Howard University students are going on day eight of their 24 hour protest inside the school’s administration building and openly declare that they will not be leaving until every single one of their demands are met. 

On April 5, the protest student leader group, HU Resist, held a rally to thank the students, community, alumni and public for their continued support. 

As HU Resist leader Alexis Mckenney stepped before the crowd to speak, rally-goers quieted to hear about progress within the Administration building.

In the building, Mckenney expressed that “Black people live free of worry about food, free of worry about poverty, free of worry about police brutality,” and she asked them to imagine this on a global scale where communities could help move black people forward. 

The rally started with chants centered around togetherness:

Student speakers described life inside the administration building:

Alumni who protested previous mishandling by administrations offered words of support:

While the protests may appear to be piggybacking off of the university’s financial aid scandal, which centered around 6 employees being fired for allegedly embezzling around $1 million from 2007-2016, the students have made it clear that their protest runs deeper than that. The students are fighting back against years of alleged mismanagement and abuse from the administration. Buildings are molded and cockroach-infested, the Harriet Tubman Quadrangle has been without consistent hot water for the last semester and housing has been provided inadequately. These are only some of the issues students have.  

HU Resist has compiled a list of demands that they have shared via Twitter, which lists: 

  1. Howard University must provide adequate housing for all students under the age of 21 and extend the Fall 2018 housing deposit deadline to May 1. (The housing depot deadline has since been extended.)
  2. There must be an immediate end of unsubstantiated tuition hikes and complete access to administrative salaries.
  3. Howard University must actively fight rape culture on campus in an effort to prevent sexual assault. 
  4. Howard University must implement a grievance system to hold faculty and administrators accountable in their language and actions toward students with marginalized identities. 
  5. Howard University must hire more counselors and implement an inclusive attendance policy that accounts for mental and emotional health issues. 
  6. Howard must disarm campus police and the formation of a Police Oversight Committee controlled by students, faculty, staff, and of-campus community representations must be created. 
  7. Howard University must allocate more resources toward combating food insecurity and gentrification within the LeDroit-Shaw community. 
  8. President Wayne A. I. Frederick and the Executive Committee of the Board of Trustees must resign. 
  9. Students must have the power to democratically influence the decisions of the administration and the Board of Trustees by way of popular vote. 
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