Students, college clash over civil-rights parody

In two weeks, Tinu Oyelowo will graduate with a degree in theater from Seattle's Cornish College of the Arts, leaving behind what she believes is unfinished work.

She and other students on the tiny campus are at odds with school administrators over a March 31 clown-class production they say went terribly wrong. Meant to parody white ignorance of the civil-rights movement, the performance by three white students resorted to painful stereotypes and mocked the era's icons.

The group of students, both blacks and whites, say Cornish officials have not done enough to address the lack of cultural awareness that led to the incident. College officials, meanwhile, say such change takes time.

The performance came before another racially sensitive flare-up at Bellevue Community College over a math question that contained stereotypical references to black people. Both incidents raise questions of reconciling artistic expression with issues of race and cultural sensitivity.

Cornish is a campus of scattered buildings where 786 students pursue degrees in areas of theater, music, art, dance and design. Less than 3 percent of the students and less than 3 percent of the faculty are African American. Students describe it as a liberal place, which is why the incident has so disturbed some of them.

Those who saw it later described something akin to a train wreck everyone sees coming but could do nothing about.

Provost Lois Harris said the performance, dubbed "Civil Rights Movement — In Its Entirety" was an in-class, end-of-semester presentation put on by three graduating students in the college's theater department.

In their clown characters, the three portrayed Martin Luther King Jr. and Malcolm X as "half-witted simpletons," said the offended students. In one scene, King begins his famous "I Have a Dream" speech, then admits to having forgotten the rest before he is shot. But it was the performers' depiction of the 1960 sit-in at Greensboro that proved most offensive.

In the historic incident, four black students forced the issue of segregation by sitting at a whites-only lunch counter in a Woolworth's store and attempting to order sodas, coffee and doughnuts. In the Cornish rendition, the students who saw it said the performers greeted each other with "Homey G, whaddup?," ordered fried chicken, chitterlings, black-eyed peas, watermelon and fruit salad, and declared, "We're not goin' 'til we git some."

Oyelowo, a senior from Florida, said Cornish administrators have put the onus on students to reconcile what happened.

"We are training artists to best represent this culture — both the flaws of this country and its strengths," Oyelowo said. "There's no pressure being put on how we educate them." There are no real cultural-studies courses at Cornish, she and the other students said.

Harris, the provost, said administrators don't believe the students or their instructor intended to be malicious and are thoroughly mortified. "They've apologized. They've been thoroughly chastised."

Harris said much of what the other students are asking is part of a long-term plan on which the college is now embarking.

"What will be seen more publicly will be seen in the fall," Harris said. "Diversity has to be measured and institutionwide, and it needs to be consistent."

"I felt ugly, gross ... " said Cassandra Pittman, 20, a freshman theater major who is black. "And to turn and see my section mates laughing while I wasn't was really painful."

Melissa Henry, a white sophomore theater student from Denver, said during the Woolworth's lunch-counter scene, audience members were "looking to the African-American students — one, for permission to see if it was OK to laugh, and two, to see if it was offending them. That's the point where artistic license goes too far."

Harris said theater officials immediately brought together the performers with black students and theater faculty to address what happened. The entire theater department also met and later participated in a diversity-training session.

Oyelowo, Henry and other students formed a group called Students Promoting Understanding and Respect to speak to diversity and culturally sensitive issues. Harris said the college plans to form a diversity committee to improve the campus climate for all students and develop a plan for curricular review. But students say there are actions the college could take now — such as hiring a more diverse faculty and requiring the three performers to write public letters of apology. One has done so on his own.

"We come from big cities and small towns and we're all ages," Henry said. "We're not all on the same playing field, culturally."

Lornet Turnbull: 206-464-2420 or lturnbull@seattletimes.com