Opinions
Wake up! Listen to black student protesters
Recent events at Mizzou recall a life-changing 1992 episode at Penn State
University of Missouri (Photo by AdamProcter; courtesy Wikimedia Commons)
The issue of race relations on college campuses reemerged last week following highly publicized incidents at Yale and the University of Missouri that triggered protests at schools across the country. Much of the reaction and commentary included patronizing remarks that minimized and trivialized the plight of African-American and other minority students navigating life on majority-white campuses.
At Missouri, students protested a string of racist incidents that were largely ignored by administrators, leading to the resignation of University of Missouri System President Tim Wolfe and Columbia campus Chancellor R. Bowen Loftin. They stepped down only after the football team threatened a boycott, jeopardizing lucrative sports revenue for the school. The athletes’ brave act of defiance should be a template for students elsewhere looking for creative and effective ways to fight back against apathetic administrators.
Meanwhile, at Yale, a black undergraduate student claimed that she was barred from a fraternity’s “white girls only” party. Sigma Alpha Epsilon denied the report. In another incident, a faculty member was accused of racial insensitivity after defending students’ right to wear potentially offensive Halloween costumes. The seemingly isolated incidents at Yale and Mizzou have proven anything but, with solidarity protests being staged across the country.
Leading Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump predictably sided with the status quo. “I think the two people that resigned are weak, ineffective people,” he told Fox News. Ben Carson assailed the “politically correct police” for the resignations.
Numerous publications and commentators have weighed in, belittling the students and ignoring the larger issues. This isn’t about Halloween costumes or the coddling of spoiled elites who miss their helicopter parents. It’s about the disparate treatment of minority students everywhere who face real obstacles to obtaining their education and degrees that are mostly unknown to their white counterparts.
The recent incidents call to mind my own eye-opening experience with race issues as a student at Penn State University in 1992, where I served as editorial page editor for the Daily Collegian student newspaper.
Back then, Penn State saw protests led by black students decrying low minority enrollment and inadequate efforts by the university to retain minority students. There were sit-ins and street demonstrations. One of my regular columnists, a black student, penned a column titled, “African Americans should not trust devilish white people.” It contained some harsh language and warnings to fellow black students to bear arms to defend themselves. “White people are irredeemable racists, who have never loved or cared about black people,” he wrote.
The column wasn’t the most profound or original take on race, but it certainly reflected the genuine fear and isolation that many black students felt on campus. One black friend told me that when traveling to campus from home, he gassed up his car in New York City and didn’t stop again until he pulled into his dorm four and a half hours later, ever fearful of having to make an unexpected stop in rural Pennsylvania along the way to State College.
The university was overwhelmingly white, with just 3.1 percent black enrollment. Many students were from small towns with zero black population. I had a roommate who had never met a black person before arriving on campus. When he saw a photo of me with my black prom date from high school, he said, “You took a black girl to prom?! What did your parents say?”
Such was the atmosphere for minority students. And so when I edited the column, I knew it would get a lot of attention on campus but I was young and naïve and had no idea the maelstrom that it would trigger. On the day it was published, I received an early morning phone call at my apartment from the newspaper office. “Kevin, you need to get down here. There are protesters picketing the office.”
When I arrived, there were two white students pacing in front of my office carrying signs bearing crosshairs that read, “White Man, Shoot Here.” It was startling but hardly a mass protest. I dismissed it as minor and went about my day. Later, I got a call from an Associated Press reporter in Harrisburg who’d heard about the protest. I explained that it was a brief demonstration by just two people. He wrote a story that moved across the AP state wire that night while I was still in the office. Our news editor flagged it for me. It read that our offices were besieged by a “wave of protests” following publication of the column. I was disappointed by the irresponsible sensationalism of the AP writer but it was only the state wire. Not a huge deal. Later that night, the story moved across the national AP wire and appeared in every major newspaper in the country the next morning. All hell broke loose.
