Brown University Students Say They’re ‘Failing Classes’ From Stress of Activism Work

Student activists at Brown University are pressuring school administrators to make it easier for activists to skip or delay classwork so that they can devote more time to social justice activism.

Manning Hall, Brown University, Providence, Rhode Island, on November 8, 2009 Chen Siyuan/Wikicommons

Student activists at Brown University are pressuring school administrators to make it easier for activists to skip or delay classwork so that they can devote more time to social justice activism. 

Justice Gaines received several notes from school deans that excused him from going to class after he said he was being emotionally overwhelmed by student activism work. 

After the publication of several allegedly racist opinion pieces in The Brown Daily Herald, Brown University’s student newspaper, Gaines felt pressure to help students organize protests, and “had a panic attack and couldn’t go to class for several days,” the Brown Daily Herald reports. 

Justice Gaines at the 2015 College Unions Poetry Slam Invitational Button Poetry/YouTube