Recognize Us protested on April 20, 2018 to express their grievances over the university’s response to the fraternity’s video. They began with a two-hour sit-in at Schine Student Center, where the group presented a list of demands to Chancellor Kent Syverud directly – including that Theta Tau be expelled and the university hold a town hall with Syverud, the Board of Trustees, administrators and deans in attendance.

The day after the Schine protest, Syverud announced the fraternity’s permanent expulsion from SU in a video distributed through a campus-wide email. A town hall was held, where Recognize Us presented a second list of demands.

Junior Iris Guzman said that the energy felt “different” at the protest in the fall.

The initial popularity of Recognize Us was caused by the anger surrounding the Theta Tau incident, Guzman said. Once that anger subsided, the popularity did too.

“Some people see the hype of the moment and some people just want to be part of something that’s going on,” Guzman said. “When you see a massive crowd of students, you want to walk with them. This year it was literally like 10 of us. We were just being loud. But we’re still here.”

Now a year later, Recognize Us is inactive, said Nolan, who was one of the original participants in the movement.

“Being students, it gets tiring really quick,” Nolan said. “Activism work in general is completely unpaid, and it’s very emotionally taxing. We aren’t professional activists. We’re students. It was too exhausting.”

Nolan said that Recognize Us was not sustainable. Because it was a single entity representing many different students. It created disagreement internally and became a “problematic space,” they said.

Junior Raymond Perez said Recognize Us struggled to remain an entity representing many groups of students because activists cannot speak on behalf of groups that they do not identify with.

“You can only serve (those groups) by advocating for the spaces so that they can advocate for themselves,” Perez said.

First-year graduate student Sam Norton said they think the administration had predicted the momentum of Recognize Us would slow down.

“This is something that comes again and again with student activism,” Norton said. “They know that a lot of experienced organizers graduate, and people leave.”

Despite a lack of Recognize Us protests, the momentum has not been lost said junior Elise Marlin. She said that due to the stress of college, it is hard to bring people together at all.

“When it comes down to it, it’s just an individual thing if you were moved by the movement,” Marlin said. “I know that I was, and my momentum hasn’t changed.”

Recognize Us brought a lot of attention to the work of individual advocacy groups on campus, Nolan said. They said that the movement should be remembered for the work of the students.

Nolan said Recognize Us opened up more discussions about topics that might have otherwise been ignored by the majority of the student body.

Many students who participated in Recognize Us are working on activist efforts within smaller groups on campus that existed prior to the movement, Nolan said. They said the individual efforts of the students in these smaller groups keep the mission of Recognize Us alive.

“There was a lot of good that came out of (Recognize Us). I just think I don’t know how sustainable any all-encompassing student movement is,” Nolan said. “It becomes more efficient, more beneficial and less oppressive to try and boost each other’s activist efforts.”