On behalf of the September 29th Movement, I want to welcome the incoming freshman class to Iowa State University (ISU).

While you are still getting first impressions of what it is like to be a college student, we thought it best to explain who we are and what we are about. After all, misconceptions will take flight as we intensify our determined quest to have Carrie Chapman Catt Hall renamed after someone who honors all women and not just middle-class white women.

We will also resume taking ISU President Martin Jischke to task because of his insistence that Catt’s politically racist statements were not racist.

His stand on Catt Hall and other issues concerning the Movement and some of our allies indicates that he talks a good game of diversity but seems incapable of walking it like he talks it. (We will talk about Catt Hall in a separate article.)

Now wait, some of you may say. You’ve just arrived at ISU and one of the first events you see this semester is the renaming of Cyclone Stadium/Jack Trice Field to Jack Trice Stadium. Isn’t that diversity in action?

There’s Thomas Hill, an African American who has just been appointed vice president of student affairs. J. Herman Blake, also an African American, has been named director of African American Studies. Although you may not have heard about it, a committee is supposed to be working on a seriously flawed ISU Student Handbook to make it more inclusive of marginalized groups as well as fair and open in its handling of student conduct. How can we say ISU hasn’t taken steps to correct its lack of commitment to diversity? Furthermore, President Jischke has vehemently denied that a lack of commitment to diversity exists. Don’t these actions back him up?

We welcome these changes. but we won’t forget that ISU still needs an Asian American Studies Program, still needs to strengthen and expand its Latino Studies, American Indian Studies, Women Studies and Gay and Lesbian Studies programs to meet the needs of this changing nation.

That’s a discussion for another time. For now, let’s look at the challenges mentioned above.

One administrator has privately told The September 29th Movement that we’re tree shakers.

We shake the tree, fruit falls to the ground and others pick it up. In our view, if no one shakes the tree, President Jischke — who thinks it’s his tree — will dispense the fruit whenever he feels like it, if he feels like it at all.

Incoming freshmen, you’ll have to decide if this analogy is accurate as this semester unfolds, but for now we’ll give you some background on the fruit that’s fallen from the tree.

Twenty-two years ago. a vociferous and dedicated student body mounted a massive effort, without success, to get the stadium named after Trice, the first African American to play football for ISU, and the only ISU student athlete to die in an athletic contest.

Wealthy alumni weren’t happy about a black man’s name gracing the stadium, or so some news stories said at the time.

In the 1980s, a renewed student body effort resulted in a compromise: Cyclone Stadium/Jack Trice Field. (Unusual, to say the least.)

During the last school year, the name change went through with virtually no opposition. The Movement did not actively campaign to get it changed, because we were too busy educating the ISU community about Catt’s politically racist xenophobic and classist views.

President Jischke was busy telling us, on the one hand, that he wasn’t here when the name of Catt Hall as approved, so he wouldn’t recommend changing it.

On the other hand, he wasn’t here during the naming of Cyclone Stadium/Jack Trice Field either, but he embraced the renaming and asked the Board of Regents to approve it. You might say he rushed to pick up the fruit that had fallen from the tree.

The September 29th Movement likes to think we created a climate that allowed the stadium name change to happen.

I haven’t researched this, but I don’t believe ISU has ever had a permanent vice president of color except on an interim basis. The highest ranking person of color I know of was an assistant vice president for student affairs. A highly capable administrator moved to another position under murky and mysterious circumstances .

So we welcome Hill’s appointment as something long overdue. We are not suggesting that he is not qualified and was appointed solely because of his race, because his credentials are solid.

We are saying that other people of color right on this campus are highly qualified and have been bypassed.

The September 29th Movement believes we may have helped the administration decide that a monochromatic roster of vice presidents is contradictory at a university that talks about diversity.

It’s a fact that the African-American Studies program (AASP) has been treated like an unwanted orphan since its inception. It has never had a permanent full-time director and has struggled along with a measly budget of $2,500 a year. That’s $50 a week, folks.

Suddenly, this year they’ve found someone to head up the program. The September 29th Movement thinks it created a climate that accelerated the process of finding a permanent full-time director who is highly qualified to make the AASP a strong and viable discipline.

Last November, the Movement engaged in an act of civil disobedience.

We wanted to peacefully assemble in the lobby of Beardshear Hall because President Jischke has been unwilling to meet with us if he can’t call the shots during the meeting, and we don’t play that.

We have the view, outrageous to some, that ISU is a democracy and that we don’t answer to Jischke, he answers to us. We see him as an equal; he sees us as beneath him.

Anyway, we were told we would receive moderate penalties, but after the meeting, penalties were increased on eight members, which the administration obviously wanted to silence.

To add insult to injury, Movement members were subjected to a star-chamber process and denied open hearings permitted by the student handbook.

ISU students and faculty members raised hell. Folks who didn’t agree with us about Catt Hall came to our defense.

Petitions, faxes and phone calls bombarded Beardshear and suddenly our lawyers were offered “a deal”: administrators backed off to the original penalties.

We realized the handbook was a mess, and everyone else did, too.

The September 29th Movement, by standing up for ourselves, created conditions that should give you the incoming freshmen, a more just and clearly written handbook.

Be warned, however. ISU administrators will ignore their own handbook and rules if it’s in their interest, which is why we had a serious difference of opinion with them.

We’re going to shake the tree a little harder in this coming school year. Catt’s name’s coming down off that building, although President Jischke thinks otherwise.

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Milton McGriff is a graduate student in creative writing and a member of the September 29th Movement Central Committee.