At midnight Tuesday, nearly 200 people will stand waiting to board four chartered buses at the Schine Student Center.

In a matter of hours, they will be standing outside the U.S. Supreme Court, fighting to keep affirmative action alive at Syracuse University and on college campuses across the country.

“Right now, there is a state of emergency as far as affirmative action is concerned,” said Jason Jackson, a sophomore finance major. “We’re trying to attract the attention of the media and the justices. Hopefully, that effort will give them something to think about when they go into that room to make the decision, yea or nay.”

Jackson is part of a contingent of SU students marching on Washington as the Supreme Court hears arguments in the University of Michigan affirmative action cases. The cases, which will decide the constitutionality of racially conscious admissions policies at the University of Michigan, have the potential to outlaw the use of affirmative action at every college in the country. In February, SU filed an amicus curiae brief with the Court in support of affirmative action.

The SU Office of Multicultural Affairs, The Black Voice, Student African-American Society and the Black Artists’ League co-sponsored and paid for the bus trip. The group will join high school and college students from across the country in a demonstration and march orchestrated by By Any Means Necessary, an organization that calls itself part of a “a new, militant, integrated, mass civil rights movement.”

Anthony Buissereth, a senior African-American studies and sociology major and editor in chief of The Black Voice, said that while the student organizations financing the trip may not support all of BAMN’s viewpoints, they are taking part in the march to ensure that minority students aren’t underrepresented on college campuses.

“If the Supreme Court strikes down race-conscious admission policies, it will have a dramatic impact on the enrollment of students of color,” Buissereth said. “If these categories are not used, the university will look a lot different.”

Buissereth feels that despite filing the amicus brief, SU is not doing all it can to support affirmative action. The Student Association would have provided the funding for the buses with Multicultural Affairs covering any shortage. Cynthia Fulford, associate director of Multicultural Affairs, said that when it was discovered that SA had no funds for the trip, her office told students that they would have to pay for part of the trip out of their own pockets. In Buissereth’s opinion, this showed that the university is not committed to the defense of affirmative action.

“This institution is not truly in support of affirmative action,” Buissereth said. “They’re talking out of both sides of their mouth.”

Instead of forcing students to pay, the trip’s organizers found a way of using leftover funds from the student organizations, almost $11,000 combined, to pay for the buses. Fulford said that Multicultural Affairs officials remained in a purely administrative role, collecting liability forms that will release the university from any responsibility should students be arrested or injured at the demonstration.

A group of students from SU’s College of Law have also charted a bus for the march. They went not only to support affirmative action but to witness an important event in legal history.

“The reason I’m going is because it’s going to be a historic event and it’ll be cool to experience,” said Lynee Hicks, a first-year law student.

Published on March 31, 2003 at 12:00 pm