The office phones rang incessantly. Penn State administrators denounced us in the media as a “hate publication.” Student organizations yanked their advertising. Oprah, Donahue, Sally Jesse and Geraldo called seeking interviews with the author and me. The story was covered by the New York Times, Washington Post, CNN and every media critic and major news outlet. Death threats began arriving to our offices. The author’s life was threatened in a flier distributed across campus with a rifle’s crosshairs superimposed across his photo. I received a death threat at my apartment from the Ku Klux Klan, which operated in a nearby town. The police visited my office offering protection. Alumni canceled donations to the university and administrators searched for ways to retaliate against the newspaper, which is an independent corporation unaffiliated with Penn State. Professors denounced our actions openly in classes. Collegian staffers were harassed on the streets.
Despite all the fear mongering in the media about us instigating a “race war at Penn State,” the only violence we saw came in the form of death threats against newspaper staff. It’s surreal to turn on the radio or TV and hear your name being trashed by commentators. I was labeled a “drug addict,” “racist,” “crazy” and worse. I lost a job offer because of the uproar.
All this because I’d defended a black staff member who’d written a column from a place of fear and isolation. Yes, he wrote some inflammatory things. But on a college campus, students deserve a wide berth when exploring complicated and emotional issues for the first time on their own. As former Yale University President Benno Schmidt once said, “A university ought to be the last place where people are inhibited by fear of punishment from expressing ignorance or even hate, so long as others are left free to answer.”
It was a life-changing experience and I wish every practicing journalist could walk for a day in the shoes of someone being castigated by the national media. It taught me the importance of fairness. Words matter and they can hurt when applied recklessly.
Fast-forward nearly a quarter century, and to my dismay students are still grappling with the same issues of racism and low minority enrollment and retention. Indeed, the list of grievances from University of Missouri students is strikingly similar to a list compiled by students in the 1960s. As the Huffington Post reported last week, “The 1969 list expressed concern about the ‘nonchalant attitude on the part of the university,’ saying it made it ‘a haven for comprehensive institutionalized racist and political repression.’ Those feelings were echoed by many protesters this week.”
Instead of dismissing these students’ concerns, we should listen and help. The condescending response from Trump, the Wall Street Journal editorial board and others ignores the genuine fears of students who face threats of violence and racist epithets — one of which was scrawled in human excrement at Missouri.
Often it’s the covert manifestations of racism that sting most, like the indifferent response of administrators and media critics. Or the persistent problems with retaining minority students and faculty at major universities that are instead focused on building multi-billion dollar endowments while neglecting needs of current students.
There are no easy solutions to these entrenched problems, but we’ve seen the result of propagating the status quo, from Ferguson to Baltimore and beyond. At the very least, we can listen to these students respectfully and engage with them. Football players don’t boycott games and students don’t initiate hunger strikes for kicks or attention. The problems are real. As Spike Lee implored us in his 1988 film “School Daze,” “Wake up!”
Kevin Naff is editor of the Washington Blade. Reach him at [email protected].
Opinions
Why I’m supporting Gary Goodweather for D.C. mayor
In a word, longtime local resident has the character for the job
Hey fellow LGBTQ+ Democrats, this is worth reading! Especially if you’re a voter in Washington, D.C. who’s planning to cast a ballot for the nomination of local candidates in the District of Columbia in 2026.
Because next Tuesday June 16 is a really Big Deal for D.C. Democrats. It’s the first time in two decades that the doors to filling the crucially important job of mayor are wide open because no incumbent is on the ballot.
That is, Mayor Muriel Bowser is not running for election. Instead she will — at last, and after three terms in office — symbolically ride off into the political sunset. And to considerable and well deserved applause. Because she’s been rightly lauded for many important accomplishments, including her well documented record of supporting the many diverse issues concerning the LGBTQ+ community.
But she’s been equally derided for her far too spineless a record recently, of (not) effectively opposing President Donald Trump and his outrageous stationing of outsider National Guard armed troops all across D.C. This despicably sad state of affairs has been a grim statement that Washington, D.C. (not being a state) is subject to the Donald’s feral instincts for nastily mean-spirited retributions. But she’s been meek and mild, and even actively complicit with Trump, when other mayors have told Trump to buzz off. And they succeeded.
But enough about Mayor Bowser. Her “sell by date” fast approaches. The old order changes. And a new day dawns.
Next Tuesday, two candidates of this old (and by now seriously outmoded) order seek to win the coveted Democratic nomination for mayor on June 16. First, there’s Janeese Lewis George, who’s a great first or second choice by any measure. And (ahem) then there’s Kenyan McDuffie.
