Bama president calls for ‘dignity and respect’ as campus protests spread nationally

TUSCALOOSA, Ala. — University of Alabama president Stuart R. Bell on Thursday encouraged students, faculty and administrators to maintain a level of “dignity and respect” in their interactions with each other, as protests swept across other college campuses around the country.

Marches and other protests took place on roughly two dozen campuses this week, resulting in the resignations of numerous professors and administrators. Protestors are calling for more “diversity” and “inclusion,” along with more specific demands.

In Tuscaloosa, three UA students released a provocative video characterizing — or, according to others, mischaracterizing — Alabama’s campus as a hotbed of racial tensions. The video has been shared over 100,000 times since being posted on the Huffington Post.

Among the unsubstantiated claims in the video is the statement that President Barack Obama’s re-election in 2012 led to white students on campus “kicking down the doors” of black students to assault them. There is no evidence to support those claims.

UA administrators have met with the students behind the video, including SGA President Elliot Spillers, who earlier this year became UA’s first black SGA president in forty years, and feel like progress is being made.

“Conversations taking place at The University of Alabama are similar to those occurring on other campuses,” said Dr. Bell in a statement released Thursday. “I have been meeting with students, faculty and staff to listen and have open dialog as we address short-term challenges, and as we work together to develop a long-term plan that moves this university forward in a thoughtful, strategic way.”

Dr. Bell was unanimously approved by the University of Alabama Board of Trustees in June to be the Tuscaloosa campus’s new president. He has been on the job for less than five months, but says he believes the university is making strides in the right direction.

“I am pleased with the steps we have already taken to make this a more inclusive and welcoming campus, but more action will be necessary in the coming weeks and months,” he said. “This will require each of us to treat one another with dignity and respect regardless of ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation or any other characteristic that might divide us. I am committed to that, and I know (students, faculty and staff) are, too.”