Through a noon rally Tuesday on the steps of Beardshear Hall, The September 29th Movement expressed its frustration in the lack of respect received from Iowa State President Martin Jischke.

The 30-minute rally featured speeches from Movement member Milton McGriff and Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender Ally Alliance President Jason Rivera. About 50 people showed up for the rally, with several students stopping momentarily as they passed by Beardshear.

Speakers were interrupted several times when the crowd shouted out in spontaneous support.

McGriff opened Tuesday’s event by announcing that The Movement has accepted offers from both the Daily and the Ames Tribune to meet with university officials in an effort to resolve disputes about Catt Hall.

Rivera said Jischke should make greater efforts in improving diversity on campus, and spoke of his disapproval of Jischke’s unwillingness to meet with Movement members.

“I believe this is our university, and Jischke should answer to us,” she said.

Rivera then outlined the nine demands made last semester by Movement member Allan Nosworthy during his hunger strike.

“The diversity of the issues discussed by the September 29th Movement are also important to LGBTAA. Racism, sexism and classism are important to queers because many of us are poor, minorities and female,” he said.

Rivera then cited statistics supporting the claim that LGBTAA members continue to face discrimination on at ISU.

He said a recent study done by the LGBTAA found that 30 percent of its members reported feeling excluded by faculty members, and 40 percent heard faculty members make gay jokes in their presence. “All of these issues are related,” Rivera said.

After Rivera’s speech, McGriff once again took center stage. He began his speech by speaking about a memo allegedly sent by the administration to faculty members supporting The Movement.

McGriff said the memo concerned conduct and activism of student affairs staff.

“As representatives of the university and certainly during work hours, their actions are limited by the university’s interests,” the document allegedly stated.

“This was not a clarification of responsibility as the university says, it was intimidation,” McGriff said of the memo. “And I have learned that even when middle-class white Americans get attacked, it hurts me.”

McGriff alleged that the administration has been using intimidation in threatening to expel them from school.

McGriff then presented a fictional story about a school with a president named Martin Goodfaith.

His examples paralleled the history of The Movement through its current wait-ins in Jischke’s office.

McGriff said people who accuse him of “biting the hand that feeds you” are wrong.

“If the hand that feeds you is giving you moldy meat, week-old bread and sour milk, I say bite that hand off,” he said. “I’m not going to back down, because I care for the students.”

McGriff closed the rally by leading the crowd in a choral reading of Maya Angelou’s poem about Rosa Parks, “I’m Only One Person, What Can I Do?”