The Johns Hopkins Disorientation Guide Fall 2018 by disgruntledbluejay

Dear Reader, What you have in your hands here is the Fall 2018 Dis-Orientation Guide, your introduction to Johns Hopkins University—well, a slightly different “Johns Hopkins” than what typically comes to mind. It’s true that this is a world-renowned institution with a beautiful campus and an impressive community of scholars and researchers. This is the Johns Hopkins we see in our admissions brochures, the one our parents like to brag about, the one donors want to plaster their names on. This is also the Johns Hopkins that hides the costs for the resources and privileges we enjoy as members of this institution. For every Hopkins medical discovery, there is a history of exploited test subjects who did not give their consent for experimentation. For every new shiny student startup space, there are black families whose homes were demolished to clear the way. For every FFC meal swipe, there is a dining worker laboring for less than a living wage. For every attempt at increasing security by arming police on campus, there are classmates who are getting increasingly worried about racial profiling and police brutality. These are the costs that we may not personally pay, but threaten marginalized communities, people of color, workingclass peoples—people who really shouldn’t be paying these costs. There are multiple “Johns Hopkins” that people experience, not just the one you read from your daily email from JHU Communications. Some academic departments have no faculty from minority groups despite Hopkins saying that diversity is important to its educational mission. A student struggling with their mental health might find an overbooked and understaffed Counseling Center, despite Hopkins emphasizing how much it prioritizes mental health. A survivor of sexual assault might take several months to hear back from University investigators, despite Hopkins committing itself to resolving cases within a 60-day period. And when confronted with these discrepancies, the University often suggests that these experiences are all exceptions to the norm. When everything seems to be an “exception,” does Hopkins really live up to the standards it advertises?

These are the other Johns Hopkinses. We hope that this little booklet will guide you through some of the major issues happening at our university. Throughout the following pages, you may notice some overarching themes: Little improvements that Hopkins spins as huge victories, claims that lack evidence, decisions made by administrators without student or community input, unfulfilled promises. Many of these problems have been around for a long time, some since this school’s founding back in 1876. Reform comes slowly, and Hopkins has the advantage of just waiting for its more, ahem, vocal students to graduate. If, after reading this booklet, you think, “Wow, this is all so fucked up,” there are many others who have had the same exact thought. Conveniently enough, a lot of them are in the student groups and community organizations listed at the end of this booklet. Go talk to them. You’d be surprised how much you can learn from all the other Johns Hopkinses there are. With love,

the editors of the disorientation guide

Table of contents Regulating “Freedom of Expression” at Hopkins Hopkins and Development in Baltimore Race and Public Health Hopkins Priorities Students Against Private Police & ICE The Militarization of the University Race on Campus An Alum’s Recollection of the Uprising Labor at Hopkins A Letter from Teachers & Researchers United The Culture of Sexual Violence The State of Hopkins Mental Health Disability Rights 101 Divest the Nest! Fossil Fuel Divestment @ Hopkins Food Justice: What’s on our plates? Power Mapping List of Resources in Baltimore

Regulating “Freedom of Expression” at Hopkins The 2016-2017 school year was a busy year for student activism due to a whole host of shitty University decisions among other things, so in April 2017, the school released a “Student Guidelines for Free Expression.” This friendly threat pointed out how, as a private entity, Hopkins had the right to determine “the time, place, and manner” for all student gatherings. These kindly remarks came under the guise of “protecting the health and safety” of people on campus and as a way to uphold Fire Code regulations. This April draft of the guidelines even admitted to itself that it “recognize[d] that the creation of the guidelines as antithetical to the spirit of free expression.” This charming self-awareness truly manifested itself when the University released an updated draft called [drumroll noise] “Guidelines for students in support of free expression through protests and demonstrations at the Homewood Campus” after even they realized how authoritarian their April draft was. Instead of outright threatening students, this new document strongly suggests that students abide by the guidelines and to let the University know 10 days in advance of any protests. They even offered school liaisons to listen to student concerns as if that tactic has ever worked in the past. It’s important to note that these guidelines are not mandatory so feel free to disregard them. Almost all its guidelines are rules that already exist in the Student Code of Conduct which we are supposedly following anyway. At its face, this document is now less of a threat but more an insult that suggests that Hopkins students are incapable of advocating for issues they care about.

A history of Hopkins & Development in Baltimore Johns Hopkins’ history is complex and mixed, but there is no doubt that Hopkins and its affiliates have strengthened racial segregation, poverty, and unfair development policies for more than a century. The original site of the university was on the borders of Eutaw Place and Bolton Hill—two wealthy, white neighborhoods beginning a process of dramatic racial change. Hopkins’ northward move to the Homewood plantation in 1901 destabilized an already shaky housing market. Black families, who had difficulty finding housing elsewhere in the city, bought homes in West Baltimore as white families fled the neighborhood. After Hopkins left the area, bringing with it many professors and administrators who lived nearby, McCulloh Avenue became an important line of racial segregation—black families lived to the west, while white people lived to the east. Hopkins academics developed and advocated for white supremacist ideas, which in turn impacted policy makers. Dr. William Welch, the first dean of the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine, directed eugenics research with Dr. Lewellys Barker, the chief physician of Johns Hopkins Hospital (JHH). Eugenics became a part of the ideology of turn-of-the-century progressives, including President Woodrow Wilson (Ph.D., 1886), who famously showed The Birth of a Nation, a film heroizing the Ku Klux Klan, at the White House, calling it “all so terribly true.” Between 1950 and 1961, Hopkins and the city collaborated to demolish the Broadway Housing Project adjacent to JHH—without consulting residents of the community. More than a thousand poor, black Baltimoreans were displaced, and the Broadway Redevelopment Project became an opportunity for JHH to expand westward, building a community for white, well-off Hopkins employees and physically separating the hospital from nearby poor and black communities. The East Baltimore Development Initiative (EBDI) began in 2001 as a

collaboration between the federal government, the State of Maryland, the City of Baltimore, and Johns Hopkins Institutions, among others. The City used eminent domain, along with money from foundations and federal and state governments, to acquire land and redevelop it according to a plan developed largely by Hopkins again without input from residents in the Middle East and CARE neighborhoods. The Save Middle East Action Committee (SMEAC) organized to fight the demolition of Middle East, winning some concessions from EBDI. Ultimately, however, they were unable to prevent the expulsion of much of the neighborhood from their homes, and SMEAC dissolved when 750 families were displaced. Residents who had lived in Middle East their entire lives were forced out. Hopkins, moreover, originally had no intention to pay residents who they dislocated anywhere near a fair amount. It was only due to the organizing efforts of community groups like SMEAC that residents were paid more. Now, Middle East Baltimore is filled with Hopkins facilities and homes for Hopkins doctors and affiliates. Gentrification, failed development, and racial segregation continue to plague black and poor communities in Baltimore. Hopkins and the city government now have their sights on Perkins and Douglas Homes in East Baltimore, and housing prices have risen by more than five times in the McElderry Park neighborhood, a poor, black community east of the Johns Hopkins Medical Institute. Near Homewood campus, similar increases in housing prices are making neighborhoods like Remington, Old Goucher, and Charles Village unlivable for many longtime residents. These changes are driven in part by the continuation of EBDI and Hopkins’ program for central Baltimore, the Homewood Community Partnerships Initiative (HCPI). But what if we created a new paradigm for development in Baltimore? Development without displacement—fair development for everyone. After all, who has the right to change Baltimore’s land if not the people who live, work, play, and worship there now?

