Until Oct. 9, the editors said, the Daily Tribune had never written an editorial about The September 29th Movement or the issues surrounding the effort to rename Carrie Chapman Catt Hall.

Their stated reason:

“We thought, all along, that the whole thing was silly.” In addition, “the students, and some of their advisers, were sophomoric…with a passion for equality matched only by an ignorance of history.”

They came to these conclusions without having a single conversation with a September 29th Movement member and apparently without reading the newsletters sent to them by the Movement, since they also believe the entire controversy centers around “(one) obscure statement made 76 years ago.”

Enter rich, powerful Iowa State donor Sharon Rodine. Rodine recently wrote a three-page, single-spaced letter to Professor Derrick Rollins, Iowa State President Martin Jischke’s new adviser on diversity.

Her letter told Rollins, who holds three graduate degrees, just how important and powerful she thought she was.

The disrespectful letter had the voice of someone used to talking down to people.

Now, the Tribune opined, the matter was serious. Now it was “no longer harmless…no longer about an obscure statement made 76 years ago.” Now, they said, “it’s about truth and power and influence and freedom.”

Rodine’s letter had thrown everything in such a tizzy, the editorial concluded, that the suddenly serious matter was now a no-win deal.

For the university, Jischke, Rollins and Rodine.

The editors imperiously left students off this no-win list, because they don’t count anyway.

If Tribune editors had read the two newsletters sent to them by the Movement, they would have seen a research paper written by Meron Wondwosen, a Ronald E. McNair Fellow, which contained 10 sources and 39 footnotes.

From that alone, they would know the Catt Hall issue was about more than “an obscure statement made 76 years ago.”

If they had sought discourse with virtually any member of The September 29th Movement’s Central Committee, questions could have been answered and a first-hand account of our position would have been available to them, whether they agreed or not.

If they had met with Professor Rollins, they would have gotten to know a thoughtful, kind man with three graduate degrees and a national reputation.

They might even have published his memo, as they did Rodine’s insulting letter, and let readers decide the merits of each. Instead, they demeaned him, calling his memo “dumb and heartfelt,” placing it in the same category as Rodine’s vitriol, which they also called a dumb and heartfelt.”

Professor Rollins is only dumb to those blinded by their own self-importance and disdain for an African American who displeases them by daring to fearlessly express his own thoughts after being told by his superior that he has academic freedom and a right to speak freely.

The Catt Hall issue has been serious all along, the Tribune’s editorial opinion notwithstanding, and this is why:

Students are told the university they are paying to attend is about diversity.

So they look around and see: cultural studies programs with virtually no resources; low retention rates for people of color; literally hundreds of freshmen of color refusing to attend ISU after being accepted and citing racial climate as a reason; an annual decline in African-American staff and faculty.

They also feel the heat on their faces from the flames of a burning cross called Catt Hall that top administrators insist honors all women.

If it honors all women, the students ask, why would the director of the Sloss House Women’s Center be the first voice to call for, not renaming the hall but simply civil discourse about the wisdom, or lack of same, in dedicating a building to someone many women find offensive.

Shouldn’t that have been a loud signal?

If the women’s center director had been white, would the university have listened?

The reality is, she’s an African American and they didn’t.

In the words attributed to Sojourner Truth, she might have said: “Ain’t I a woman?”

If it honors all women, why did two women raise their voices of protest in the UHURU! newsletter of Sept. 29, 1996. “Ain’t I a Woman?” they might have asked.

There are many ways to look without seeing, and for those caught in the web of oppression, not being seen is so familiar that it feels ordinary,” wrote scholar Lewis Gordon. Because the protectors of privilege far too often look without seeing, they may not even know what Gordon means.

I know the ordinariness of not being seen. I’ll tell them.

The lessons of the 1960s, good and bad, have not been learned and internalized by this nation so steeped in racism, sexism and exploitation of the poor during its 220-year history.

Therefore, as the philosopher Santayana warned, we are repeating history because we have not learned from it.

To Tribune editors, the Montgomery bus boycott in 1966 was undoubtedly silly and sophomoric, too, because, after all, Negroes were allowed to ride on the bus, so what else did they want?

They had constitutionally been upgraded from three-fifths of a person to separate-but-equal beings.

Editorials of the day surely asked why those ungrateful wretches stirred up so much trouble when they had nothing to complain about.

Some of us believe the right to sit where you wish on a bus symbolized a deeper need and addressed profound hurt, pain and muted rage that had festered for more than three centuries.

Like Catt Hall, it was about the ordinariness of not being seen — ever — and being sick and tired of being insulted.

About being sick and tired of being sick and tired. About understanding that docility never got anyone’s attention, that even rational legal requests went unheard when dealing with those who had the tenets of white supremacy imbedded so deeply in their psyches they assumed their behavior to be “normal.”

To The September 29th Movement, the issues have always been trust and influence and power and freedom, along with self-determination and mutual respect.

We’re glad the Tribune has caught up, although some self-examination may show them why it took a rich, powerful white woman in a vile mood to discover the issues.

Catt Hall has always been about more than a politically racist woman’s name on a building. It’s about a pattern of behavior at ISU that says people of color don’t count.

For instance, if the honoree is black like Jack Trice, Iowa State metaphorically sits him in the back of the bus behind the university logo and a hyphen to keep from offending rich donors (like Rodine).

Carrie Chapman Catt rides in the front.

Those who object are perceived as ignorant of history because they have different heroes and heroines and reject external interpretations of history from those who want to patronize them.

Whether Jischke, Rodine, the Tribune editors, et al., like it or not, there are some uppity African Americans, and others, on the ISU campus who will not be docile and say “Yassuh, boss.”

Historically, outspoken people of color — particularly outspoken black Americans — have been unacceptable to the majority culture.

Even Martin Luther King Jr. was considered a troublemaker by many when he was alive.

If Rodine or the Tribune editors knew anything about respect, they would have at least made an attempt to have discussions with the Movement’s leadership before publicly launching their condescending and highly inaccurate broadsides.

But they wrongly perceive the Movement, as does Dr. Jischke, as a handful of disgruntled darkies who can be ignored as they sit grumbling in a corner of their plantation.

Once again, so you won’t forget: we are uppity, the spiritual descendants of surly field slaves — the kind who prayed for a strong wind when the big house caught on fire — and abolitionists and Indian warriors and Latino revolutionaries.

Those who perceive us through plantation-owner mentalities must adjust their thinking if any healing is to take place.

There will be no more business as usual, we will demand respect, whether you like us or agree with us or not.

We want healing because Iowa State is our community, too. But healing must take place on both sides because respect is a two-way street.

You give it, you get it.

History ultimately will decide who is silly, sophomoric and ignorant of the past, not newspaper editors.

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