Diversity and Inclusion Task Force Report

APPENDIX D: TRINITY UNIVERSITY FACULTY STATEMENT IN SOLIDARITY WITH BLACK LIVES MATTER June 8, 2020 As educators, it is our duty to stand for social justice and to promote equity on our campuses, in our communities, and around the globe. We stand in solidarity with the Black Lives Matter movement and the protesters fighting against structural racism and police brutality. In the words of the Black Lives Matter mission statement: “By combating and countering acts of violence, creating space for Black imagination and innovation, and centering Black joy, we are winning immediate improvements in our lives.”

Systemic changes in our communities are desperately needed. Law enforcement agencies are permeated by structural racism, and add to the disproportionate incarceration, suffering, and death of Black people in the United States. Higher education is also plagued by and built on structural racism, and the experiences of Black students, faculty, and staff, particularly at predominantly white institutions (PWIs), involve significant barriers not faced by their white counterparts. Predominantly white institutions are not merely majority white, but tend to center whiteness and the experiences of white people. Black students, faculty, and staff face structural exclusion as well as overt racism and microaggressions, often alongside empty promises from their institutions, while receiving limited support and resources. These barriers and disparities result in lower levels of retention of Black staff, students, and faculty.

Trinity University is complicit in structural racism. We have heard Black students’ distress about racist treatment by Trinity community members and members of surrounding communities’ police forces. All too often, Black students, faculty, and staff leave due to lack of support from our campus community. On June 7, 2020, these concerns were powerfully presented in the joint statement from BSU, ASA, and TDC and we stand in support of this statement. These experiences demonstrate that we, as a community, are not living up to our stated values that “at Trinity, each and every person matters” and that “each individual is treated with thoughtful care and compassion.”

We as a faculty admit our own part in structural racism, and pledge to do better by incorporating anti-racist pedagogy and thinking in our classrooms, research, and service. These changes cannot be limited to “diversity and inclusion” measures, but must actively challenge white normativity and white supremacism.

We further call on our administration to stand with and for our Black community members by heeding the call to institute a formal review of policing policies and practices on campus with an eye toward shifting resources toward investment in our Black community; and to create a new, autonomous, executive-level position for Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion with a fully funded office and robust staff.

As Trinity University faculty, we support this mission and pledge to work as a campus to improve the lives of our Black community members.

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