Updated April 19, 2010

Jamie Matz stood on the bottom step of Hendricks Chapel holding a sign. A group of students danced around him, banging pots and pans.

They sang. They chanted. But Jamie Matz remained quiet and composed, steadily holding his sign above his head, letting it speak louder than he was.

“I’m not another uninformed student protesting,” his sign read. “JPMorgan Chase was forced to take the TARP money. They didn’t need it.”

Matz was one of about 60 students on the steps of Hendricks Chapel for the “Take Back Commencement” rally Friday on the Quad. But, unlike the protestors, he wasn’t there to denounce the university’s choice of JPMorgan Chase & Co. Chief Executive Officer Jamie Dimon as the 2010 commencement speaker. Matz was there to defend the commencement decision.

“I just didn’t want to be embarrassed that only this side of the story was being represented,” he said.

Since the announcement of Dimon as commencement speaker March 25, student reactions have been mixed. The most vocal students are speaking out against Dimon because they are unhappy with the process by which Dimon was chosen, the corporate banking world he represents and JPMorgan’s ties with Syracuse University. They organized Friday’s rally and created a “Take Back Commencement” petition and Facebook group.

The rally was meant to bring together all of the student discontent and vocalize it. The students stood on the steps in front of Hendricks for nearly two hours, even as it began to rain, holding signs, dancing, and singing original songs and chants.

The steps were decorated with a range of colored signs showcasing the protestors’ discontent with Dimon. The signs read phrases such as “Biden, Goodall, Vonnegut, WTF 2010?” and “No Dimes from Dimon.” One sign addressed the connections between the university and JPMorgan with a drawing of Otto the Orange and the JPMorgan logo holding hands, reading “So happy together?”

Audra Coulombe, Mariel Fiedler and Ashley Owen led chants in protest. Throughout the demonstration, students shouted, “We are the students, we’re here because we pay, and we don’t want to hear what Dimon has to say.”

Howie Hawkins, who will run for governor of New York under the Green Party, and Minnie-Bruce Pratt, a professor in the writing program, stood on the steps with the students to show their support. Hawkins spoke for about 10 minutes about the damages JPMorgan has inflicted over the years on the public, including during the recent financial crisis. Pratt read a poem showing her support of the students’ decision to speak up.

“The organizing they are doing, to me, represents the best ideals of education,” she said. “They are looking at the connections between the speaker and real world and their own lives in terms of the economic implications.”

But through the commotion, Matz remained in the same spot, holding his sign. He stared straight ahead, rarely interacting with the protesting students.

“I feel that a lot of people are speaking and protesting when they are clearly uninformed about the whole situation,” he said.

Coulombe said she wouldn’t mind engaging in conversation with the opposition but does not appreciate being called ignorant and uninformed.

“I want them to come so that they can engage us in conversation, and we can talk about it, but that’s not happening,” she said. “They’re just standing there angry and they’re not talking to us, and we are more than happy to talk to them.”

Chancellor Nancy Cantor and Senior Vice President and Dean of Student Affairs Thomas Wolfe also came by to see the protest. The two discussed the issue with Fiedler and Owen, two of the group’s leaders, on April 9, Cantor said. They offered the students to use Hendricks Chapel to discuss the issues further after the commencement ceremony.

Commencement speakers receive both positive and negative reaction every year, Cantor said.

“I don’t know that I actually thought through exactly how people would react, but every commencement speaker gets reactions,” she said. “This one is particularly intense, and I would expect it to be because of the urgency and timeliness of the global financial crisis, which affects everybody.”

Ponchos and umbrellas came out as the rain began to pour toward the end of the protest, but the students kept dancing and shouting. Matz left before the end of the protest. In spite of Matz’s claims that the protesting students were uninformed, Fiedler said she felt differently and thought the protest was a success.

“It’s pouring rain, but you can hear the energy,” she said. “I’m happy. An enlightened minority is always better than an ignorant majority.”

Published on April 15, 2010 at 12:00 pm