While he may have spent his high school years on the football and wrestling teams, Sam Rennebohm acquired a decidedly different set of extra-curriculars when he arrived at Columbia.
The ethnic studies major was thrust into the spotlight because of his involvement with several organizations that have dealt with race, inequality, and privilege on campus, including Stop Hate on Columbia’s Campus (SHOCC), Students Promoting Empowerment and Knowledge (SPEaK), and Respecting Ourselves and Others Through Education (ROOTEd). Rennebohm was also a key organizer for fall 2007’s hunger strike.
Drawing attention for often being the only straight, white male involved in these activities, the Seattle native has had to reconcile his identity with his interests.
“It’s very easy to feel guilty, but it’s not productive,” Rennebohm said.
Rennebohm’s involvement in these activities began in earnest when he spent a year after high school graduation in South Africa working at a primary school.
“I encountered ideas that I had not really grappled with in high school when all I was doing was playing football,” he recalled.
Being a General Studies student the next year didn’t stop him for pursuing those interests. Once on campus, Rennebohm participated in the Columbia Urban Experience, which introduced him to groups like SPEaK and ROOTEd.
“For a freshman, it was real serious stuff, and I didn’t know what people were talking about half the time,” he said. “I remember sitting at meetings at 5 a.m. where we discussed whether or not we were going to stage a sit in at Low. It was the exciting, naïve part where I thought, ‘Oh, I could be arrested tomorrow.’”
The son of a minister and a social worker, Rennebohm grew up exposed to different underprivileged communities, including the homeless. But he said it wasn’t until he was involved with campus activism that he really grappled with his own identity.
“Half of this is learning about others, and half is learning about yourself. It put me out of my comfort zone in a good way,” he said of being a facilitator. “I was excited to be a part of people who are doing something they believed in.”
For Rennebohm, the pivotal moment at Columbia might have been the 2007 hunger strike that protested the perceived ethnocentrism of the University’s academic and administrative policies and demanded alterations to Columbia’s expansion project in Manhattanville. Though he recognizes several obstacles that made it less effective, he said he still thinks highly of the strike’s accomplishments.
