Smith security sought the assistance of the Northampton Police Department, the District Attorney's Office and a handwriting analyst to investigate the continuing instances of racist and homophobic graffiti.
That night, students at Gardiner House organized a rally. They ran through the residence and across campus chanting, "Hey hey, ho ho, this racist shit has got to go," and "Stop the silence, stop the fear."
Later that evening, several students put out a call for a sit-in the following morning via email and voicemail. Those students coordinated with members of the Students Grassroots Organizing Group (SGOG) who had planned a walk-out for the following day.
At 8 a.m. on April 24, approximately 250 people gathered in College Hall, the campus administration building, and held a sit-in. The students sang songs such as "We Shall Overcome" and "Amazing Grace." The students were joined by acting President John Connolly, Dean of the College Maureen Mahoney and Director of Institutional Diversity Brenda A. Allen. "I didn't expect [Connolly] to sit down and sing," said SGOG member Eva Haldane. "It did mean a lot."
"[The sit-in] was a symbolic act more than anything else," said Smith senior Amanda Ballantyne. "The idea was that these incidents and the problematic handling of these incidences by the administration, public safety and the residential life system, have caused huge disruptions in the lives of many students."
"We wanted to demonstrate to the administration that the incidents and their subsequent mishandlings were unacceptable and intolerable by disrupting the beginning of the administration's day and forcing administrator's to recognize the number of students who have been affected (in one way or another) and the level of our outrage," added Ballantyne.
Most students at the sit-in were dressed in all black, while several residents of Gardiner House wore t-shirts that they had designed the night before. Some of the t-shirts read "Zero tolerance, enough is enough." Haldane wore a shirt that said "My name is Eva, not to be confused with Nigger."
Several other students wore t-shirts which said "Viva la Basta," which refers to Smith first year Christine Basta, who became the direct target of homophobic graffiti when the words "Die, dyke, die" were written on her message board on April 5. At that time, according to Haldane, Basta was the only openly gay first-year student at Smith.
The students remained in College Hall for about an hour.
At 11:10 a.m., approximately 250 students walked out of their 11 a.m classes. They convened in College Hall and began chanting and marching through administrative and academic buildings, inciting other students to leave class. This demonstration, which in the end had about 500 participants, lasted for about an hour.
The SGOG had originally planned to stage a protest at the scheduled faculty meeting that day. However, Connolly decided to cancel the meeting and called an all-campus meeting in John M. Greene Hall. A fact sheet explaining the recent event was distributed to the approximately 2,000 members of the Smith community in attendance.
"I wanted everyone to hear from me that we take these events very seriously, and are responding to them vigorously" said Connolly, who delivered the opening remarks.
"I want to thank publicly the many members of the student body who have been pressing us about these concerns and also the many students and members of the faculty, staff and administration who are working with us to correct them," Connolly continued. "I believe we are making very good progress, and we will continue to do so until we get it right."
Mahoney, Allen and two members of SGOG also addressed the crowd before the meeting turned into an open forum.
"The all-college meeting was necessary and showed the community that the institution was invested in what's happening and is taking it seriously," said Smith sophomore Maureen Yusef.
However, Yusef did not think that there should have been an open forum at the meeting. "It needs to happen in the housing community before we can get the whole community talking about it," said Yusef. "The dialogue wasn't that helpful because there were too many opinions … it was too much for people."
That night each campus residence held a mandatory meeting to discuss these matters.
These events occurred as the administration negotiated with members of the SGOG over a five-page list of demands they presented on April 16. The demands ranged from requiring every Smith student to take a class on race and ethnicity, to the creation of a residence for students of color and international students, to a return to "need-blind" admission and financial aid.
The administration has had several meeting with the SGOG, in which they have gone over each demand. "[On Monday] we came to agreement on all of them," said Chief Public Affairs Officer Ann Shanahan.
That agreement will be passed on to the senior staff and incoming President Carol Christ. Shanahan said that Smith should be able to say what has been agreed upon by the end of the week.
On Tuesday evening, residents of Gardiner House held a brown-out, which according to Yusef, is when a group of people of color and their allies gather together to show solidarity. Sometimes they eat, sometimes they talk and sometimes they yell.
At Tuesday's brown-out, the residents served dinner and many people talked about the recent events at Smith and their various opinions on it. Travis J. Bristol '03, attended the brown-out along with two other Amherst students. He said they talked about "how they weren't afraid of the threats made against them."
"I sense that there is a lot of anger and that's justified," said Bristol. "But I think one has to go beyond the anger and find ways to institute change."
Bristol, who is a member of Amherst College's Black Men's Group, recommended to the students at Gardiner House to learn "how to work within the circle of power and bring about change."
Bristol told them that instead of asking the administration to require students to take a class on race and ethnicity, that they try to institute something more practical like the program that the College sponsors during its Orientation which teaches students about white privilege. The Smith students liked Bristol's idea.
"We think it's really important that the five colleges know what's going on [at Smith] and that we can come together," said Haldane. "This isn't a Smith thing. Solidarity would be beautiful."