Syverud, SU administration cannot honestly work against racism
Dear Editor,
I am in full solidarity with #NotAgainSU and am deeply grateful for all the students leading these actions. Like other members of THE General Body wrote to The D.O. five years ago at the sit-in, we saw much of this same disingenuous, incompetent and intentionally vicious behavior on the part of the Syverud-led SU administration.
We experienced a Chancellor Syverud who was primarily missing in action, monitoring the protests from his shiny castle, allowing — or perhaps ordering — the Department of Public Safety, who claim to have students’ safety at heart, to intimidate student protestors, force us to take down signs, restricting our access to food and our freedom of movement. DPS sent in armed people to scare us, others to watch us, pen us in further and threaten us with all manner of things related to our standing in the school, changing the “rules” on us on a daily, or even hourly, basis. All of this was intentional.
We saw some two-faced administrators who pretended to be “on our side” only to sell us out. We saw the administration try to divide us up, to meet with us only in small groups rather than with everyone involved.
We marched to the Board of Trustees meeting to appeal to them for help as we in the sit-in faced escalating intimidation from the administration, and to discuss the climate on campus which saw direct attacks from administration on programs supporting students of color and sexual assault survivors. The Board of Trustees refused to meet with us, thereby showing their true alliance.
To the SU administration, the #NotAgainSU activism and the terrorizing hate crimes themselves are more of a public relations nightmare to be managed rather than them actually giving a damn about students of color, stopping sexual assault, prioritizing students with disabilities or supporting staff and faculty.
Syverud and the SU administration cannot honestly work against racist, anti-Jewish, anti-immigrant, anti-Black speech and acts, because many of their own actions on a university policy level have been white supremacist and anti-women at their core.
As usual, they will try to wait you out and hope that the moment passes and everyone forgets. I am tremendously saddened you are still fighting this, and so grateful for your amazing work.
Sincerely,
Becca Shaw Glaser
Class of 2015