hopkins: a “leader in public health” Hopkins’ shining reputation as nation’s third best undergraduate public health studies program and best graduate public health school is matched with a far uglier side. Johns Hopkins Hospital (JHH), now known as the Johns Hopkins Medical Institute (JHMI), started amidst an era of growing racial tension in 1889. Many people in surrounding communities in the city have grown up hearing that Hopkins would abduct children off the street for experiments. The most infamous example is that of Henrietta Lacks, who underwent a cervical exam at JHH in 1951. Without Lacks’ or her family’s consent, the doctor took a biopsy of her tumor. Henrietta’s robust cancerous cells were propagated, circulated, and used in research around the world. Called the HeLa cells, Lacks’ cells were the first to live outside the body and “have become the most widely used human cells that exist today in scientific research.” Yet Henrietta Lacks’ family was not made aware of this until the early 1970s— almost two decades after her death in 1951. As recently as 2017, her family tried to sue Hopkins for the institution’s gross violation of consent and exploitation of her cells. Other stories are less well-known. In the mid-1960s to 1970s, Dr. Digamber Borgoaonkar drew blood from over 7,000 boys who were enrolled in a free Hopkins child care program, whose families were told that their children were being tested for anemia. The majority of these boys were from low-income black families. Hopkins scientists used their blood to screen them for the XYY karyotype, thought by some scientists to make men more likely to become criminals. Information about the blood samples and boys’ names was then passed onto the police. More recently, in the 1990s, the Kennedy Krieger Institute (KKI) conducted a study on exploring cost-effective ways of reducing lead levels in contaminated homes. Lead poisoning has devastating effects: inability to focus, severe behavior issues, and decreased IQ among them. Study participants were recruited

through Baltimore landlords, whom the KKI “encouraged...to rent these [leadcontaminated] properties to families with children.” Even more troubling is that “families were encouraged to remain in these properties if their blood was to be tested” and were not informed of the health risks that their children would face if they continued to live in these residences. Two of the families eventually sued the KKI in 2001, and the case was brought to the Maryland Court of Special Appeals, which compared the study to the famously unethical Tuskegee Syphilis Study. The KKI was sued again in 2011 for knowingly exposing children to sources of lead when families discovered that their children’s blood lead levels had increased after the study. These actions, and many more, have caused deep-seated (and well-founded distrust of Hopkins in the black communities around its campuses. The cultural divides and historical trauma caused by racism in the healthcare system have had quantifiable effects on the health of black communities. While the JHMI’s physical size, fame, and prestige have grown, the structural and physical health of the communities surrounding the JHMI has deteriorated. For example, Residents in Roland Park, a majority white neighborhood, are expected to live 84 years, while residents in Oldtown/Middle East, a majority black neighborhood, are only expected to live until 70. We learn in our public health classes that any sort of public health work done in a community must be a community-led effort. As JHU students, we must work with and under community leaders to come to a compromise, come into a community willing to learn and understand the culture and history of that community, and address any concerns and questions that the community has. Achieving true public health and reconciliation means undoing the effects of decades’ worth of institutional racism, abandonment, distrust, and fear caused by our university.

All the damn footnotes for the previous page:

(In case you’ve ever wondered what native Baltimoreans call JHU….. See #9.) Ed Pilkington, “Top US universities use offshore funds to grow their huge endowments,” The Guardian (8 Nov. 2017). 3. U.S. Department of Defense Contract, Release No: CR-009-1, (12 Jan. 2018). <https:// www.defense.gov/News/Contracts/Contract-View/Article/1415144/> 4. Colin Campbell, “Johns Hopkins leader Daniels has seventh highest base salary among private college presidents,” Baltimore Sun (10 Dec. 2017). 5. Ian Duncan and Talia Richman, “Johns Hopkins University wants its own police department,” Baltimore Sun (18 Mar. 2018). 6. Mira Wattal, Corey Payne, and Emeline Armitage, “Hopkins must break with ICE - now,” Baltimore Sun (19 July 2018). 7. Meagan Peoples and Morgan Balster, “Hopkins didn’t go far enough in divesting from coal,” Baltimore Sun (27 Dec. 2017). 8. Siddhartha Mitter, “Gentrify or die? Inside a university’s controversial plan for Baltimore,” The Guardian (18 Apr. 2018). 8. Tamar Lewin, “U.S. Investigating Johns Hopkins Study of Lead Paint Hazard,” The New York Times (24 August 2001). 10. Steve Hendrix, “Johns Hopkins Hospital inspires mistrust and fear in parts of East Baltimore,” Washington Post (25 Jan. 2017). 11. Jaisal Noor, “Nurses Demand Johns Hopkins Halt ‘Anti-Union Campaign,’” The Real News Network (26 Apr. 2018); Sarah Meehan, “Nurses at Johns Hopkins allege hospital is impeding their efforts to unionize,” The Baltimore Sun (25 June 2018). 12. Jeanette Der Bedrosian, “First-Year Medical Students Still Rely on Cadavers to Learn Anatomy,” JHU Magazine (The Hub) (Winter 2016). 13. Alyssa Wooden, “Contract worker unions rally for job security,” The Johns Hopkins News-Letter (8 Dec. 2016); Corey Payne, Grace Hargrove, Chase Alston, “JHU efforts to cut a union company raises doubts about its commitment to Baltimore,” The Baltimore Sun (29 July 2016). 14. Sarah Y. Kim, “Henrietta Lacks’ estate to sue Hopkins Hospital,” The Johns Hopkins News-Letter (2 Mar. 2017) and “2018 Henrietta Lacks Memorial Award Nomination Submission Information,” Johns Hopkins Urban Health Institute. 15. Scott Dance, “Hopkins faces $1B lawsuit over role in government study that gave subjects STDs,” The Baltimore Sun (1 April 2015); Oliver Laughland, “Guatemalans deliberately infected with STDs sue Johns Hopkins University for $1bn,” The Guardian (2 April 2015); Sushma Subramanian, “Worse than Tuskegee,” Slate (26 Feb 2017). 16. Sarah Y. Kim and Alyssa Wooden, “RAs on financial aid demand equitable compensation,” The Johns Hopkins News-Letter (29 March 2018) 1.

