Supporters

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“Freshman year, first semester: I’d been experimenting with new hairstyles and was very proud of my attempt at Goddess Braids. My Geology professor took one look at me and asked, ‘so what’s the deal with this-- are those attached to your hat’? The sheer ignorance of the question, especially coming from an experienced professor at a supposedly diverse university, threw me off in his class for the rest of the semester. I put the encounter in my course eval, and actually got an apology email from him at the end of the course… so that’s something, I guess.” - Anonymous CAS Student

"I was hired at a small Boston consulting firm. I applied for the Yawkey Nonprofit Internship Funding, which would pay me for my work. Since, my role was helping nonprofit businesses through their philanthropy initiative, I assumed I could still apply, especially since I would be covering all costs for transportation and food by myself, on top of working 20 hours a week with no pay. They told me my internship did not meet the requirements and denied my application. The pandemic moved my work remotely, but for a time I shouldered the burden of paying for all my expenses, justifying it with the idea that having an internship on my resume was worth the cost." - Anonymous CAS Student

"In my first-year French class last year, the professor and all of the students were white except for one Black student. We were doing a French exercise that said "which of the people in the room is most likely to..." and then we would fill in the blank. One question was "which of the people in the room is most likely to like hip hop?" and one white male student named the only Black student in the class, who was not even in class that day. That white student did not even know the Black student (it was the first week of class), and was clearly operating off of racist stereotypes. Why would he name the only Black student in the class as most likely to like hip hop, when he was not even in class that day? To me, it was a blatant micro aggression and the professor (and the rest of the class) thought nothing of it. " - Anonymous CAS Student

Petition Testimonials: Why I signed...

"For a school that would rather cut off its own foot than not remind people that MLK Jr. was an alum, BU lacks the self-awareness and reflection in higher administration that is absolutely necessary to dismantle the ways in which white supremacy has both manifested and been built into the foundations of the university and its curriculum."

"Because at a minimum BU needs to partner with students to undo it’s racist legacy, to truly and meaningfully apply the teachings of its most referenced alumni. And at most it should do everything Northeastern students are asking: https://sites.google.com/view/blackatnu/home."

"I am signing this petition because I believe it is important that BU - and CAS specifically - does the necessary work to actually, actively fulfill its promise to support, engage and teach its entire community. CAS has a responsibility to cultivate antiracist learning and can do so by following its students’ recommendations."

"I know how important it is to have mentors who look like me, and that is an experience all students should be able to access."

"BU has failed its marginalized students on many accounts. LGBTQ+ people and/or BIPOC are shockingly absent from CAS syllabi. There is very little, if any, D&I training for faculty and staff, the majority of whom are white. Microaggressions by students and faculty alike go unchecked. There are no BIPOC therapists at SHS, nor is there a support group for POC. Our student center is named after Tom Yawkey, the former Red Sox owner who historically opposed racial integration in baseball, whose discriminatory behavior even the City of Boston and the current Red Sox owner condemned. Our University’s address, 1 Silber Way, is named after a former BU president who had a reputation of misogyny and disbanded all LGBTQ+ groups and related topics on the basis of the hateful rhetoric known as homosexual militancy. According to the BU LGBTQ+ Task Force report, BU is one of the only major universities without an LGBTQ+ resource center or LGBTQ+ alumni network. BU touts its reputation of being MLK’s Alma Mater yet has completely failed its marginalized students by not defending marginalized students nor providing them with the resources they need. It is very clear that BIPOC, especially QTPOC, are currently not being given the tools they need to succeed at BU; administration needs to make significant changes on an institutional level in order to create a welcoming environment in which all students (not just rich, cishet, white students) can flourish."

"This petition is an incredible catalyst to the anti-racist work that BU must begin doing in order to become a space that truly values all its students. Right now, it is clear that BU does not value its BIPOC students. They need to do better and they shouldn’t have to be taught by BIPOC students how to do this, but the goals of this petition are a great start."

"BU CASARI is asking critical questions about racial equity under Lfa; questions the BU admin has refused to address."

"As a student from a very low SES background, life at BU was a constant struggle. I worked multiple jobs and I can only imagine how much harder life would've been if those on-campus jobs had disappeared in the middle of my time at BU. Most of my success can be attributed to the extra, unrewarded mentorship and investment of BIPOC faculty who saw and respected the struggle rather than penalizing the places where I fell short of more advantaged peers. From experience, I know I don't want anyone else to come out of their time at BU feeling like they had to succeed in spite of the institution."

"I am tired of being promised progress by the administration, only for nothing to happen. CAS has, for FAR too long, neglected to not only teach but even acknowledge the critical contributions BIPOC have made to academia, research, theory, and literature. CAS MUST change its fundamentally whitewashed and colonialist curriculums."

"I want to be part of a better, more diverse & integrated CAS and BU. We've been moving in the right direction, but too slowly. Many of the demands on this list are not new. BU has shown, in our response to the Covid-19 pandemic, that we can make enormous institutional changes over a period of months. These students are providing a roadmap for CAS to accelerate fixing our internalized, institutionalized racist inequities. Many faculty & staff in CAS departments, and throughout the University, are ready & willing to do this work. CAS and BU leadership can make this a fundamental part of our jobs, not something extra that we try to squeeze in when we can. Some of these demands are simple and all are long overdue. Change is hard, but this is the direction I want to move."

"CASARI's requests are exactly what everyone at this university should already be doing to foster an anti-racist environment. Given the deep commitment to these ideals espoused recently by BU administration, I trust that BU will enact them without hesitation."

"I am signing this petition because it took me 6 years to see how racially and culturally monolithic my departments were. I want future math and CS classes to be more racially and culturally diverse, so that people aren't shocked by diversity in the field like I was."