By Teresa Watanabe, Los Angeles Times (TNS)

LOS ANGELES — Alton Luke II is an African-American sophomore at Occidental College who backs the broad goal of racial equity for students. But he has chosen not to support the minority student movement aimed at ousting college President Jonathan Veitch and improving campus diversity — and bluntly announced his views on Facebook.

For that, he has paid a price.

Luke said some of his friends, black and white, have started ignoring him. He’s been called ignorant. He said the hostility of some protesters toward those with different views is a major reason he is not supporting their uprising.

“They’re doing what they claim white people do to us, which is marginalize us and cast us as the bad guy,” said Luke, a graduate of Long Beach Polytechnic High and kinesiology major who aims to become an orthopedic surgeon. “You can’t have a different opinion here or you’re persecuted. But I’m standing against their tyrannical and unjustified actions.”

Protesters at Occidental, Claremont McKenna, Yale, Ithaca, Brown and other campuses appear to have wide support as they demand action to address the bias some minority students say they face.

But sharp dissent over the movement’s tactics is also emerging, as critics have begun to step forward.

At Claremont McKenna College, where protests led to the resignation of a top administrator, more than 300 students sent a letter to the campus community expressing support for the fight against racial discrimination. But they called the use of hunger strikes to force Dean of Students Mary Spellman to step down “extremely inappropriate,” and also castigated the cursing at administrators at a recent student protest, the “cyberbullying” of students over an offensive Halloween costume and the filing of a federal civil rights complaint against Claremont.

“Never have we been more divided as community. Never did we think the day would come where we were scared to speak our minds, where fear of our fellow students’ rage silenced us,” said the letter, signed on behalf of the students by Nathaniel Tsai, a junior majoring in government. “It is time for the demonstrations and the hostile rhetoric to stop.”

At Yale University, nearly 800 students, faculty, staff and others sent a letter to campus President Peter Salovey expressing concerns about several student demands — among them mandatory diversity sensitivity training, an ethnic studies requirement and the firing of a faculty member who questioned staff warnings about culturally offensive Halloween costumes.

Zach Young, a junior majoring in ethics, politics and economics, had joined the Yale student “march of resilience” against discrimination. But he helped spearhead the letter after he saw the subsequent student demands — especially the call to fire Erika Christakis, a faculty member who had challenged the costume warning from the Yale Intercultural Affairs Council, asking whether there was no longer room for students to be “a little bit obnoxious … a little bit inappropriate or provocative or, yes, offensive.”

The letter defended Christakis’ free-speech rights and called the training and curriculum demands “a menace to the cause of liberal education because they are clearly driven by a particular political agenda devoted to conversion instead of intellectual exploration.”

Salovey announced that he supported Christakis.

Young and Luke said they have never been threatened with physical violence for their views — unlike some protesters, who have reported receiving anonymous threats on the Yik Yak social media site.

Some faculty members have also spoken out against the protests, including Glenn Loury, a Brown University professor who has researched racial inequality and wrote that he was “appalled” by student allegations of endemic campus racism. Loury, who is African-American, said he had been lavished with university resources for his work and well treated by open-minded colleagues.

In a Facebook post, he rejected student calls for a “revolutionary reshaping” to fight campus bias through diversity training, special staff to recruit more minority faculty and other steps, saying they could lead to “intellectual mediocrity.”

At Claremont, a second critique was made last week by two students who called for letters of support for Spellman, saying she had been unfairly targeted. The former dean became the lightning rod for long-standing complaints by minority students alleging university inaction in addressing racial bias and providing resources, such as funding and a dedicated space, to help them.

In hundreds of fliers posted throughout the campus, students described broad experiences with discrimination, including vandalism at the Queer Resource Center, defacement of Black Lives Matter posters, racial slurs and perceived mockery of their cultures.

Spellman was particularly criticized for telling a Latina student she would work hard to support students who “don’t fit our CMC mold.” The former dean could not be reached for comment.

In marshaling support for Spellman, seniors Rachel Doehr and Katharine Eger said they supported the broader effort to give voice to marginalized students but expressed concern that the effort “quickly morphed into a torrent of seemingly uncontrollable anger that left casualties in its wake.”

©2015 Los Angeles Times. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.

Photo: Jocelyn Lo, 20, left, and Jesse Moore, 20, carry their sleeping bags as they leave the area where students camped out in protests over racial bias at Occidental College in Los Angeles on November 20, 2015. (Irfan Khan/Los Angeles Times/TNS)