students against private police In the Middle East neighborhood of Baltimore City, Hopkins-sponsored residences are a painful sight. For its life-long residents, these buildings are much more than a barbed wire fence, which line parts of the university’s East Baltimore campus. They represent the displacement of over 700 families, the necessary ‘collateral damage’ in Hopkins’ conquest to build the biggest, most beautiful nest in Baltimore City. This project, known as the East Baltimore Development Initiative (EBDI), is part of the university’s attempts to make the city more desirable for its blue jays. Just like a real blue jay, which consumes the young of neighboring species, Hopkins sacrifices its neighbors: black, working class families. But, as students discovered last spring, residential tower-fences and metaphorical bird cannibalism has not quelled our university’s appetite for expansion. What would it take for Hopkins to build the biggest, most beautiful nest in Baltimore City? In a schoolwide email delivered on March 5th, administrators finally answered: a private police force. The timing of the March 5th email was a deliberate attempt to curb opposition. Because only in March did students, faculty, and staff learn that since January, Hopkins had been pushing a bill through Maryland State legislature that would allow private universities to establish their own police forces. Many community leaders did not learn of our university’s intentions until one week after we did—despite Hopkins’ claim that it put forward this proposal with community support. You might be thinking: What’s wrong with a private police force? Don’t most universities in Maryland maintain their own police forces? Isn’t Baltimore dangerous? Administrators themselves cited safety concerns over the “challenges of urban crime here in Baltimore” and police departments maintained by “university peers in Philadelphia, Chicago, and Los Angeles” as reasons for creating a Hopkins PD. Yet the “challenges” that the Hopkins administration never seems to remember are the harm and violence experienced by people of color when increased policing is enacted as the solution to crime.

While it might be common for our “university peers”—such as the University of Chicago and the University of California Los Angeles (UCLA)—to maintain their own police departments, it is also common for these same institutions to be in the news for racial profiling and police brutality. In 2006, campus PD tasered UCLA senior Mostafa Tabatabainejad for refusing to produce identification in a university library. And, only one month following the announcement of a potential Hopkins PD, University of Chicago police officers shot fourth-year Charles Thomas, who was suffering from a bipolar episode at the time. Both Mostafa and Charles were students of color. These are the costs of being a Black or Brown student on a highly militarized campus. Tasered for studying, or worse, shot for your mental illness. And UChicago and UCLA are not anomalies. They reflect the willingness of police to immediately use force against anyone perceived as ‘other,’ even when they are students of institutions. There’s no reason to think—especially given its history—that our university would be an exception. What’s the cost of being a Black or Brown student at a militarized Hopkins? As fourth year public health major and Black Student Union president Chisom Okereke puts it, “We are going to be seen as a threat, like the Baltimoreans they feel they have to protect themselves against.” Who are the Baltimoreans that Hopkins feels they have to protect themselves against? Are they the unarmed, black men who frequent suspect descriptions in emails sent by Campus Safety and Security Advisory? The same ones who prepare your lunch at the Fresh Food Cafe or who attend Margaret Brent Elementary? A private police force would also impact Black and Brown Baltimoreans who live and work near Hopkins’ campuses.

Get to know the Baltimore Police Department:

- In Spring 2015, Freddie Gray, a Black Baltimorean, died in police custody. All officers were acquitted in the trial. His death sparked the Baltimore Uprising. - The U.S. Department of Justice released a report in 2016 detailing how the BPD routinely violated constitutional rights and had a pattern of harassing African Americans. - The Gun Trace Task Force was an elite unit of BPD officers who robbed citizens, confiscated drugs and guns to resell on the street, and searched people and property without warrants. -A whole lot of other shit. Go google the rest.

In Hyde Park, the neighborhood surrounding the University of Chicago, 99 citizens filed complaints against the UCPD from 2005 to 2014. Of those, 77 were filed by Black-identifying residents. And what these university spokespersons always neglect to mention is that in 2016, there were 44 cases of campus sexual violence (reported and unreported) in and around Hopkins’ campuses, as compared to 43 cases of robbery, aggravated assault, burglary, and motor vehicle theft. Additionally, in 2017, victim based crime in and around Hopkins’ campuses was at a four year low. In spite of these statistics, the conversation surrounding crime at Hopkins is disproportionately skewed towards non-student on student crimes, instead of studenton-student. This supports the flawed narrative that Baltimore is dangerous, that Baltimoreans are dangerous, that students need armed guards to protect themselves against Baltimoreans—a narrative which collapses the moment we begin to see the city’s residents not as a monolith, but as people. Given all of this information, students couldn’t let Hopkins’ proposal go unchallenged. In the four days following the March 5th email, we formed the Students Against Private Police (SAPP) coalition, released a petition condemning the university’s actions, and held our first protest. We marched to the PresiSAPP protest outside President’s House. dent’s House. As SAPP organizer Kyra Meko said, “We figured that if President Daniels is okay with sending a private police force into communities where people live, he wouldn’t mind some visitors at his own house letting him know what they think.” That same day, SAPP’s petition garnered over 1500 signatures from students, faculty, staff, and community members. All of this in four days. Our efforts did not stop at Homewood campus. We took our grievances with us to Annapolis: phone-banking, canvassing, and testifying directly to city and state legislators. By March 30th, thanks to a joint struggle led by SAPP and community

organizations, sponsoring delegate Curt Anderson pulled Hopkins’ bill. Despite this political win, the struggle against a Hopkins PD is far from finished. Following the delegate’s pronouncement, administrators quickly announced that the bill would be in “summer study” until its reintroduction in January of 2019. SAPP cannot and will not stop organizing. We recognize that the biggest, and most beautiful nest in Baltimore City does not include gentrification, displacement, or a private police force, but increased access to healthcare, donations to community land trusts, and support for restorative justice. Come join us in building it.

Hopkins & ICE: Started in 2009, Johns Hopkins’s partnership with ICE includes over ten million dollars in contracts in Bonus Episode exchange for ICE-specific and leadership training. Hopkins describes it as a “cooperative relationship,” intended to “support the ICE mission, strategic goals, […] and contribute to measurable outcomes and results.” But when 60% of ICE’s budget funds Enforcement and Removal Operations—amounting to 2 billion dollars in the 2018 fiscal year—it becomes likelier and likelier that those “measurable outcomes and results” are the number of families detained, deported, and separated from their children. Housed in the Division of Public Safety Leadership of the School of Education, these degree granting programs are being discontinued, and will end with the cohort graduation in 2019. We shouldn’t have to wait that long. On July 7, a Hopkins community member released a petition demanding the end of this collaboration. By July 22, it had gained over 1000 signatures, and four media outlets had picked up the story. Hopkins loves to portray itself as an ally to immigrants, releasing statements—3 in the past year—in favor of DACA and in opposition to Trump’s travel ban. But it’s almost as if supporting immigrants and entering into a financial exchange with the organization that endangers their livelihoods are, well, mutually exclusive. One has to wonder: does ‘support’ mean anything in the administration’s vocabulary?

