Standing on Red Square at Georgetown University, AU student Sam Niemann passed out flyers that said “White Students’ Union.” She got some support and interest, some confused glances and some anger toward the concept.
Niemann, a freshman in the College of Arts and Sciences, was participating in a fieldwork project for her Sociology-100 class. She and her group members chose to focus on how people react when confronted with something outside of their comfort zone and created the idea of a White Student’s Union.
“Our project was simply to hand out flyers for a completely fictional ‘White Students' Union,’ and see what people would do,” Niemann said in an email. “Would they laugh? Ask to join? Punch us in the face?”
The group told bystanders the group is “an open, accepting, non-racist group” that hoped to determine how to white students are seen and how they see themselves.
While they expected a negative reaction, they found that it was a mixture of opinions regarding the organization, about half positive and half negative.
“Some people said that it's an interesting talking point, while others think it's ridiculous,” Niemann said.
The project was mentioned in Vox Populi, the blog of Georgetown’s student-run weekly newsmagazine The Georgetown Voice.
The AU students chose to go to Georgetown instead of passing out flyers out AU because the group knew AU students and had already told some students at AU about the project idea.
“We didn't want to pass these out at AU because people here know us, and we didn't want to get beat up/questioned by our acquaintances,” Niemann said. “We knew no one at Georgetown, so there wasn't a real chance of someone we knew seeing us and being very, very confused by what we were advocating.”
When asked about her feelings on the development of such an organization, Niemann said, “Do I support the creation of a ‘White Students’ Union?’ No. But I thought it would be interesting to see what other people thought.”
