Dear students,
We in the Department of Black Studies were moved by Thursday’s walkout and sit-in at Frost Library. Initially an expression of solidarity with students at Missouri, Yale, and elsewhere, it quickly turned into an intense, fiery event, full of compelling stories of struggle, friendship, insistence on belonging, and an overwhelming demand that the institution change. Spoken directly to the Dean of Faculty, those words bore truths that are as old as the presence of students of color on campus and as new as the demands of student life today.
Again my classmates hide and in darkness come to silence me. Again attempting to sacrifice black life for all life, a theme all too common. Posters in Val, displayed anonymously, again, mourned the death of free speech as the “true victim” of black suffering. Bold statements from a void. You, in placing these posters so publicly in our dining hall, where I was supposed to see them, be surrounded by them, where are you?