militarization of the university The Applied Physics Lab (APL) is a Johns Hopkins affiliated research lab. The APL holds million and billion dollar contracts with the CIA and the Department of Defense, including the Navy and the Air Force. Through these contracts, the APL builds bombs and drones that kill innocent civilians, develops surveillance technology that is used to surveil civilians and leftist movements (particularly those led by Black and Indigenous peoples), and generally facilitates the US government’s invasion, destabilization, and destruction of other countries. Over the years, the APL has earned the nickname “Death Lab.” Multiple protests against the weapons research have been staged at both at the APL itself and on the Homewood campus since the lab’s founding. Historically, the APL has been on the side of violent American imperialism and has pursued newer and better ways to kill people. The APL: > developed missiles for the Korean War > performed an instrumentation study on the first hydrogen bomb test in 1952 > formed a working group to aid the US naval forces engaged in

combat operations in the Gulf of Tonkin during the Vietnam War devised air combat technology and techniques to be explicitly used in the Vietnam War > developed an AutoID system which was used in the drug war in Latin America and in Operation Desert Shield > was instrumental in the development of the Strategic Defense Initiative, Ronald Reagan’s later abandoned “Star Wars” program A fun bonus example: Former JHU President Lincoln Gordon (coming off of his tenure as Ambassador to Brazil, during which he supported an anti-democratic coup that created a brutal military government) even issued formal statements supporting the APL’s military research amidst anti-Vietnam War protests. On December 13, 1968 the University and the Navy issued a statement regarding the APL which read in part: “the mission of the Laboratory is to provide, within the contractual authority provided by the Navy, support of specific Navy and other governmental programs.” This distinguished JHU from other universities, such as Cornell, MIT, Columbia, and Stanford, which were severing their ties with defense-related research laboratories in the face of the anti-war movement. Let’s not forget that this war, included routine destruction of crops by US forces, which led to famines among US “allies.” This was not particularly secret. On top of that, US forces committed indiscriminate massacres of Vietnamese civilians, often as direct policy. Estimates range in the tens to hundreds of thousands. By actively arming the US, the APL was and still is complicit in its war crimes. Today, the APL continues this history through a staggering amount of contracts with the military, most notably involving the development of nuclear weapons and drones. The Johns Hopkins University mission is to “foster independent and original research and to bring the benefits of discovery to the world.” With the APL’s secret research projects, the “benefits” of which include drone strikes and other war crimes, we are left to question how seriously Hopkins takes its university mission.

Race on Campus: From the Black Student Union The Uprising During the spring of 2015, our campus, usually stilled by the constant stress of academics and deadlines, was rattled by the Baltimore Uprising. On April 19, 2015, Freddie Gray suffered a fatal spinal cord injury following his arrest by the Baltimore City Police Department (BPD). The emotions surrounding this tragedy amongst the students of the Black Student Union (BSU) mirrored those of the city of Baltimore. Many students were angry and scared, and wanted some sort of accountability on the part of the BPD, who are not exactly renowned for their lawful practices. Many of us know what transpired within the city during that time and have differing interpretations of who did what, when they did it, and why. We wanted to use this little blurb to explain how it went down from inside our Hopkins Bubble.

The Response It feels like Hopkins administrators breathe a sigh of relief when the summer comes around. During the school year, students consistently put pressure on the administration in efforts to improve the quality of student life. Then, just like that, we’re gone: away on vacation, abroad for an internship, or in a lab doing research. Given the unrest that engulfed the school during the spring semester, they certainly hoped that the summer break would be what our campus needed to return to “normal”. But for students of color, there was no more “normal”. There was no more “Forever a BLUE Jay” because it was clear that at the end of the day, we were Black. There was no coming back from the realization that your fellow peers, professors, and administrators saw you as less than them. The other. The other, worthy of being considered a student at JHU on paper, but somehow unworthy of being treated like a student in reality. How does a Black student

come back to an institution that merely sees their presence on campus as a diversity statistic? It just wasn’t the same for students of color anymore and we were not going to let the administration think otherwise. So… we pulled up. We realized that in the BSU students at Fall 2015 protest wake of Freddie Gray’s passing, our campus was one of many dealing with underlying racial turmoil. The BSU decided to come together in solidarity with the anti-racism struggle at the University of Missouri by staging a protest in the Fall of 2015. Up until that point, we had struggled to get the administration to listen to us. We needed to be strategic and voice our thoughts when they would be the loudest. And what could be heard louder and clearer than the sound of money flying out the window? To Hopkins, not a damn thing. We realized that in the wake of Freddie Gray’s passing, our campus was one of many dealing with underlying racial turmoil. The BSU decided to come together in solidarity with the anti-racism struggle at the University of Missouri by staging a protest in the Fall of 2015. Up until that point, we had struggled to get the administration to listen to us. We needed to be strategic and voice our thoughts when they would be the loudest. And what could be heard louder and clearer than the sound of money flying out the window? To Hopkins, not a damn thing. The BSU got wind of a commercial shoot (that would definitely be expensive to re-record) happening outside of Gilman, where President Daniels himself would be making an appearance. A perfect opportunity to strike. With hand-made posters, we interrupted the commercial and presented administrators with a list of demands.

1. We demand a public address to be held by the administration (including but not limited to President Ron Daniels, Provost Lieberman, Provost Shollenberger, and the Board of Trustees) to The Johns Hopkins community in which President Ron Daniels will announce an explicit plan of action detailing how the following demands will be instated. 2. We demand that The Johns Hopkins University creates and enforces mandatory cultural competency in the form of a semester long class requirement for undergraduate students as well as training for faculty and administration. 3. We demand that the Center for Africana Studies be recognized as a Department. 4. We demand an increase in the number of full-time Black faculty members, both in the Center for Africana Studies and throughout other departments within the institution. Moreover, we demand equal representation of self-identifying men, women, and nonbinary Black individuals within these positions. 5. We call on The Johns Hopkins University Krieger School of Arts & Sciences to support the hiring of faculty concerned with the history, culture, and political position of peoples of African descent. Calls for diversifying faculty are important, but equally crucial is attracting faculty whose work creates a scholarly community dedicated to Africana studies. 6. We demand accountability for peers, faculty, and staff who target Black students both inside of and outside of the classroom. Attending to such situations must transition from a passive email sent to the student body, to an active stance taken against racial intolerance by the administration. Perpetrators that aim to make Black students uncomfortable or unsafe for racial reasons must complete additional diversity training and face impactful repercussions for their actions. 7. We demand a transparent five year plan from The Johns Hopkins University Office of Undergraduate Admissions regarding the welcoming of and retention of Black students. We demand black bodies be removed from diversity marketing campaigns until Hopkins addresses the low quality of life here that many Black students experience and the problems with retaining Black students all four undergraduate years and then takes the necessary steps to resolve them. 8. We demand more Black professors within the Women, Gender and Sexuality program to add a new dimension to the Department on intersectionality and inclusivity that is currently being neglected and ignored.

Because of our efforts, Daniels agreed to participate in a Race Forum. This forum provided the community with a chance to ask pressing questions regarding race at Hopkins. But we werenâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t afforded a transparent experience. All of our questions had to be submitted prior to the forum to allot the president ample time to formulate his response. It feltâ&#x20AC;Ś calculated. Though this forum was a

step in the right direction, it left a great deal more to be desired. As the months went on, we awaited Hopkins’ response to our detailed demands. Finally, in the Spring of 2016, administration unveiled their forty-one page reply: The Roadmap on Diversity. (Spoiler! It was a major let down.) While we were appreciative of administrators’ efforts to improve diversity on campus, we were critical of their plan of action. This document not only failed to provide specific details on the initiatives proposed, but it also neglected to answer some of the most pressing demands that were brought forth in 2015. And, in all forty-one pages, the document did not once use the word “racism” or acknowledge the harsh, racist environment that led to the forum in the first place. The university released another draft of the document in the Fall of 2016 which improved by using the word “racism” a total of 3 times in the new 85 page document and included more details on its proposed initiatives. However, all the talk of “review” and “best practices” fail to address what the BSU sought for back in 2015: a critical and substantive response to systemic racism on campus. For structural change to occur, administrators must actively acknowledge that Hopkins is a predominantly white institution that was founded by and for white men. While progressive strides have been made, whiteness is still the default setting for many of the academic departments and centers at this university. The Roadmaps’ focus on diversity is noble, but a catchy title is not enough. We need a concrete plan to create a campus climate in which all students, faculty, and staff feel valued.

