SU Senior focused on activism after #NotAgainSU

By Rose Boehm asst. copy editor

Before senior Clarke Johnson committed to Syracuse University, a senior at the time told her to research the Theta Tau incident so that she would be mentally prepared to be a Black student at SU. Then in November of Johnson’s first semester, SU’s handling of a series of racist, antiSemitic and homophobic incidents led to #NotAgainSU protests over the rest of the academic year.

This year’s seniors are the last undergraduate class that was on campus for #NotAgainSU. Johnson, however, isn’t leaving. She hopes to continue to educate the student population on the events of #NotAgainSU when she returns next semester as a graduate student by giving talks to freshmen through the Office of Multicultural Affairs.

“I have a feeling that when I leave, and when the rest of us leave, those of us who have experienced it, I do think it’s going to die out,” Johnson said. “It’s going to turn into a situation where it happens again, and again and again and again.”

If people don’t talk about it, it will only cause a cycle of hate crimes to continue at SU, she said. Johnson never got too comfortable in the rest of her time at SU. She spent the next three years building her confidence and trying to find a place that was her own.

“That was probably the most traumatic thing I’ve ever had to deal with,” Johnson said about #Not-

AgainSU. “Knowing that I’m going to be one of the last people who actually experienced it on this campus, that is so weird to me.”

The #NotAgainSU movement began with sit-ins at the Barnes Center at the Arch where students spoke, protested and awaited comments by Chancellor Kent Syverud.

The sit-ins became a sleep-in, and Johnson said she continued protesting alongside her peers. People went home in shifts to shower and eat. Professors excused absences, and it became the only thing that Johnson focused on.

“I felt as if I could make things happen or I could feel better if I was there to see the changes in action,” Johnson said.

At least 16 hate crimes were reported between Nov. 7 and Nov. 21, 2019. In one incident, a Black student that Johnson knew was racially targeted by members of the Alpha Chi Rho fraternity.

“The night after the story had come out, I had to go to my dorm see