But this is Ranked Choice Voting and it’s brand new. It’s not “either/or” binary, just like we now appreciate that sexual orientation and identity are also non-binary.
My first choice is clear because I know him. His name is Gary Goodweather. But so, who is this outsider candidate for mayor anyway?
It goes like this. First, together with his remarkable wife, successful D.C. Realtor Meredith Margolis, Gary and their two college age kids are all 20-year residents of Dupont Circle. I actually first met Gary and Meredith a year ago at a BBQ event, when he was a speaker at the historic, progressive, feminist Woman’s National Democratic Club.
So once again, who’s this Gary Goodweather? And why should you seriously consider him for your personal first or second or even third choice?
Here’s why. He’s new to politics in the conventional old paradigm of “politics.” But he knows Washington, D.C. forwards and backwards and inside and out. Because he’s been involved for many years in successful local private sector business investments, including the development of neighborhood-based BIDs, or Business Improvement Districts including the one in NoMa.
And his thinking is typically “out-of-the box.” For example, he’s currently an actual active advocate for establishing agriculture in our densely populated urban environment — through so-called “tiered gardens.” Yes, D.C., trust me, this is an actual thing. And yes, it requires street smarts to deal with challenging zoning issues; but it’s a real example of what fresh blood and new thinking and real imagination can bring to our hogtied and often over-regulated city.
Gary was in the U.S. Army and the National Guard for four years as a captain in the armored command. He earned his MBA in finance from Johns Hopkins University in night school.
If elected, Gary would be D.C.’s first Jewish mayor. (His is Reform Judaism. Repair the breach!)
He’s become my friend and I admire his intelligence and diligence and imagination and in a word his character.
Here’s what he said to me about what he calls his political North Star: “All D.C. residents should be protected, regardless of who they love. Love is love. Love who you want. Identify how you choose to be.”
Look, it’s always time for good weather in our city. Maybe it’s time for Gary Goodweather as mayor too. First choice or second choice. Then let’s all see what happens next.
David Hoffman is a freelance writer and retired federal government civil servant. He is a longtime resident of the H Street Northeast corridor. He is a member of both the Woman’s National Democratic Club and DSA, Democratic Socialists of America Metro DC chapter.
Opinions
Don’t just vote for change — vote for Hope Solomon for mayor
LGBTQ community isn’t separate from Washington’s story — it is our story
My name is Hope Solomon, and I’m running for mayor of Washington, D.C.
I’ve spent my entire life here. I attended D.C. Public Schools. I grew up working in my family’s small business here in D.C. I live in Dupont Circle. For 17 years, I worked in national security with the Department of Defense, FBI, and Department of Homeland Security. Then last July, I got DOGE’d by Elon Musk.
I don’t recommend it as a career strategy.
But it did give me something I hadn’t had in a long time: perspective.
For the first time in years, I had space to slow down and ask a simple question: Why does it feel like Washington is being run by the same small group of people playing musical chairs, while everyone else is just expected to live with the results?
That’s when I decided to run.
I wasn’t raised in Washington’s political circles. I was raised in Washington. There’s a difference.
Some of my earliest memories are going to see the AIDS Quilt on the National Mall with my mother. I didn’t fully understand it at the time, but I understood enough to know it mattered—because it made something the country had been trying not to see completely impossible to ignore.
My family’s version of a home-cooked meal has always been Annie’s or Mr. Henry’s. I grew up going to Pride, the High Heel Race, drag brunches, and drag shows. As a kid, I thought that was just what cities were like—sequins, show tunes, queens, neighbors, everything mixed together.
Turns out that wasn’t every city.
It was Washington.
The arts shaped me just as much as anything else. I started at Fillmore Arts Center, trained for years with the Washington School of Ballet, and performed across the city—from the Kennedy Center to Warner Theatre to Lisner Auditorium.
The arts taught me discipline and confidence. But more than that, they taught me something Washington has always understood: A city works when people are free to be exactly who they are.
Growing up here, LGBTQ+ Washingtonians were my neighbors, my teachers, fellow business owners, artists, friends, and family.
They helped build the Washington I know.
And that’s why this moment matters.
Washington is facing a budget crisis. Small businesses are struggling. The federal government is openly hostile toward our city. But what worries me most isn’t just policy—it’s whether we lose what makes Washington itself while trying to fix it.