An alum’s recollection of the Baltimore Uprising It was truly an identity crisis. A lot of black students felt isolated from the larger student body. Once again, it felt as if one had to choose between one’s own academic success and a city that they felt connected to. It was unnerving, at a time in the academic year where assuredness and the ability to concentrate were needed the most. Non-black student response was mixed. Some viewed the mayor’s 9:00 pm city curfew (and the university’s cancelled classes) as an opportunity for relaxation or to better prepare for quickly approaching finals. In response to student apathy, members of the 2014-2015 Johns Hopkins Black Student Union (BSU) organized a die-in demonstration in the Brody Learning Commons, forcing ongoers to intentionally step over Black bodies to reach their destination. Social media was teeming with student views as to how Black Baltimoreans should have responded to the injustice experienced. Most hinted at a need for nonviolence, reprimanding the actions of community members with little to no insight on Baltimore’s racialized history of inaccess. Platforms such as Yik-yak became the grounds for racist postings perpetuating Black stereotypes of aggression, inferiority, and incompetence. These concerns were brought to the attention of the administration. However, in an effort to preserve freedom of speech, no punitive course of action was taken by the university. -A member of the Class of 2017

Labor: Hopkins as an Employer

Johns Hopkins University & Medical Institutions comprise the largest private employer in Maryland, with nearly 45,000 directly employed workers in Baltimore City. We emphasize directly employed because there have been important struggles led by workers who are indirectly employed by Hopkins—workers who don’t count in official statistics. What does it mean to be ‘indirectly employed’? One of the key features of twenty-first century economic change has been labor subcontracting. Subcontracting is when a large company—in this case, Hopkins—does not hire its workers, but instead enters into a contract with another company which hires them on behalf of JHU. Proponents say subcontracting cuts costs and allows for greater specialization. But the reality is that these arrangements allow Hopkins to push the responsibility of being an employer onto other companies while reaping the rewards of workers’ labor. This allows institutions like Hopkins to circumvent labor laws, pay lower wages, and deny benefits. You will interact with these subcontracted employees every day. At Homewood, they are the dining hall workers, the security guards, the bus drivers, and the groundskeepers. They are likely the people with whom you will have the most interaction and with whom you will forge strong, friendly relationships. They are also some of the most exploited people at the university. In the late 1990s, Hopkins began to phase in subcontracting. A group of student activists discovered that the company being contracted to provide these workers, Broadway Services, was owned by a corporation that JHU had created for the sole purpose of subcontracting workers to JHU. Basically, Hopkins created a shell company that would hire its workers. JHU would enter into contracts with the shell company, and the shell company—not Hopkins—would be legally and politically responsible for the workers’ welfare and working conditions. This acrobatic legal maneuvering couldn’t be more absurd—except that the Broadway Services headquarters is located on the same campus as the medical institute. At the same time, there was a nation-wide push for the Living Wage Cam

paign. Students seized on this momentum and teamed up with local labor unions and community organizations to form the Student-Labor Action Coalition (SLAC). For several years, SLAC staged pro-worker actions against the university administration. Their slogan: “Hopkins Creates Poverty.” In March 2000, SLAC organized a massive sit-in in Garland Hall. It lasted 5 days and received an outpouring of support from community members. Local businesses and restaurants sent in food and supplies for the demonstrators, community organizations held rallies in solidarity, and UNITE HERE cohort in Annapolis; Displacement Protection Forum in 2017 famous national activists either showed up or reached out in support. Because of these actions, the university eventually agreed to raise wages for all low-wage workers, both direct and subcontracted employees. This was one of the first major victories of the national Living Wage Campaign. But, unfortunately, it was one of the last for workers at Hopkins. Wages stagnated and subcontracting continued apace. And in 2016, Hopkins attempted to push unionized subcontracted security guards out by bringing in a new, anti-union contractor: Broadway Services. The security guards had only recently unionized with the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) and were about to receive increased health care coverage as a result of their bargaining process. Hopkins’ decision to push out the company—and the union— meant losing jobs and healthcare for these workers. The SEIU teamed up with Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) and the Black Student Union (BSU) to campaign against Hopkins’ decision. After a public pressure campaign and a summer of petitioning, the administration acquiesced

to the coalition’s demands and renewed the contract with the union firm. This major victory for subcontracted workers sparked a new wave of solidarity. The food service workers’ union (UNITE HERE), the Baltimore NAACP chapter, and community organizations such as the Baltimore Housing Roundtable joined together with SDS, BSU, and SEIU to re-start a new SLAC campaign. Recent Labor Struggles at Hopkins For the next two years, the SLAC cam2014: Directly employed paign had three demands for subconcustodial workers at the tracted workers: a $15 minimum wage, medical campus unionized a housing subsidy program, and disand demanded fair wages. placed worker protection—a guarantee 2016: Subcontracted secuthat, if Hopkins switched contractors, rity guards pressured Hopkins to the workers would keep their jobs at renew their contract with a union firm, guaranteeing healthcare covthe new middle-man firm. erage. The Student Labor Action Coalition reforms as a result of the momentum. 2018: Nurses unionizing at Hopkins hospital are facing a foul, vitriolic anti-union campaign from administration.

The SLAC campaign was ultimately successful. While not all workers received a $15 minimum wage and Hopkins rejected SLAC’s displaced workers’ protection proposal, the negotiations won a wage increase for all workers, and the Baltimore City Council passed a city-wide workers protection policy. This meant that every subcontracted worker in Baltimore—including those at Hopkins—was now guaranteed a job when corporations changed middle-man contractors. Despite progress, Hopkins still creates poverty. We have many struggles ahead against an administration that’s often more concerned with the bottom-line than with the people who live and work here. But the success of SLAC at Homewood proves that we have the power to change things for the better when students and workers stand together in solidarity.

the culture of sexual violence To put it (more than) lightly, Hopkins has a problem with campus sexual violence. About 1 in 4 female-identifying and 1 in 20 male-identifying students experience sexual assault while in college, and the unfortunate fact of the matter is that Hopkins students are no exception to these statistics. In fact, at Hopkins, the reporting rate is a low 3%, which means that administrators can falsely claim that sexual violence is not an issue at Hopkins. If you think that data is suspect, then check out the following examples in which students, not Hopkins, have supported survivors. In particular, the Sexual Assault Resource Unit (SARU) has led several successful campaigns to change the campus culture around sexual assault.

