//features//
Fall 2019
Fall 2019
A Name on a Banner, a Seat at the Table:
Protest and the Butler Banner
Maya Bickel
At the Columbia Commencement ceremony in May 1989, five people snuck onto the roof of Butler Library and unfurled a 140-foot banner. They were soon stopped by campus security who arrested them and removed the banner, but for a few brief moments, the names of eight women hung over the names of the eight men inscribed on Butler’s facade. Laura Hotchkiss Brown, then a senior in the School of General Studies, had organized the whole event. Over the course of an entire year, she and four friends hand-painted and sewed the banner, all the while planning an elaborate effort to hang it on the roof. Since Brown’s banner-hanging thirty years ago, a banner with women’s names has been hung on Butler’s roof three subsequent times, each citing her as an inspiration. All of them, though, have missed the original spirit and intent of Brown’s banner.
Laura Hotchkiss Brown’s banner-hanging was an act of protest against Columbia University. On October 9, 1989, after she had already graduated with a degree in comparative literature and ancient studies, she wrote a letter to the editor in the Columbia Daily Spectator titled “Fruitful Protest.” In the letter she explains that she had returned to college (after working as a dressmaker) to learn about “[her] tradition as a writer, and [she] began to realize that the concept of a female tradition was not being addressed in a cohesive way.” Her banner, then, was a call to the University to engage with the female tradition in a cohesive way.
After she was arrested, she got official support for her banner through the Dean of Students of the School of General Studies, who helped her attain a cosponsorship from the Vice President for Information Services and University Librarian Elaine Sloan and the Columbia Institute for Research on Women and Gender. The University excitedly picked up her project, and also subtly changed the way it was framed.
The new iteration of her banner, which was unfurled for the second time on Monday, September 25, 1989 and accompanied by an exhibition and lecture series, was named “the Butler Library Banner Project.” This time, the banner was a project, a collaboration, a piece of art on display, but certainly not a protest. Martha Howell, the director of the Institute of Research on Women and Gender, and Elaine Sloan said in a joint statement, “With challenges like hers, the critical inquiry into our cultural heritage that is at the heart of liberal education at Columbia will continue to thrive.” By identifying Brown’s banner with the general aims of Columbia as an educational institution, i.e., critical inquiry, the statement stripped her banner of its status as a critique of the institution itself.
In the second iteration of the Butler Banner, hung in March 1994, and another collaboration between students and the University administration, the notion of institutional criticism was almost completely absent. “In celebration of Women’s History Month, a banner was hung from the roof of Butler yesterday morning to recognize some of the women who have also had significant achievements in the humanities,” proclaimed the March 22, 1994 Spectator article. The article quoted Sharon Brous, a student involved in the project, who said, “it is a celebration, but it is also a way to acknowledge that something is missing.” In this iteration, the banner is primarily framed as a celebratory gesture. The article mentioned that this student also saw the banner as a protest of discrimination against women. This banner, like Brown’s hung over Butler Library, clearly making a statement about the different treatment those women and men received from Columbia’s curriculum. However, its framing ignored this aspect of the banner entirely. The only mention of protest is not against Columbia University and its exclusion of women from its curriculum or even from its library facade; instead, Brous framed her protest as directed against discrimination generally. Since the banner was celebratory and not critical, its framing also lacked any sense of an intention to effect specific institutional change.
Unfortunately the banner could not celebrate women for very long: strong winds ripped it to pieces after only one day.
The third iteration of the Butler Banner Project began last year, when Columbia Libraries approached the Vice President of Policy in CCSC with the proposal to organize a third banner to honor both Brown and female literary works. The fact that the original initiative for this iteration came from the University and not from students further highlights its changing nature from an outside critique to an inside commemoration. In a September 26 op-ed, the Butler Banner Project, now represented by a small group of students, explained that the project aims to shed light on the lack of representation given to so many identities and themes in the contemporary canon. It also “invites students to question the values of Columbia as an institution and much of Western society.” It seems like a more direct criticism of the University than the 1994 banner, but the operative word in this iteration of the banner is “question.”
In the Columbia Press Release from September 27 about the Banner Project, Executive Vice President of University Life Suzanne Goldberg said “the exhibition [that accompanies the banner] prompts exciting and important questions about who we are as a University community, what our sources of knowledge are, and how we interact with our campus environment.” The word question also comes up in the Barnard Press Release about the project, and even in a CNN article about it.
