKneeKSU is a loosely-formed group without a set organizational structure. Students who want to be involved dive in head-first, sometimes stepping up to take leadership roles.
Alexa Vaca is such a student, who is currently serving as the movement’s main organizer. Vaca, a senior political science major, explained this history and her role serving as a student organizer in the TakeAKneeKSU movement.
“Change only happens when people let love and compassion lead them,” Vaca said.
Vaca explained that the TakeAKneeKSU protests did an excellent job of shaking up the community and drawing awareness and attention, but much more behind-the-scenes work goes into making sure that the campus is safe and welcoming for students of color.
Vaca described the hushed nature of the job when she explained that if organizing strategies get leaked, TakeAKneeKSU could face silencing and bureaucratic pushback.
The movement’s origins reach back to 2015 when concerned student organizers at KSU decided to take a stand by presenting a list of student demands to former President Daniel Papp in 2015, who, according to Vaca, agreed to continually meet with the organizers. Some of the demands included hiring a more diverse staff and requiring students and faculty to undergo diversity training.
After Papp left and Sam Olens took office, student organizers with a newly formed name, TakeAKneeKSU, coordinated a series of protests where students kneeled during the national anthem at public events during the 2017-18 school year. One protest happened during a football game and another during Olen’s investiture. Others happened on the campus green.
These protests gained national attention and spread quickly on social media using #TakeAKneeKSU.
After realizing the protests alone wouldn’t bring the desired changes, the organizers met with Olens and presented a list of “charges” against him. The charges included the cutting of funding to black student programs, the removal of three KSU hiring ads that included the words “social justice,” the choice to strip the African American Student Alliance of the ability to choose the speaker at Martin Luther King Jr. Day, the forced removal of the words “black lives matter” from pamphlets made by the black studies program and the silencing of KSU cheerleaders.
Vaca wants KSU students to know about TakeAKneeKSU’s meeting with former president Olens and their charges against him because she believes the charges were likely an essential part in Olens’ resignation, which she says happened about two weeks after the meeting.
Now, at the start of a new football season, four of the five cheerleaders who knelt last year have been cut from the team, with one actively suing the university.
“Students have the power on the campus . . . but we have to harness that power,” Vaca said. “We do not want to let these issues be swept under the rug by the new administration.”
Vaca says that TakeAKneeKSU is planning to meet with President Whitten to continue the discussion on racial justice.
“We can’t look forward unless we address the things that have been happening for years,” Vaca said.
Students and faculty who are interested in getting involved can email takeakneeksu@gmail.com