Title IX Suits After Secretary of Education Betsy Devos spearheaded a policy change that included repeal of the the 2011 Dear Colleague Letter (DCL), SARU began an open letter campaign in the fall of 2017 demanding that the Hopkins administration promise to uphold the crucial protections mandated in the DCL. These protections included: using the preponderance of evidence standard of proof, ensuring completion of investigations within 60 days, offering interim measures, and barring mediation in sexual assault investigations. The open letter garnered over 800 signatures, and after months of meetings, the Provostâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s office sent out a letter to the student body assuring us that these protections would remain in place. The JHU policy on sexual assault, therefore, remains unchanged. However, whether that policy and its intentions are consistently upheld is a more complicated question. Problems like understaffing and a lack of transparency and communication with students have led to problems with the reporting process beyond the on-paper policy.

A flawed reporting system In spring 2018, The Johns Hopkins News-Letter published a pair of articles discussing the experiences of eight different survivors who had gone through the Office of Institutional Equityâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s (OIE) reporting process. The OIE is responsible

for “equal opportunity” at Hopkins, which means they work to prevent discrimination of any kind, including that based on gender, race, sexual orientation, and disability. Title IX enforcement therefore falls under their jurisdiction. The articles in the News-Letter revealed gross inadequacies in the resources available to survivors who chose to report and the process’ lack of transparency. Several of them recounted that their investigations took far more than 60 days, that enforcement and implementation of interim measures was extremely inconsistent, and that they were not properly informed on the steps of the process and the resources available to them. The OIE responded to these stories by pointing to the recent hiring of new investigators, increases in funding over the past few years, and the decision to release an annual report. The University loves saying how it has doubled its staff since 2015 to a whopping 13 people. That means that prior to 2015, there were only 6.5 people handling all reported instances of sexual assault (and racism) at all 9 divisions of Hopkins. The changes that the administration touts can only be meaningful and substantial if they are coupled with a willingness, on the part of the OIE, to actively listen and respond to students’ concerns and lived experiences.

Admin’s response to Cosby Allegations In October 2015, following the rise of public awareness regarding allegations of sexual assault against Bill Cosby, SARU advocated alongside Lili Bernard for Hopkins to rescind Cosby’s honorary degree, awarded in 2004. Bernard is both the parent of a Hopkins student and one of the women who accused Cosby of rape. In response to this pressure, as well as pressure from other peer institutions, Hopkins released a statement that they were “actively reviewing”—though not rescinding—the degree because they “exercise great care and deliberation in awarding an honorary degree and would do so in the event of revoking one.” There was no further movement from the Board of Trustees, despite investigation and continued efforts on behalf of SARU, student survivors, and Bernard. Hopkins ignored, sidelined, and disvalued the requests of Hopkins-affiliated survivors. On April 26, 2018, in response to Cosby’s guilty verdict and conviction on three counts of felony aggravated indecent assault, Hopkins announced that its Board

of Trustees revoked the degree. Though this was a necessary and important step, JHUâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s decision to ignore the advocacy efforts of SARU, Bernardâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s account, and support from other students/alumni, and to believe only a guilty conviction, indicates their disbelief of survivors. Such action supports the narrative that pressing legal charges is the only way for survivors to be believed and undermines Hopkinsâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; supposed support of its own survivors who do not want to pursue that legal process.

Failure to create a safe environment One of the most common protections that Hopkins can put in place for survivors is to issue no-contact orders. These orders are intended to prevent further harassment during the reporting process and to prevent a perpetrator from making a survivor feel unsafe. The job of enforcing no-contact orders falls to campus safety and security. However, security officers often are not aware of who has an order against them, meaning that they are unable to intercede should it be violated. This puts the burden of enforcing a no-contact order on the survivor, which can often only be done retroactively by reporting violations to security. Consequently, one of the most common measures that Hopkins uses to protect survivors is largely ineffective. Other interim measures such as changing class sections or housing are inconsistently provided, but often come with a no-contact order which still requires enforcement by security to be fully effective. If security is inconsistent with or ignorant of the need for enforcement, these protections fail at ensuring the safety of survivors on campus.

Resources for surivors & allies

Hopkins-af filiated resources

Local, non-Hopkins af filiated resources

Student Health and Wellness || (410) 5168270 Does not offer rape kits, but can provide medical care for minor injuries and STD testing STD testing without insurance: $11-$26 Plan B without insurance: $10-$20 (at CVS, this costs $42)

TurnAround, Inc || 24-hour helpline (443) 279-0379 || Main telephone (410) 377-8111 Located in Station North (1800 N Charles St #404) and in Towson (8503 Lasalle Rd)

Reporting to JHU Online reporting form (option to be anonymous): http://sexualassault.jhu.edu/ file-complaint/complaint-form.html Campus Security (410) 516-7777 Dean of Students Office (410) 516-8208 Mandated Reporters Title IX Coordinator Joy Gaslevic | (410) 5168075 | joy.gaslevic@jhu.edu Sexual Assault Prevention, Education, and Response Coordinator Alyse Campbell | (410) 516-5133 | acampb39@jhu.edu Anyone who is paid by JHU is a mandated reporter: staff, faculty, RAs Non-Mandated Reporters/Counseling JHU Counseling Center || (410) 516-8278 Safe Line Hotline || (410) 516-7333 Interfaith Center || (410) 516-1880 Can contact Maeba Jones, Assistant Chaplain, at maeba@jhu.edu

House of Ruth || 24-hour hotline (410) 8897884 || Main telephone (410) 889-0840 Located by Morgan State (2201 Argonne Drive) as well as at other locations around Baltimore Power Inside || (410) 889-8333 during business hours Chana Baltimore || Helpline (410) 234-0023 || Office (410) 234-0030 Mercy Medical Center || ER Phone (410) 332-9477 Can do anonymous, Jane Doe rape kit & STD testing without insurance for $11-$26 Can call Hopkins security for transportation, JHMI (get off at Peabody stop), or taxi/Uber/ Lyft Baltimore Police Department || Emergency #911 || North District Non-Emergency (410) 396-2455 NOTE: Police department WILL involve Hopkinsâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; authorities

Baltimore Crisis Response Inc. (BCRI) || for more info, visit jhusaru.wordpress.com/resources (410) 433-5175

The State of Mental Health at Hopkins

It’s undeniable. The weekly onslaught of projects, papers and midterms combined with a pressure cooker-like academic atmosphere and some seemingly indifferent professors can leave many students struggling with their mental health during their time here at Hopkins.

