To President Jeffrey Herbst, Dean of the Faculty Douglas Hicks, and Dean of the College Suzy Nelson,
On Thursday, 11 December 2014, 63 faculty members attended a pre-vigil meeting to learn more about recent events and to show their solidarity with non-violent student protesters who were targeted with anonymous and violent threats. Although full details of the incidents and responses that have occurred over the past week remain somewhat unclear, the meeting aimed to present an overall timeline of events that led to a significant number of students departing our campus. We understand that the administration views much of its response as standard operating procedure and as resulting from limits in legal precedents. We do not agree that such claims recuse us from being accountable for fissures in our systems of response. We conclude that there are at least three very serious concerns that warrant immediate redress:
- We are upset by the lack of information about the incidents on campus—no meetings were called via the FAC, no forums were held for community discussion, and neither division directors nor chairs were informed. The e-mails we received from President Herbst and Deans Hicks and Nelson were vague, and they did not communicate the deep and troubling issues that unfolded over the course of the week. We cannot do our jobs as faculty well if we do not know what is happening on campus. We demand to be better informed on all incidents on campus so that we can support and guide students. Likewise, we demand to know the outcome of the current investigation of the anonymous threats.
- We are incredulous that Colgate did not act more swiftly to the threats made to our students given that our campus has demonstrated immediate response to an anonymous social media threat in the past; we are very concerned that this is a result in part of the systemic racial and class bias that have marred our systems of response and accountability in our national context as well. We ask: why was Colgate not prepared to capture screen shots and IP addresses on social media in order to quickly apprehend and prosecute students who anonymously threatened violence against or who sent anonymous and intimidating e-mails to individual students?
- We are concerned about our campus safety officers’ ability to ensure the protection of all Colgate students, particularly those students who express views or demonstrate in ways that are personally offensive to individual officers. We hope for sensitivity to difference and increased efforts at community building with students. If, as a nation, we are seeing calls for diversity trainings and a return to community policing in order to build trust and community, why aren’t we doing this here at Colgate?
We write this petition as a means of holding ourselves and our campus leaders accountable for addressing these fissures. We are deeply concerned about our students, both those who have left campus, as well as those who remain and have been deeply affected by the traumatic events that occurred on Thursday, Friday, and Saturday, now ten days ago. We take our responsibility for making change on our campus seriously, and we stand collectively to assert that such breaks in our system as suggested in our concerns above are unconscionable. We ask for an immediate and public address of these issues by our administration.
Signed (109 Faculty, names omitted)