In Summary
Arizona State University student Sarra Tekola spoke exclusively with BNC about racism on campus and threats they've received after speaking against it.When John Lewis addressed the nation in Washington, D.C., in 1963, he said, “To those who have said, ‘Be patient and wait,’ we have long said that we cannot be patient. We do not want our freedom gradually, but we want to be free now!”
These words from Lewis still ring true today and activists like Sarra Tekola are standing up for their beliefs on their own terms.
Tekola is an Arizona State University (ASU) Ph.D. candidate at the center of controversy after they chose to stand up against intimidation tactics deployed against Black students on campus.
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The Seattle native said Arizona is not a friendly place for people of color. Seeing a need in the community, they began working to make it a better place by co-founding Black Lives Matter Phoenix Metro. “We felt like there was a need for an organization like ours in this state because of the culture,” Tekola said.
As a first-generation college student, Tekola knows how resources at their alma mater, the University of Washington, helped them succeed. Those resources included programs like Trio and the McNair Scholars Program, but they said those things did not exist at ASU.
“They didn’t have any of that and so because of that, I felt like the ladder I had climbed up on did not exist at ASU,” Tekola said. They sought out to build a better campus for students of color so that it could be more accessible.
Tekola’s goal to make ASU better for minority students then evolved into a campaign they helped spearhead called the Multicultural Solidarity Coalition. The mission was to get a multicultural center on campus and resources for students of color. The ASU administration initially ignored the coalition’s request because they wanted the entire campus to be a multicultural center, which Tekola called the “all lives matter approach.”
The coalition even wrote a 25-page proposal as a roadmap for the institution, but it wasn’t until the uprising from George Floyd’s murder that university President Michael Crow was propelled to act. Tekola said Crow used parts of the coalition’s proposal as part of his plan without giving them credit.
Crow approved the creation of a multicultural space for students, but it lacked governance that would allow the coalition to implement rules around who could use the space. “They went against our advice and they opened up the multicultural center without any governance, leadership or security or safety,” Tekola said.
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On Sep. 23, 2021, two weeks after being opened, a significant incident occurred and Tekola’s life changed. During a Black study table session hosted by the Black Graduate Student Association, two white men sat across from a group of Black students and allegedly began intimidating them. The men are accused of showcasing a “Police Lives Matter” sticker and political apparel Tekola called “Trump regalia.” They also accused the men of making aggressive nonverbal threats to the Black students studying.
The students went to the administration for help, asking them to address the safety issue, but after 30 minutes of waiting, Tekola took matters into their own hands. “They weren’t listening and then finally, you know it starts to escalate,” Tekola said. “That’s when we turned on the cameras because we already knew how it goes down and how they’re gonna lie about what happened.”
Tekola and another student leader of color, Mastaani Qureshi, asked the white men to leave the space. Video of the interaction went viral and as Tekola expected, the activists were painted as the aggressors and the university opened an investigation.
Tekola and Qureshi were charged with breaking the school’s code of conduct by disrupting the university environment. “They were the ones in the multicultural center disrupting things, but they didn’t get in trouble at all,” Tekola said.
University officials instructed them to write a three-page paper explaining how they will be civil in future moments of controversy. The white men involved in the incident were not punished. Tekola does not plan to write the paper but instead plans to create a video discussing the history of respectability politics and how Black students who don’t assimilate are attacked.
Incidents of racism are not uncommon on the ASU campus, according to them. “Every single semester I’ve been here, real neo-Nazi and white supremacist national groups like Identity Evropa, Blood and Soil and antisemitic groups post flyers,” Tekola said. “They’ve done banner drops telling Jews to go home. They’ve done that.”
When the university was confronted about the racist flyers being put up on campus, student activists were told its free speech, according to Tekola. “We have a student code of conduct violation for our speech which is not protected, but when white men attack students of color, that’s free speech,” Tekola said.
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Since the video of Tekola confronting the white men went viral, their safety was threatened through thousands of death and rape threats. Additionally, their address and their parents’ address were leaked, further requiring them to hire private security. “I told [ASU] about these death threats. They refused to do anything about it and so now, I don’t even feel safe coming on campus without security,” Tekola said.
“In addition to that, it was just very violent racialized and gendered sexualized hate that was directed toward us,” Tekola continued. “In fact, they took our logo for the Multicultural Solidarity Coalition, and took my face and started making fake accounts and posting historic lynching photos with our logo on the people’s heads.”
They called the threats towards them “vile” and expressed displeasure with the administration’s lack of a response. Tekola is no longer encouraging Black students to attend ASU. “It’s not a safe place and so until ASU gets its act together, I’m not going to continue to build a ladder into a building burning,” they said.
Tekola not only wants ASU to change its culture, but they also want a public apology and the university to release a public statement condemning white supremacy. “They need to put out a public statement saying that there is no place for that on this campus because there is currently a culture that they have let run rampant,” they said. “So they either need to distinguish themselves from it or openly join them.”
Most importantly, Tekola wants the university to prioritize the safety of students of color, especially in the multicultural center. “When ASU committed to a multicultural center, what that means is that they need to prioritize students of color safety in that space over the comfortability of white students,” they said, citing that it’s become a place of “racial angst” rather than a safe space for students of color.
“They know what they need to do. They need to give the governance of the space to the multicultural solidarity coalition,” Tekola said. “We are the ones that birthed that space.”
To critics, Tekola says they’re not interested in participating in a culture of respectability politics, citing Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s letter from a Birmingham jail to white clergy members who critiqued his approach to civil rights and told him to wait for a change to come.
“We’ve been told that since MLK and now MLK is dead and we still don’t have change and that has never worked,” Tekola said. “It has never worked to ask nicely. It has never worked, you know, to be patient. That’s not how change is made.”
Tekola is up for a big fight against ASU as they prepare to finish their dissertation. The Black community and allies can help in their fight for justice by spreading awareness and getting other students of color to tell ASU they won’t enroll if racism continues to be allowed on campus.
“We really need to tell them, you know, ASU you need to put your money where your mouth is. You need to show us that Black lives matter,” Tekola said. “Because right now when we look in the investments, they’re not investing in Black students. They’re not investing in safety for students of color.”
Until ASU changes, they are encouraging Black people to withdraw their support. “And so Black people, we should not be supporting. We should not be giving money,” they said. “We should not be going to ASU until they get their act right and they deserve our presence.”
BNC reached out to the office of the ASU president for comment and did not hear back before the story was published.
After publication, an ASU spokesperson sent BNC the following statement:
ASU does not tolerate racism and sexism on campus. Our charter specifically states that our success will be “measured not by whom we exclude, but rather by whom we include and how they succeed.” This is a driving force behind all of our actions.
If the university is made aware of racism happening on campus, we act immediately. Unfortunately, on occasion, anti-Semitic flyers have been hung and vandalism has occurred on campus and again, when these incidents are brought to our attention we move swiftly to remove these items and investigate.
The university has issued several statements on anti-Semitism, which can be found here. President Crow has also recently issued a statement pertaining to violence against Asian American communities; actions we are taking to address inequities and systemic racism and support the growth of Black students, faculty and staff through the LIFT Initiative; and a message encouraging respect and inclusion among the ASU community and reminding the community that we assert the right of every individual to live in dignity, free from discrimination of any kind.
If you or someone you know is struggling from trauma triggered by this story, resources are available here.
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