SOC Students Take to the Halls in Pop-Up Demonstration

Students in Rebecca Sperling’s Cultural and Social Change class (SOC 361) put theory into action on Wednesday, December 9th in a pop-up demonstration against the rising tension and cases of Islamophobia across the country.

After several students in her class became upset during a discussion of xenophobic and Islamophobic tensions across the country, Associate Professor of Sociology Rebecca Sperling decided to directly engage her students in social action. The class agreed, chose an appropriate holiday carol, and after voting on the locations, went across campus and out into the community to sing a song of peace. 

The group’s first stop was Vice President Podell’s office to interrupt APC, the Academic Policy Committee’s weekly meeting. Then to the Commons, a quick song in Starbucks, and a group melody in the Thomas J. Shanahan library. The last stop was the corner of 71st and Third avenue to engage the outside community. Students at each location gave out the lyrics to interested and engaged viewers. 

“They had to pull together pretty quickly and use a lot of what they knew about the issues of social change to target a particular intervention and pull it off pretty quickly,” said Dr. Sperling when asked about the learning goals of the demonstration. “The plan took place in a short class period so they had to mobilize quickly. They had to work as a community to come to some consensus about the ways in which they were going to plan their intervention, their targeted intervention. They all volunteered according to their strengths - oddly enough they had to work out a lot of disagreements and come together as a community to pull it off.”

 

Published: December 11, 2015

Contact

Dr. Rebecca Sperling
rsperling@mmm.edu
646-393-4143