A student-run rally calling for suspended AU President Benjamin Ladner's resignation yesterday ended with students storming a Board of Trustees meeting in Butler Pavilion.
Students staged a sit-in blocking all exits to the meeting, which was being held in the Butler Board Room on the sixth floor of Mary Graydon Center. Acting as a liaison between the board and the students, Julie Weber, executive director of housing and dining at AU, authorized 20 students to enter the meeting to voice their opinions and ask questions.
The rally began at 5 p.m. when a series of speakers addressed an audience on the quad. "We've been talking about it, and we estimate the protest, at its peak, was anywhere from 500 to 700 people," said Maeve Reed, a senior in the college of arts and sciences and one of the student organizers of the event.
Speakers included angered students, a member of the AU Tennis Team, a member of the Student Government and a professor.
"If we don't do something about the way the board of trustees is structured, this will happen again," said School of International Service Professor Stephen D. Cohen. "Because the way our board of trustees works, a Ben Ladner is inevitable."
Cyrus Katzen, namesake for the Katzen Art Center, was also present at the rally handing out pro-Ladner fliers. "This is the most ridiculous thing I've ever heard," Katzen said, pointing to the protesters. "Dr. Ladner built this school."
Students were passing around fliers detailing Ladner's expenses as outlined in a Washington Post article. "The Washington Post is a bunch of lies," Katzen said.
A counter protest was staged by an organization named Students to Save President Ladner. School of Public Affairs senior Jordan Landry, a member of the organization, stood on the quad with a megaphone and repeatedly said that Ladner "is good and decent man."
A march following the rally led to the tunnel, where students chanted, "Show us the money!" upward at the meeting. Although not part of the organizers' original plan, students then flooded into the Butler Pavilion and blocked the doors to the board meeting.
Weber addressed the shouting students, who were accompanied by several local reporters covering the event. When Weber asked what the students hoped to accomplish, they asked for Ladner's resignation. "Ladner's not here," Weber said.
Weber came out of the meeting again shortly thereafter and said the trustees would allow 20 students inside to ask questions and hear the board's views. Rally organizers chose the group, which consisted of both graduate and undergraduate students. These students were permitted entry to the meeting for a little over an hour.
After the meeting other rally participants blocked cars in the parking garage believed to belong to the trustees, saying they would disperse once the board members told them if they supported Ladner's removal or not.
The rally finally ended in the amphitheater, where students who were allowed into the meeting explained the details to a crowd of about 100 students.
The rally was organized largely by students and was not affiliated with any organization.
The students who organized the event were CAS senior Megan Linehan, SPA senior Liz Best, CAS senior Maeve Reed and School of International Service sophomores Alexandra Steepanuk and Caroline Behringer.
"This definitely is a success," Linehan said. "We had people saying we'd get fifty kids. This isn't fifty kids."
"This started as three people, who found out that two people were planning the same thing and it just went from there," Reed said.
