University students hold anti-racism protests across US – as it happened

Students at Tufts University have just walked out of class. There, students have used the hashtag #thethreepercent to highlight the school’s percentage of black students.

Just 4% of Tufts students are black, and only 84% graduate after six years (known as a retention rate), the lowest of any ethnicity at the school. As a point of comparison, 94% of white students at Tufts graduate after six years, according to the National Center for Education Statistics.

Protesters at Stanford University: “It is our duty to fight for our freedom.”

Demonstrators at the University of Cincinnati are in silent protest, standing in a chilly rain.

The first demand from activists there is that two university police officers, Phillip Kid and David Lindenschmidt, be barred from patrolling campus. The two officers were on scene after fellow university police officer Ray Tensing shot and killed a 43-year-old unarmed black man, Sam DuBose.

The protesters are also asking for “extensive background checks” of police, faculty and staff.

We’re less than 30 minutes away from another wave of protests on the west coast.

We’re expecting actions at University of California at Berkeley and at Stanford University. Demonstrations should also start soon at Michigan State University.

Protesters at Ryerson University in downtown Toronto, Canada have hung a sign from what appears to be a parking garage.

Just a few months ago administrators there removed “white student union” signs from around campus, calling them “offensive.”

As the Princeton Press Club points out, one of the largest forums for discussion of race (and for backlash against protesters) on college campuses has been the pseudo-anonymous sharing app Yik Yak.

We call it pseudo-anonymous because the company gathers at least enough user information gathered to track threats and report them to police. The company admitted providing user information to police after users threatened protesters at the University of Missouri.

Protests are also happening in the halls of at least one school of criminal justice – here’s a shot from inside John Jay College in New York City.

Here’s a look inside the sit-in at the president’s office at Princeton University.

We’re here. We been here. We ain’t leaving. We are loved.”

Students at Wesleyan University have issued their own set of demands.

Students there are asking for an equity advocate, a multicultural center and tracking of faculty and staff “micro-aggressions”.

President Michael Roth, past presidents, and the bureaucracy of this institution have actively neglected to address issues that pertain to students of color and empower them with the same level of resources, consideration, and inclusion historically available to white students.

Here is some of the latest video coming out of the University of Cincinnati, where a student group called the Irate 8 has organized students.

And here’s more video from the University of Massachusetts at Amherst.

One protester at Princeton has told us students are already occupying President Christopher Eisgruber’s office.

And Princeton University’s press club has tweeted a list of demands issued by the school’s Black Justice League.

We demand the university administration publicly acknowledge the racist legacy of Woodrow Wilson ...

We demand cultural competency training for all faculty and staff...

We demand a cultural place on campus dedicated specifically to black students...”

Here’s the full document.

We just learned students are protesting at the University of Pittsburgh today, beginning at 4pm ET.

We’re also expecting demonstrations from students at Emory University, Morehouse and Spelman College around 6pm ET.

There are also calls for protests in Amherst, Boston and Worcester Massachusetts, at Stanford University in California, and Rutgers University in New Jersey.

We also know at least one Canadian school, the University of Toronto, has issued a set of demands, asking administrators to hire more black faculty, provide better mental health services to students of color and to divest from the American for-profit prison industry (a demand suggested by the Black Liberation Collective).

Anti-blackness is systemic. And anti-blackness is a choice. In order to address anti-blackness, we must all become anti-racist in our actions.”

If you know of more protests, please tweet them to us.

Today’s “day of action” takes place across the country, but times seem to vary. We’re expecting protests at University of Cincinnati in Ohio to begin at 12pm ET.

Others protests at the University of Michigan and the University of California at Berkeley around 3pm ET.

Organizers have told The Guardian that protests are also expected at Yale, Harvard and in Atlanta, Georgia.

Good morning, and welcome to our live blog on the #StudentBlackOut protests planned for universities across the US today.

Anti-racism demonstrations have roiled schools from Yale University in Connecticut to the University of Missouri to Kean University in New Jersey in recent weeks.

Students at these schools, especially black students, have been threatened online, received pushback from within their communities, but have also been successful in some of their demands.

• Today’s protests are organized by the Black Liberation Collective, a group that called for today’s protests on social media, and describes itself as organizing black student unions across the country.
• The collective appears to be riding the groundswell of support for the Black Lives Matter movement.
• The most high-profile protests took place at the University of Missouri last week, where the school system’s chancellor and president resigned after the football team joined in anti-racism protests.
• Since then, student protesters across the country have made similar demands for diversity training, resignations, and more faculty of color.
• This hasn’t come without pushback – students at Mizzou were threatened anonymously last week, and Kean University students were threatened online today, according to local police.

You can read the full story of the planned protesters here. And we’ll have live coverage throughout the day on this blog.