In trying to understand the specific aims of this iteration of the project beyond provoking questions, I visited its website. While there is a page titled “Our Mission,” no mission is articulated. The page explains what the project is, why and how these female-identifying authors and visionaries were chosen, and briefly describes the accompanying events and exhibitions. The words “purpose,” “aim,” “focus,” or any other words generally used to explain a “mission” are noticeably absent.
Project leaders and University administrators framed this banner as an effort to provoke questions, which makes the act of questioning—instead of any change resulting from those questions—an end in itself. The questioning further loses any power when the University administrators are the ones inviting the questioning.
Columbia, by picking up the banner, has, in certain ways, fulfilled Brown’s goals—she’s getting recognition for these women and starting a conversation about their exclusion. In fact, Brown was pleased when the University decided to collaborate with her. Her October letter called on students to realize that “protest can yield fruitful results at Columbia… This is a significant step and one that should be recognized.”
Although Brown jumped at the opportunity for University approval, this approval resulted in a complete reframing of the banner. The subsequent iterations were framed as promoting critical inquiry, celebrating women, and provoking questions. None were framed as a criticism of Columbia and none called for specific changes at the level of the University.
Beyond the reframing, the fundamental problem with the subsequent versions is that they were all University initiatives. Brown’s original banner was a powerful statement against the University, and the statement’s power relied on the banner’s not being sanctioned by the University. As a protest of the University, her banner expressed an objection to Columbia’s exclusion of women; Brown’s initiative called on Columbia to formally recognize the women on the banner just as it recognizes the men inscribed on Butler and enshrined in the curriculum. Her banner, as an outside force, could make demands of the University. Once the banner became a part of the University, however, it could no longer call on the University; it was the University.
A body that has power to enact change does not need to call for reform; it can simply enact it. Hence the strange balancing act that is the Butler Banner Project (in all its iterations): the University and students work together to hang a banner, highlighting the absence of women and other marginalized groups from Columbia’s curriculum, and then frame the project in a way that does not call for specific, substantial changes. The banner has allowed Columbia to give the impression of supporting a deeper engagement with female-identifying authors and visionaries, without making any substantial modifications to its curriculum or to the facade of the library. The Banner thus enables Columbia University to escape responsibility for its role in the exclusion of women and other marginalized groups from the curriculum.
Thirty years after Brown’s initial banner, this new banner gives students the opportunity to call on the University to enact actual, substantive change. Perhaps if we engage with this banner in the spirit of the original protest it will finally yield fruitful results.
Laura Hotchkiss Brown’s banner-hanging was an act of protest against Columbia University. On October 9, 1989, after she had already graduated with a degree in comparative literature and ancient studies, she wrote a letter to the editor in the Columbia Daily Spectator titled “Fruitful Protest.” In the letter she explains that she had returned to college (after working as a dressmaker) to learn about “[her] tradition as a writer, and [she] began to realize that the concept of a female tradition was not being addressed in a cohesive way.” Her banner, then, was a call to the University to engage with the female tradition in a cohesive way.
After she was arrested, she got official support for her banner through the Dean of Students of the School of General Studies, who helped her attain a cosponsorship from the Vice President for Information Services and University Librarian Elaine Sloan and the Columbia Institute for Research on Women and Gender. The University excitedly picked up her project, and also subtly changed the way it was framed.
The new iteration of her banner, which was unfurled for the second time on Monday, September 25, 1989 and accompanied by an exhibition and lecture series, was named “the Butler Library Banner Project.” This time, the banner was a project, a collaboration, a piece of art on display, but certainly not a protest. Martha Howell, the director of the Institute of Research on Women and Gender, and Elaine Sloan said in a joint statement, “With challenges like hers, the critical inquiry into our cultural heritage that is at the heart of liberal education at Columbia will continue to thrive.” By identifying Brown’s banner with the general aims of Columbia as an educational institution, i.e., critical inquiry, the statement stripped her banner of its status as a critique of the institution itself.
