Word: nelsons
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...Nelson and the BSA had not know about the sit-in beforehand, and did not participate. Nelson chose instead to try to mediate between the administration and the protestors. The sit-in ended peacefully, and the University's subsequent success in hiring high-profile professors was, many say, a result of the very visible student protest...
...During Nelson's tenure as head of BSA, she guided the organization through two of Harvard's most dramatic recent controversies: the protests to push for a stronger Afro-American Studies Department and the debate over a Confederate flag hung by a Kirkland House student...
Despite the eventual revival of the department, Nelson regrets not having taken a more active position and joined the protestors. "I feel that we [in the BSA] were kind of timid in our action," she says. "We didn't want to sit in, but we wanted to support those who were. Looking back I would have had the board and the membership agree to sit-in with the others because that would have been such a strong showing...
...Nelson's actions during the debate over the Confederate flag last year were the best example of how she has used her position of authority both to teach student and change Harvard. Last winter, a white student in Kirkland House placed a Confederate flag in her window. After a few days of protest against the flag, another white protest against the flag, another white student in Cabot House put a flag in his window. A Black student in Cabot then placed a swastika in her window...
...Nelson and Daniel J. Libenson '92, chair of Harvard/Radcliffe Hillel, wrote a joint letter to The Crimson condemning the flags. The BSA, led by Nelson, and other groups conducted a series of eat-ins in Kirkland an Cabot Houses in an effort to explain to other students why the flags were painful and hateful to Blacks and Jews. At the same time Nelson led the eat-ins, she met with administrators and tried to persuade them to use the University's racial harassment guidelines to force the students to remove the Confederate flags...