Fellow Clarkson Students,
I hope you and your families are keeping well during this volatile period of our modern history. The first thing I would like to do is thank the students who had the bravery and willingness to open their hearts to the Clarkson community at last week’s Forum on Racism. The value in attending this forum was the ability to listen and support these students’ message even if I cannot fully understand their pain and experiences. Black Lives Matter. This is the minimum we should be advocating for, without any disagreements or compromise. We should also be ready and willing to highlight the viewpoints, life experiences, ideas, feelings, and accomplishments of our Black community.
One of the greatest lessons I have learned from this past forum is that what we do as a community speaks much louder than any words of allyship or support we can claim to provide. No matter how well-meaning the words we put out in these times, they do not weigh as much as action. Listening to my peers’ stories about the blatant and abhorrent instances of racial bias and discrimination on and off-campus, it highlighted my own ignorance. My past mistakes and silence surrounding these issues caused more harm than I could understand. Knowing this, I am deeply sorry for my ignorance and am prepared to work alongside you to make the necessary changes Clarkson needs to move forward.
Words alone will never fix these issues. CUSA is geared to move forward with an innovative plan that welcomes input from the Black community, and other communities of color, in order to best support them. We apologize CUSA is so late coming with our response and understand the importance of providing action and accountability. Those of us who are CUSA representatives recognize that we need to rebuild our relationship with the Black community and improve our communication with the student body as a whole. These plans are open to discussion and input. Here are the beginning steps CUSA intends to move forward with:
Action Plan:
1. CUSA pledges our full financial support in purchasing a full membership to the Sustained Dialogue Institute for the Chief Inclusion Office. This will allow the CIO to implement this program with our support and participation in Sustained Dialogues. These are dialogue-to-action change processes in which students, faculty, staff and administrators engage in conversations to positively impact the social climate of the university.
Black students have expressed they do not feel represented by CUSA or supported in their events or clubs and organizations, which is why we are taking the following steps:
2. We will be releasing a weekly newsletter once school begins that will include the following:
§ Weekly summary of CUSA initiatives/progress, with meeting minutes from all CUSA meetings, including meetings with President Tony Collins
§ Relevant resources
§ A link to our suggestion box on Knightlife for feedback
§ Upcoming events where we encourage Black and other underrepresented student organizations to advertise their clubs and events to the widest audience possible
3. In order to bridge the gap between administration and the students we will be hosting a monthly Town Hall event in which President Tony Collins, Chief Inclusion Officer Dr. Jen Ball, Provost Robyn Hannigan, and CUSA representatives will sit on a panel where students can voice their concerns, questions and suggestions or submit them virtually. It will be polled which additional faculty and staff members join the panel each month.
4. CUSA has attempted to be as inclusive as possible by requesting and often only supporting events that are open to the entire student body, we are learning that this in itself can be exclusive. We will be reworking our Finance Bylaws so as to allow us to support events both open to the public and those that give space for culture specific events. In doing so we hope that there will be room for both safe spaces for underrepresented students and cultures, and places for students to learn about them.
5. CUSA will be surveying what events students would like the Activities Committee to put on and offering co-hosting opportunities with student organizations for underrepresented students so they can introduce their club to a wider range of students.
6. We have heard from the forum the large number of students that do not feel comfortable or even safe entering or using the Student Organizations Suite, and this is unacceptable. That space is for all students to use to access resources, printing, and study space and racist language or behavior of any kind will not be tolerated. CUSA is collaborating with the Office of Student Life to generate ways of addressing this issue, and creating guidelines for using the space.
These steps are only a start, and CUSA must be open to the critical feedback our underrepresented students will give on how we can best serve them. Many of the changes that need to be pushed this year cannot wait until in-person learning resumes. This platform must be used to amplify the voices of students who have felt the need to keep silent for white comfort. The Clarkson University community is prepared to surrender the need for appeasing white fragility. CUSA will work towards this with the students whose voices we need to elevate.
I now call upon the students who did not attend the forum, and those students who are uncomfortable or feel unaffected by the issues in conversations of race. Now is the time more than ever to amplify Black voices and get involved. If you make a mistake, recognize it, learn from it, and move forward. Any feelings of helplessness on these issues dissolve when we begin to support one another. To my Clarkson community, I ask for your awareness, your compassion, and your empathy towards the issues affecting our students of color. This will lend to your steps forward to being more inclusive and actively anti-racist. This is an issue that cannot be ignored any longer.
This school year will not be “normal” by any means, this is only in part due to having our education tailored to social distancing and community safety. The previous normal where any students regularly face discrimination at the hands of systemic racism is unacceptable. Perhaps this deviation from what was normal is what we all need to create a new environment that actively confronts racism. Black students and other students of color are not the ones responsible to educate us on our past transgressions; we must take that initiative if we wish to move forward. There is a lot of work that must be done, and CUSA representatives are committed to putting in all that we can.
Please take care of one another, and take those extra steps to listen and act on what we can learn.
Avery Paradis
CUSA President
How CUSA is choosing to move forward is with action and accountability, we leave our suggestion box link here. We are open and willing to change in the right direction so that all of our students feel heard.
https://knightlife.clarkson.edu/submitter/form/step/1?Guid=e7bf1a89-6d70-4523-b778-5be54ca00de0
Please feel free to reach out to CUSA at senate@clarkson.edu