We all gained a better understanding of the crucial need to address mental health on campus following the release of the Final Report released by Task Force on Student Mental Health and Wellbeing last February. This Task Force of students and faculty and staff was called forth in March of 2016 following the unexpected resignation of the Student Government Association’s Executive President who cited struggles with his mental health as his reason for stepping down. This final report includes data collected from 2,260 out of 16,014 students. The findings are bleak. Despite Hopkins insisting that we are not unique for our struggles with mental health, the data says otherwise. Of the respondents, 28.5% felt overwhelmed “very often” compared to 23.7% at Ivy leagues and 24.4% among peer institutions. The top 5 reasons students at Hopkins sought treatment at the Counseling Center were anxiety, depression, academic stress, suicidal thoughts/ behavior, and social problems; 59% of Counseling Center attendees cited these as their reasons for seeking treatment. Close to 30% of undergraduates and over 15% of graduate students said that they had seriously considered suicide. The report also finds that these struggles are also disportionately found among students with financial hardship, students of color, LGBTQ+ students, among other marginalized identities. At this stage, Hopkins is in dire need of resources to support its student body. Two free resources it points to are A Place to Talk (APTT), a student group focused on providing nonjudgmental peer counseling, as well as the Counseling Center which has a staff of professional therapists. The Counseling Center itself is woefully understaffed. According to its website, there are only 16 psychologists and 6 psychiatrists serving a body of around 8,000 students. As a result, those eligible for services are rarely able to schedule appointments for more frequently

than every two weeks. Additionally, because the Counseling Center is not structured to accommodate long-term treatment, students are left to find consistent or long-term treatment from outside providers, which can be expensive, difficult to find, and generally inaccessible. While the Counseling Center provides identity-based support services, such as one for students of color, LGBTQ+ students, and Asian/Asian-American students, there are limitations to the treatment and those seeking to attend are pressed to commit their time every week. Many existing staff at the Counseling Center work extremely hard to meet student needs, yet there is still a lack of diversity among its members and an undeniable lack of resources to provide sufficient care to the increasing number of students students who demand it. The final report also strikingly reveals that Hopkins faculty and staff vary wildly in terms of their level of understanding of both the resources available to students and how to compassionately and effectively work with students who are struggling. Currently, faculty and staff receive one single annual email from the Provost and Senior Vice President for finance and administration to learn how to address student mental health among other issues like allegations of sexual assault and harassment. Hopkins also offers trainings and workshops but they are optional and poorly attended, likely only by professors who already understand the importance of students’ mental health. The final report concluded with a series of recommendations that centered around increasing people’s awareness of and access to current resources and promoting a more supportive environment. How these recommendations are actually implemented lie in the power of senior University officials like Students may contact President Daniels and the Board of Trustees. the Hopkins Counseling It is important that students are active and persistent in advocating for improved mental health services and that we all look out for one another over the course of the year. It’s okay to not be okay. It’s not okay to think that no one cares.

Center at (410) 5168278. Dial 1 to reach a counselor on-call. For emergencies, call 911 or Homewood Security at (410)516-7777.

disability rights 101 Despite Hopkins’ reputation as one of the top medical institutions, the university has frequently disregarded its disabled students. Want to get to class or to the library? Steep stairs and broken elevators ensure that you won’t, in a reasonable amount of time—if at all. Beyond Homewood campus’ physical inaccessibility, students with a range of disabilities struggle to thrive on at a university that doesn’t support our existence. Professors rarely understand the importance of disability accommodations. The Counseling Center often turns away students for challenges that are more complex or that need longer-term support. Events on campus frequently fail to provide any accessibility information. Student Disability Services (SDS) receives far too few resources to serve disabled students. Rarely mentioned in the context of diversity, disability is misunderstood and ignored. Advocates for Disability Awareness (ADA), an organization led by disabled students, has been working to improve disability rights at Hopkins. In spring of 2018, Dr. Brent Mosser, Director of SDS and our biggest ally on campus, was fired. It was a watershed moment. We could no longer accept the administration’s unfulfilled promises to enact change with our best interests at heart. For too long, we had been an underserved, invisible minority, but we decided to speak out. We demanded immediate reforms that guarantee our rights, provide us the services we require, and empower students with disabilities to succeed at this university. After circulating a petition that received more than 650 signatures and organizing a protest to demand that the administration hear our voices—the voices of disabled students—we succeeded in pushing Hopkins to take action. ADA leaders and representatives of the administration met several times to create bridges of communication, discuss the nuances and details of our demands, and hold Hopkins accountable to fulfilling them well and by their deadlines.

As of July 2018, Hopkins made several changes, each of which we had directly called for: • • •

• •

The search committee for a new director of SDS (who was hired) included ADA leaders. The office was moved to the Mattin Center to create a larger, more accessible space with room for silent testing and a community gathering area. The Counseling Center is working to hire an ADHD specialist so that students with ADHD will no longer be turned away, in addition to restructuring their scheduling system so that students can have a same-day appointments rather than waiting multiple weeks for an intake or follow up. The university is adding disability information to diversity trainings at both the student and faculty levels. Sociology courses will (finally) include content about disability, with a potential new Sociology of Disability Course to be offered in fall 2019.

All these changes? They are a direct result of student-led efforts. We will continue to fight to ensure that the rest of the demands are met and to address the needs of students with disabilities at Johns Hopkins. A complete list of the demands of Advocates for Disability Awareness can be found here: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1Xf4nGQMx9_4_2_AhI1sTGd12DCpWctMr/

[If you have questions about how to get involved with ADA or how to get accommodations, feel free to reach out to us at jhu. ada@gmail.com or through out Facebook page, facebook.com/ advocatesfordisabilityawareness. You can request accommodations through https://studentaffairs.jhu.edu/disabilities/.]

DIVEST THE NEST! Generally regarded as a forward-thinking institution, one might expect Hopkins to follow through with its statements about fighting climate change. But the millions of dollars Hopkins has invested in fossil fuel companies tell a different story than the one the university promotes. Fossil fuel divestment is a simple and effective campaign. The ask is for Hopkins to sell all its stock in fossil fuel companies as a way to show the public that continuing to invest in a fossil fuel-dependent future is an unsustainable practice. Divestment is a symbolic act more than anything else; Hopkins’ share in these companies is minimal compared to both the university’s and the companies’ overall finances. Yet it is a strategy that activists have successfully implemented in the past, in the campaigns to end South African Apartheid and tobacco investment. Nelson Mandela even publicly commended UC Berkeley’s actions of divestment as monumental to ending apartheid. For over six years, undergraduate and graduate students in Refuel Our Future have been organizing for Hopkins to divest from all fossil fuel companies listed on the Carbon Underground 200TM. In December 2015, they submitted a proposal to the Public Interest Investment Advisory Committee (PIIAC), a group of advisors that makes investment recommendations to the Board of Trustees at JHU. PIIAC reopened for the first time since tobacco divestment in the 1990s to hear requests after students pressured the university to convene the committee again. Refuel members continued public pressure by staging a demonstration in November 2016, and the Provost responded by organizing a panel about fossil fuel divestment in April 2017. In September 2018, PIIAC released their recommendation for full divestment from fossil fuel companies in both direct and commingled funds, based on Refu-

el’s proposal and their independent research. This was huge—their recommendations for divestment were robustly defended and advocated for strong action against university investment in fossil fuel companies. However, in December 2018, Board of Trustees announced proudly that they would divest only from companies who earned 35% or more of their revenue from thermal coal production.

