BY THE FAIRFIELD UNIVERSITY FACULTY WELFARE COMMITTEE/AAUP

Alumni at Fairfield University organized around the hashtag #BlackStagsMatter after two statements from university administration in the wake of the murder of George Floyd and Juneteenth did not directly address the need for concrete changes or the Black Lives Matter movement. Many of the alumni had been involved in organizing on and off campus since 2014, and they launched a petition that quickly garnered almost 5,000 signatures, “Fairfield University Must Say Black Lives Matter,” along with a series of specific demands related to support for students and faculty of color on campus. They are using social media on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram at @blackstagsmatter, where they are also sharing personal stories of microaggressions and racial incidents on campus. One of the posts included a graphic giving the president’s statement a D- grade. Members of the Fairfield Chapter of AAUP, the Faculty Welfare Committee, released this statement in support of both the students’ demands and goals for our chapter.

Black Lives Matter. As representatives of the faculty of Fairfield University through the Fairfield AAUP Faculty Welfare Committee, we applaud the work of activists around the country and beyond who are calling attention to systemic institutionalized racism. We support demands for change in the wake of the police murders of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, and Ahmed Arbery, three recent victims within a long legacy of police and state violence.

We decry the violence Black communities have experienced since well before the founding of this country. We assert with our fellow activists that Black Lives Matter. Yet, we recognize that institutions of higher education have not made the commitment to live the truth of that statement. We support the AAUP’s recent Statement on Racial Justice in Higher Education and are concerned about protecting activists within academia who are vocal on these issues as well as “Black studies, Latinx studies, indigenous studies, and other ethnic studies programs,” which are “especially vulnerable to political interference.” We praise the effort, and lament the sacrifice and suffering, it has taken to rouse the country from its sleep.

We recognize, as members of the broader labor movement, that powerful majorities within organized labor have been complicit in preserving systemic segregation in this country. We denounce the Fraternal Order of Police as a labor union that is actively benefiting from harming Black communities. We call on labor allies to distance themselves from the FOP and other unions that damage communities of Black and Indigenous people and people of color. We will continue to argue for more just labor categories on campus and against the outsourcing of labor that often leaves our most vulnerable community members without a voice on campus. And on our campus, we recognize the degree to which our charge of attending to “faculty welfare” has abetted the white status quo. The entire Fairfield community needs to do much more to advocate for Black scholars and students on our campus and to create networks that sustain these scholars and students. We as an institution must, in particular, find ways to actively support scholars of color through the tenure and promotion process and to train departments to recognize and interrupt their own racist biases in evaluating the scholarship of colleagues of color. Although many faculty members have bolstered students of color in their efforts on campus, it remains a fact that Black faculty and students have found this insufficient. The university has repeatedly rebuffed and ignored demands for support, safe harbor, concrete funding, and fully staffed offices to assist underserved students. We acknowledge this, and we commit to a renewed examination of the ways in which our practices in and beyond the classroom have aided the forces of racism and the status quo.

We support the faculty chair of inclusivity and encourage broadening their role in the future. We need to engage them in all levels of full-time tenure-track and non-tenure-track faculty recruitment, including annual department hire requests, job descriptions and job ads, and curricular decisions, which are often embedded in hiring decisions. We renew our commitment to Black Lives Matter in our core curriculum through social justice signature element courses and in our regular course offerings. We believe the coordinator of this signature element should have the same resources (ability to hire new FT faculty as experts in the field, course releases, and other funding) as that of other elements. We seek racial diversity at every level of our institution, from faculty to senior administrators (including a proposed vice president for diversity) to the board of trustees. In the arena of diversity in admissions, we reaffirm our commitment to the city of Bridgeport through the Bridgeport Scholarship, a key element of our Jesuit mission, and firmly demand an expansion of this program.

For these reasons, we applaud the work of the Fairfield Anti-Racist Black Stags Matter campaign launched by the Fairfield Alumni Response Team and urge the administration to engage with the demands presented by that group in a full and thoughtful way. The gift of this urgent moment is an opportunity for deep reflection, and not a public relations issue to be met defensively. This alumni initiative is an offering made in trust and with the hope that change is possible, and our response should exhibit the care and respect that we hold in our hearts for all members of our Fairfield family. We are proud of the ways in which our alumni are using their intellect, artistry, and skill—those gained at Fairfield and beyond—to call all of us to wake up, to take the corrective moves to ensure that our institution examines its role in abetting segregation and racial inequality in this country. We urge our campus leaders to examine what cura personalis (or “care of the whole person,” an integral part of our Jesuit mission) means in an environment where Black and Indigenous peoples’ lives have been used to consolidate the power of white-led institutions. This is not the time for vague promises but, rather, a reckoning with the roots of who we are and what canons of knowledge and patterns of institutional culture have brought us to this moment. We know that the well-being of our students as whole people can only be fostered by an institution with the intellectual and ethical skills, the constancy, and the discipline to see each of its students as a whole person. This can only happen when we as an university community are willing to examine our  own complicity in the devastating racism that has founded this country and its everyday institutions, practices, and treatment of people. We can do better, and this moment demands our best.