In the second iteration of the Butler Banner, hung in March 1994, and another collaboration between students and the University administration, the notion of institutional criticism was almost completely absent. “In celebration of Women’s History Month, a banner was hung from the roof of Butler yesterday morning to recognize some of the women who have also had significant achievements in the humanities,” proclaimed the March 22, 1994 Spectator article. The article quoted Sharon Brous, a student involved in the project, who said, “it is a celebration, but it is also a way to acknowledge that something is missing.” In this iteration, the banner is primarily framed as a celebratory gesture. The article mentioned that this student also saw the banner as a protest of discrimination against women. This banner, like Brown’s hung over Butler Library, clearly making a statement about the different treatment those women and men received from Columbia’s curriculum. However, its framing ignored this aspect of the banner entirely. The only mention of protest is not against Columbia University and its exclusion of women from its curriculum or even from its library facade; instead, Brous framed her protest as directed against discrimination generally. Since the banner was celebratory and not critical, its framing also lacked any sense of an intention to effect specific institutional change.
Unfortunately the banner could not celebrate women for very long: strong winds ripped it to pieces after only one day.
The third iteration of the Butler Banner Project began last year, when Columbia Libraries approached the Vice President of Policy in CCSC with the proposal to organize a third banner to honor both Brown and female literary works. The fact that the original initiative for this iteration came from the University and not from students further highlights its changing nature from an outside critique to an inside commemoration. In a September 26 op-ed, the Butler Banner Project, now represented by a small group of students, explained that the project aims to shed light on the lack of representation given to so many identities and themes in the contemporary canon. It also “invites students to question the values of Columbia as an institution and much of Western society.” It seems like a more direct criticism of the University than the 1994 banner, but the operative word in this iteration of the banner is “question.”
In the Columbia Press Release from September 27 about the Banner Project, Executive Vice President of University Life Suzanne Goldberg said “the exhibition [that accompanies the banner] prompts exciting and important questions about who we are as a University community, what our sources of knowledge are, and how we interact with our campus environment.” The word question also comes up in the Barnard Press Release about the project, and even in a CNN article about it.
In trying to understand the specific aims of this iteration of the project beyond provoking questions, I visited its website. While there is a page titled “Our Mission,” no mission is articulated. The page explains what the project is, why and how these female-identifying authors and visionaries were chosen, and briefly describes the accompanying events and exhibitions. The words “purpose,” “aim,” “focus,” or any other words generally used to explain a “mission” are noticeably absent.
Project leaders and University administrators framed this banner as an effort to provoke questions, which makes the act of questioning—instead of any change resulting from those questions—an end in itself. The questioning further loses any power when the University administrators are the ones inviting the questioning.
Columbia, by picking up the banner, has, in certain ways, fulfilled Brown’s goals—she’s getting recognition for these women and starting a conversation about their exclusion. In fact, Brown was pleased when the University decided to collaborate with her. Her October letter called on students to realize that “protest can yield fruitful results at Columbia… This is a significant step and one that should be recognized.”
Although Brown jumped at the opportunity for University approval, this approval resulted in a complete reframing of the banner. The subsequent iterations were framed as promoting critical inquiry, celebrating women, and provoking questions. None were framed as a criticism of Columbia and none called for specific changes at the level of the University.
Beyond the reframing, the fundamental problem with the subsequent versions is that they were all University initiatives. Brown’s original banner was a powerful statement against the University, and the statement’s power relied on the banner’s not being sanctioned by the University. As a protest of the University, her banner expressed an objection to Columbia’s exclusion of women; Brown’s initiative called on Columbia to formally recognize the women on the banner just as it recognizes the men inscribed on Butler and enshrined in the curriculum. Her banner, as an outside force, could make demands of the University. Once the banner became a part of the University, however, it could no longer call on the University; it was the University.
A body that has power to enact change does not need to call for reform; it can simply enact it. Hence the strange balancing act that is the Butler Banner Project (in all its iterations): the University and students work together to hang a banner, highlighting the absence of women and other marginalized groups from Columbia’s curriculum, and then frame the project in a way that does not call for specific, substantial changes. The banner has allowed Columbia to give the impression of supporting a deeper engagement with female-identifying authors and visionaries, without making any substantial modifications to its curriculum or to the facade of the library. The Banner thus enables Columbia University to escape responsibility for its role in the exclusion of women and other marginalized groups from the curriculum.
Thirty years after Brown’s initial banner, this new banner gives students the opportunity to call on the University to enact actual, substantive change. Perhaps if we engage with this banner in the spirit of the original protest it will finally yield fruitful results.
//MAYA BICKEL is a junior in Columbia College and Features Editor of The Current. She can be reached at mb4227@columbia.edu.
Photo courtesy of The Columbia Spectator, Volume CXVIII, Number 37, 23 March 1994
Photo courtesy of The Columbia Spectator, Volume CXVIII, Number 37, 23 March 1994