On June 1st 2020, Brendan Fong, Emily Mata and Caitlyn Wells send an updated list of Student Demands for institutional change to the Executive Team, President, Provost and Faculty Council. The list and letter can be read below: Dear Westmont Community, “Justice too long delayed is justice denied.” -Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. In February 2019, hundreds of students signed a petition requesting the removal of the image of White Jesus standing on North America in the Voskuyl Prayer Chapel... In the past year we have watched the ebb and flow of what is being called “the conversation” occur without substantial, determined, and institutional change as requested in the initial petition. What is painfully obvious from the ongoing protests, letters and petitions is that the impact of the policies, practices and culture of our educational institution do not align with the intentions as laid out in the statement of “Biblical and Theological Foundations of Diversity” of the College, nor the aspirations layed out in the Executive team’s recent email on campus climate.
Despite mass support as demonstrated by nearly two hundred and fifty student signatures on the original petition, more than six hundred alumni signatures in an open letter, a sustained poster protest, and more than one hundred and twenty students, faculty, and staff participating in an embodied protest outside of chapel, there has been no public acknowledgement to the lines of inquiry submitted last spring to the Faculty Council, Executive Team or Westmont Student Council Student Association. As of yet, despite promises otherwise, the few “tasks” in progress communicated via the Executive team’s email have been closed affairs, leaving out academic authorities on race and cherry picking student input. Moreover, the posture of our community has been disturbingly reactive, rather than proactively working to address the systemic racialized violence, inequity, and tokenization perpetuated by the #toxicWestmont cage of oppression. In their email sent on March 5th, 2020 at 10:45 p.m., the executive team expressed “desire to improve how we, as leaders, can help our community engage in respectful dialogue, listen to one another, learn from one another, appreciate differences, pursue reconciliation, and promote justice and hope.” Separately, in an apology for her authoritarian email cracking down student protest, Vice President of Student Life Edee Schulze wrote she is “committed to continuing to pursue better conversations and make changes so we can be a stronger community for everyone.” Recent conversations with Faculty and Staff affiliated with the Beloved Community Project, or BCP, have revealed a hunger for student input on institutional initiatives for anti-racist change. As part of their commitment, we expect those in our community who have been gifted with offices of power and tasked with just stewardship to provide public replies to the following lines of inquiry. We await a transparent, institutionally significant and timely process to begin implementing these changes. Student Demands, Organized by Administrative Domain Admissions:
Quotes taken from Statement of Key Terms and Identity, approved by the board of trustees in 2009, A Message to our Westmont Community from the President's Executive Team, and An Apology. Yours in peace, Brendan Fong, Caitlyn Wells, Emily Mata and more than 885 students, staff, faculty, alumni and concerned community members.
1 Comment
Jeff Shaffer
8/18/2020 01:20:55 pm
I think there is one simple ask maybe you could make that I have not seen yet - change the Founders Room to a Black Lives Matter room - just off the DC... highlighting the work that needs to be done to make things right... perhaps highlight the lives of significant black leaders in Santa Barbara...
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