This was not a win for fossil fuel divestment. More than anything, it was a publicity stunt for Hopkins. With this announcement, the university could join the ranks of other institutions that have chosen to divest without taking much action at all. Millions of Hopkins dollars are still invested in fossil fuels, and we fail to make any other commitment to sustainable actions beyond making some relatively insignificant infrastructure changes. We can’t green our campus without greening our portfolio—to do so is to fight the symptoms instead of the cause. We also fail our surrounding community by not taking stronger climate action. Baltimore City joined several other cities in suing fossil fuel companies in July 2018, citing negligence and failure to act against climate change that has deeply affected many communities. In Baltimore, marginalized communities continue to face the worst effects of climate change. Investing in fossil fuels is a misuse of power—and once again fails to align with Hopkins’ supposedly publicserving initiatives.

what’s on our plates? Imagine a plate of food in front of you. What’s on it? Think about where each of these things came from. What were the steps and processes that brought cubes of fried tofu or chicken breast to your plate? The cup of soda next to you? The people, processes, and power that brought food from seed to plate can collectively be described as our food system—a complex web of economic, cultural, and personal factors that contribute to how we produce, consume, and conceptualize food. The history of the modern food system is linked to colonialism, slavery, commodification of land, water, seed, and other forms of exploitation. Many of the foundations of our modern food system, like those of other systems here in the US, were built on racism. Food is and historically has largely been picked, processed, and prepared by black and brown people both in the US and abroad. Immigrant and migrant laborers currently comprise the majority of farmworkers in the US. Black families have faced generations of land loss through broken promises, trickery, and economic disenfranchisement. These marginalized populations contribute the most labor in the food system and face the worst health effects. In Baltimore, many communities of color live in “food deserts” or “Healthy Food Priority Areas.” It is no accident that these areas tend to have high concentrations of poverty. We might better think of these patterns as a reflection of food apartheid— intentionally created inequity based on racial and economic divisions. The conversation about equal access to food cannot be complete without a

discussion on equal access to fertile land, clean water, or seeds. Yet, our universities consistently sign contracts with large food corporations who choose to prioritize profits at the cost of public health, people, and the environment. About 70% of colleges and universities outsource their dining services to another contracted provider; 92% of those schools are served by just 3 corporations: Aramark, Sodexo, and Compass Group. Hopkins ended its contract to Aramark and signed onto Bon Appétit Management Company (the friendly “sustainability” aka greenwashed arm of Compass Group) back in 2012 after the University signed the Real Food Commitment. The Commitment promises that we will source 35% of our campus dining food from real sources by 2020, meaning food that is local/community-based, ecologically sound, fair, and/or humane. This was a move in the right direction—reallocating the hundreds of thousands of dollars we spend on food annually at Homewood to smaller producers focused on sustainability and fair treatment of workers and animals has provided economic opportunity for smaller businesses to grow. But meeting this commitment faces a number of challenges. Decisions underscoring product shifts are still informed by bottom lines and by company-to-company kickbacks, which are essentially agreements between a food service buyer and a company that incentivizes purchasing product from one company in exchange for cash rebates back to the food service company. Other university and food company involvement comes in the form of “pouring rights.” Pepsi has pouring rights over our school, meaning Hopkins received perks like a new Rec Center, free soda cans for student organizations, and, more than likely, a large financial donation, so that Pepsi could exclusive rights to beverage sales. That means they get the opportunity to advertise their brand to thousands of Hopkins affiliates every day as they continue their abusive labor practices. The food system is complex and rife with injustices! Let’s not forget that.

Power Mapping University president Ronald Daniels Besides being a meme, Ronnie D is also our University’s President! Responsibilities: creating strategic plans for Hopkins , answering to the Board of Trustees , allocating resources and funds around Hopkins, posing for cute photo ops with people of color. Base salary: $1.3 million in 2015 (the most recently listed year) or the 30th-highest-paid private university president in the U.S. in 2015 or about 24 years of tuition Past and Current Achievements: •Tripling –and then doubling– tuition at the University of Toronto’s law school (where he was Dean) •Hiring a lot of bureaucratic administrators with unclear job descriptions •The strategic Ten by(?) Twenty Mission — 10 vagueish goals to reach by 2020 (#4 is to literally be top 10) •Not funding the annual “President’s Day of Service,” even though it’s named after his position •Being from Canada! He has a moose in his office. •Notable Quote: “This is an enlightened form of self-interest.” -- On the University’s “East Baltimore Development Initiative”

tees The Board of Trus

While President Daniels is the friendly face of the University that we see the most often, the real power lies with those who meet in the fanciest rooms around campus: the Board of Trustees . They are charged with “guard[ing] the university’s integrity to ensure that it fulfills the purposes for which it was established, and to preserve and augment its physical and financial assets.” Basically, they want Hopkins to make money and look nice — a truly noble goal for

the 40ish sort-of-well-intentioned mostly rich white guys who have the honor of being a “Trustee.” If you want anything substantial done at this school, get these folks on your side. It’s kind of hard to google all these people, but here is a highlight reel of some of their accomplishments: •Extending Ronnie D’s contract until 2024 and deciding his salary •19 of them work in finance or “venture capital” or as investors or... whatever other synonymous words apply. These people are really useful for a school that wants to “augment its physical and financial assets.” •Trustee Mayo Shattuck III (great name, by the way) is the Chairman for Exelon Corp, an energy company with holdings in fossil fuels. Did he recuse himself from the fossil fuel divestment vote? We still don’t know! •Trustee William Miller III gave $75 million to the philosophy department, which is genuinely pretty cool.

The Provost and His Deans Provost Sunil Kumar oversees all of the University’s academic and research programs, along with Beverly Wendland (Dean of Krieger) and Ed Schlesinger (Dean of the Whiting). Academic department funding, Homewood lab resources, and academic support systems are in their hands. Beware of petty bureaucracy and interdepartmental politics when engaging.

Vice Provost of Student affairs and the office of student Life Vice Provost for Student Affairs Kevin Shollenberger is one of the best dressed administrators on campus. He, along with the folks in his office (Homewood Student Affairs), are in charge of all aspects of student life outside of academics — career services, housing, dining, student groups, mental health, etc. The Dean of Student Life will not be named in this document as there has been a revolving door of Deans who come to this school for a couple of years until they find a higher paying job at another school.

cutive VP of Communications & Exe ons ati Director of Media rel

They try to make the school look good even when the school does bad. Blurring the lines between “news” and “PR propaganda,” these people portray Hopkins through a rose-colored lens. If you are asked to be in one of their “articles,” be careful of how they represent you.

Our Faculty Beyond giving us grades, our professors are often interested in social issues too. Some may make condescending remarks about your campaign (talk to Refuel our Future about this one), but others may provide enormously beneficial advice. Keep in mind that how vocal they are may depend on their tenure status: A department chair can afford to take more risks than a professor who just started their first job.

The Donors There are big donors (Michael Bloomberg) and there are small donors (alumni who are harassed by the Hopkins call center). Specifically, Michael Bloomberg has donated over a billion dollars to Hopkins, which is more than any other single donor ever. With this influence, he has an outsized say in the way his dollars are put to work and can strongly sway everything from what the campus physically looks like to what research gets funded (and what doesn’t).

What do i Do with this info? Look for people who might be sympathetic to your cause. Look for people who have conflicts of interest (hey, Mayo Shattuck III). It’s helpful to know where we, as students, fit in this convoluted hierarchy of University stakeholders and decision makers — especially when calling for change at this school. Getting informed is the first part of the battle!