We are preparing for finals, writing exams, grading them…. These are important things. But all around the country people are speaking out against the outrageous injustices that people of color face on a regular basis. We must acknowledge these issues. The time to speak out is now.
The following notice appeared on the faculty list-serve tonight.
On Monday, December 8th, at 3 pm, students of Wesleyan University will be marching in response to the police brutality and systemic racism that led to the deaths of Mike Brown, Eric Garner, and countless other people of color in recent times. The state must be held accountable for the prejudicial treatment of these individuals. Our movement must start from the ground-up. I am emailing you to ask for your support and solidarity, and invite you to march alongside us students for this cause. We will be gathering at Exley Science Center at 265 Church St.
At Wesleyan we affirm that we are an institution that values boldness, rigor and practical idealism. One doesn’t have to be an idealist to recognize that change is necessary, and that we must demand it.
Join us. This is Why.
you’re saying this now because the students arent explicitly criticizing you and your inattention to the AFAM dept.
of course you are going to co-opt this anti-racist rhetoric without previously supporting this cause or the causes of people of color on this campus
thisiswhynot
Dear President Roth:
You forgot to mention that Wesleyan apparently also seems to value anti-Semitism. It is sad that your institution has succumbed to the demands of the so-called Students for Justice in Palestine and decided to curtail the sale of Sabra products on your campus. What a sorry statement for the condition of higher education in America today that Wesleyan supposedly represents. There is so much real cruelty and deprivation in the world, yet you chose to ignore it and allow yourself to be bullied by groups of students who are nothing more than empty headed robots who are programmed to hate Israel. Do you boycott products from China, where human rights are abysmal? Do you boycott products from Africa or Latin America? No, of course not.
It would be of great benefit to this nation and to our world if people in positions like yours would take a few minutes to analyze how closed minded your institution really is, and how much damage you are doing to our country and to the world as a whole every time you allow a victory for blind hate.
You have the privilege of molding the next generation of our leaders. If decisions such as this one are typical of your institution, then the best you will be able to say is that you have wasted a lot of young adults’ valuable time, and a lot of parents’ valuable funds.
Thank you for inspiring and encouraging our youngsters. This is so important, and I am so glad our youth, who will be the creators of change tomorrow, have mentors at Wesleyan to guide, encourage, and support them when they need to advocate for truth and justice.
Hopefully, while I haven’t seen it in alumni communications yet, President Roth and the Administration are also speaking out on personal responsibility and respect for law enforcement, as willingly as these incidents induce our liberal institutions to cry out solely for social justice and racial equality. In the Ferguson case, Michael Brown committed several crimes, including life threatening attacks on a police officer; blood tests revealed he was high on marijuana. He alone created the circumstances leading to his death: it is not willing disbelief to assume results would have been the same had he been a white man behaving in the same manner.
Eric Garner is, indeed, a different story. There should at least have been an involuntary manslaughter indictment. But this is less a racial inequality/social injustice story than one of law enforcement methods and Grand Jury rules: unfortunately, the lack of indictment may turn out to be a lawful interpretation of statutes that protect both police officers and civilians. We can legitimately address that.
Even Mrs. Garner stated on Meet the Press this past Sunday, “this is not a black/white issue”.
The NYC police officer was not gunning to kill Mr. Garner, and one has to minimally admit that — had Mr. Garner quietly allowed the officers to take him into custody as they were seeking to do — he’d be alive today.
I know, I know: he was only selling cigarettes, and he denied even that. I don’t blame him for seeking to avoid his 32nd arrest (I mean that), but let’s face it: as things are today, if you accelerate an encounter with an officer of the law, things will go against you very quickly — white, black, or other.