Because the soul of this city is in places like Annie’s. It’s in neighborhood restaurants, small theaters, Pride celebrations, independent businesses, and the people who make this city feel like home.
As mayor, I’ll fight to protect that. I’ll stand up for LGBTQ+ rights, support LGBTQ+ youth, invest in the arts, strengthen public safety, and back the small businesses that keep our neighborhoods alive.
Most importantly, I’ll lead with the understanding that the LGBTQ+ community isn’t separate from Washington’s story.
It is Washington’s story.
If you want another career politician, you’ve got plenty of options.
If you want someone who was shaped by this city, believes in this city, and is ready to fight for this city, I’m asking for your vote.
Learn more at HopeForDC.com. On Election Day, don’t just vote for change. Vote for Hope.
Hope Solomon is a candidate for D.C. mayor.
Opinions
Vote Kenyan McDuffie for D.C. mayor
He will best protect D.C.’s interests amid federal meddling
Elections are always important, but this year in D.C. they will bring major changes. Because of that, your vote in the Democratic primary on June 16 is more important than ever. D.C. is so overwhelmingly Democratic it is a near certainty the winners in the Democratic primary will win the general election. So, I urge everyone eligible, take the time to vote.
D.C. makes it very easy. Every registered voter has received a ballot in the mail. I cast mine before I left for a vacation. When you read this don’t put your ballot in the mail, rather vote at an early voting location, or put your ballot in one of the drop boxes around the city, or vote in person on June 16. You can find the locations for these options nearest you by going to the DCBOE website.
This year for the first time D.C.is dealing with rank choice voting, and who you rank second, or third, can make a difference in the outcome. It is important to note that you don’t have to rank the candidates. You can bullet vote for the one you like, or rank up to five. If there is one or more you like, you can simply choose a #1 and #2. Again, there is no requirement that you rank more people. From what I am seeing, in most of the races, even if five, six, or more, are running and listed on the ballot, in most of those races it will come down to one or two who have any chance. The way the city handles giving out our public money, it will cost us a lot of taxpayer dollars for all those people with no chance at all to win. I hope after these elections the Council will take a close look at how we do our public financing, and reform it. I am all for public financing, just not at the rate D.C. does it. We must ensure anyone who gets city money, accounts for every penny of it. It should never be spent on personal items. If it is not all used, it needs to be refunded to the city.
I have not made endorsements in every race, but clearly the most important race this year in D.C. is for mayor. After 12 years of Muriel Bowser serving as our mayor, there will be someone new sitting in that office after Jan. 1, 2027. What people must remember when voting for mayor, is the person we elect, even if Democrats take back Congress, and I think we will, must continue dealing with the felon in the White House for the first two years of their term. We have seen doing that requires the skill to walk a tightrope. While fighting him on nearly all he is doing, it’s crucial the mayor understands they must not alienate him to the point where he goes all out to attack the city, and the residents here. Remember, home rule gives the felon in the White House, and Congress, enormous power over us. Congress gets to review all our legislation, and our budgets, before they become law. The president controls the D.C. National Guard, and the federal agencies that in many cases get involved, and impact the work of our city. That includes housing, parks, the MPD, and others. There is only one person on the ballot who fully understands that, and has shown, by word and action, they know how to deal with him in the way that will benefit all the people in our city. That person is Kenyan McDuffie. I urge your #1 vote for him. If you have decided to vote for one of the other candidates, I would hope you would list him on your ballot as #2.
Then for Democratic Council-at-large I urge you to consider a #1 vote for Kevin Chavous. Then Brian Schwalb for Attorney General, Phil Mendelson for Council Chair, and Brooke Pinto for delegate to Congress. For Ward 5 Council I recommend Zachary Parker. For Democratic Party slots, I urge a vote for all those running on the Democrats United for a Free D.C. slate.
Then for the Independent Council-at-Large seat I urge a vote for Jacque Patterson or if you vote for Doni Crawford, rank Jacque #2.
Again, the results of this election will determine the future of the District of Columbia. It is the most important election here in years. I urge everyone who can vote in the primary to do so. Your vote can make a difference to you, and all your neighbors.
Peter Rosenstein is a longtime LGBTQ rights and Democratic Party activist.
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