Working in solidarity towards justice and liberation

Posted: June 2020; Updated May 2021

We as the CSLD staff acknowledge, through our personal and professional commitments, that this is not the time to stay silent. A lot has happened since we’ve last seen many of you in person, and even virtually. Among a global pandemic, we witnessed the ongoing violence and disregard for Black lives, with the recent killings of Ahmaud Arbery, Breonna Taylor, George Floyd, Tony McDade, and Dion Johnson, among, unfortunately, many others. Violence against Asians and Asian Americans has increased during the pandemic, including acts of racism, verbal altercations, and physical assaults. On March 16, 2021 Xiaojie Tan, Daoyou Feng, Paul Andre Michels, Elcias R. Hernandez-Ortiz, Hyun Jung Grant, Soon Chung Park, Suncha Kim, Yong Ae Yew were murdered in a hate-based shooting in Atlanta, Georgia creating a national spotlight on the rise in violent attacks for individuals of the API community. And in our own community, we recently witnessed hate against those who identify as Trans. These incidents, and many others, serve as all too regular painful reminders of the difficult and uncertain times in which we live and must be addressed as a part of our efforts to develop as people, as inclusive leaders, and as members of an educational community.

To our Black community members: We see you, we acknowledge your trauma, we are here for you. We will listen and we commit to action to confront and dismantle white supremacy, anti-Blackness, and systems of inequity in place in our community, and even in our own department.

To our API community members: We bear witness to your pain, fear, and anger that for many has been silenced or ignored. We will commit, in addition to the items noted above, to enhance opportunities to elevate API voices through scholarship, community-building, and outreach.

To our Trans community members: The University of Rhode Island believes in the importance of equity and creating an inclusive campus environment where people can be their authentic selves. The CSLD believes you belong here, and we, along with our campus partners, commit to being an active part of building an inclusive community where every person has the opportunity to learn and grow to achieve their goals in a safe and supportive environment.

Our work in the CSLD has been and will continue to be values-based and grounded in specific theories and models that call for leadership to be ethical, inclusive, and in connection and community with others. But they are not perfect. In what we teach, both inside and outside the traditional classroom, we must examine everything with a critical lens, and work to center voices and perspectives that have been historically silenced. These leadership models of the past and present must be used meaningfully in order to engage in leadership that promotes social justice and liberation and our work has been on-going using the work of Dugan (2017) and others to deconstruct and reconstruct our perspectives and pedagogy.

In the spaces we occupy, we as individuals each bring with us our privileged and minoritized identities, and we must examine how we show up in these spaces as racialized people, what that means for those spaces, and confront our own anti-Blackness. We acknowledge our efforts have not always achieved these goals, personally and departmentally. However, we will continue to learn, to work to deconstruct practices and policies that may contribute to systems of oppression and to live out our core value of inclusive leadership in academic and co-curricular spaces. We hope you will join us.

Lastly, we know that our actions will speak louder than these words. The CSLD commits to the following action items, as well as offers the following resources:

1. As individuals, we are committed to doing the ongoing work ourselves, to continue learning in order to be able to teach and advise more equitably, and to seek out and to contribute time and resources to support individuals, businesses and organizations that support our stated values. Professional staff have obtained, or are in the process of obtaining the Social Justice and Inclusion Microcredential through the Office of Community, Equity and Diversity.
2. In the courses we teach, we will continue to revise curriculum to center issues of race and identity and to take a deeper look at the voices behind the resources we use to ensure representation of authors, theorists, and activists who can best share this knowledge with us and allow us to look critically at the historically white lens of leadership. Some courses underwent initial revision in Fall 2020 and the work will continue for all courses into Summer and Fall 2021. We invite you to view the current revision status of our classes here.
3. In our co-curricular programs, starting right away with the Leadership Institute (hiring process, application process and program), we are actively reviewing and restructuring programs to fit the unique needs for each student population for whom they are intended. We will examine the intent of “why” we have led certain programs traditionally and implement change so that all participants may engage with us fully and authentically. In the new initiatives we are working on, we will center these issues from the start. We welcome any feedback and thoughts on existing CSLD initiatives like the Leadership Institute, North Woods Challenge Course, Rose Butler Browne Program, Sophomore Breakthrough Experience and The Junior Experience, and others, from current students and alumni on how we can better serve students at URI. We invite you to view the current revision status of our co-curricular programs here.
4. We will connect with and follow the educational resources and opportunities for learning provided through URI’s Office of Community, Equity and Diversity via web.uri.edu/diversity
5. We will work to build community, focus on justice, and ensure accountability in a transparent and responsive manner. If you have concerns that you would like to share about our programs, policies and practices, please reach out to mboyd@uri.edu

In Solidarity,
Melissa Boyd-Colvin, Melissa Camba-Kelsay, and Alison Jackson Frasier