Dear classmates, faculty, staff, and upper administration,
Last year we wrote a petition to SPU, arguing that the practices and policies of the university are in need of drastic revision in order for justice to be served for marginalized students and the growing population of students of color on campus. Our approach was therefore aimed at changing the system by working with upper administration to alter or abandon specific policies and practices regarding student life. Our primary goal was to begin the process of hiring a Chief Diversity Officer, and we intentionally avoided most educational platforms used to explain systemic injustice (that’s the school’s job). The response by upper administration was to have us, the SPU Justice Coalition, meet with several different groups of faculty, staff, and administrators to analyze different aspects of the institution to decide where changes can and should be made. The focus of one of these groups was to design a job description for a Chief Diversity Office. Each of these groups proved to be unproductive distractions.
In the Spring of 2016, the hiring committee appointed to oversee the selection of a Chief Diversity Officer met for the first time. The Justice Coalition requested that at least two of its members be allowed to join the committee. President Dan Martin denied this request, and asked for the participation of only one member because this is the maximum number of students that have been allowed on previous hiring committees. This response on the part of upper administration, specifically President Martin, clearly demonstrates a poor understanding of power and privilege, and a misguided understanding of the change that needs to happen.
There is an unfortunate kind of knowledge that comes from being a member of a marginalized group. This kind of knowledge serves as a filter through which the world is encountered, and marginalization is learned. It is this kind of knowledge, this personal experience, which does not stretch to imagine injustice but remembers it. Privilege is an unfortunate reality that distorts the truth of injustice, so that the privileged often do not recognize justice when they see it. Privilege cannot be avoided, and therefore we cannot justly blame or hate those who have it. It is the acceptance, and the abuse, of privilege that is so often the foundation of systemic injustice. This is the situation in which we find ourselves at SPU.
To some, the role of the Justice Coalition seems to be that of a teacher—we have information that others do not, and we should share it. It seems to those people that the justice coalition should explain the situation from our perspective, suggest a few books, and let Dr. Martin do his job. It seems this way especially to Dr. Martin, who constantly reminds students of all the books he reads and the conferences he attends. If it were the case that these books and conferences could eliminate the distortion of privilege entirely, then Dr. Martin would know that what Seattle Pacific University needs is partnership with people whose lives are unfortunately familiar with marginalization, whose histories have been shaped by systemic injustice, whose memories are filled with the faces of the oppressed, and not just the image of a well-stocked bookshelf.
This is the role of the SPU Justice Coalition: we are not the most educated because we have so many degrees, or have read the most books, but we have an education of a different kind—a lived experience with the internalized bias of the system itself. Especially in the absence of a Chief Diversity Office, we are in a unique position to provide insight into the shape of our future, but we are not experts in the creation of the system, in the creation of policy. We have been, until recently, hopeful that the institution, with all its aspiring goodwill, would be willing to partner with us, each group providing important insight. Of course, we who are constantly misled by the system, whose families have been abused by the system, whose people have been killed by the system, are not willing to enter into these spaces alone. We are wary—and we, the powerless, only have strength insofar as we have each other. We were denied this safety. We were denied partnership. We were denied access to participation in the creation of our future, on the basis of typical (status quo) policy. President Martin, true to his privilege, agreed to only work together on his terms.
Three members of the Justice Coalition walked into the conference room in Demaray Hall last Spring. Dan Martin pulled us out of the meeting to talk in the small lobby, and asked why we were there. “Guess how many students were on my hiring committee,” he said, “You’re asking that all schools change their hiring policies.” Yes, President Martin—we are. It is unreasonable to expect that any institution would arrive at a new destination (justice) without changing its course (systemic exclusion and oppression). In order for true change to occur, we must be a part of the process - therein lies the real change!
“Attempting to liberate the oppressed without their reflective participation in the act of liberation is to treat them as objects which must be saved from a burning building; it is to lead them into the populist pitfall and transform them into masses which can be manipulated.” — Paulo Freire
It is not our fear that the newly appointed Vice President of Equity and Inclusion would be poorly chosen; it is not entirely our fear that this new position would only detract from other areas of the school where good work is already being done; our fear, our assertion, is that any kind of success resulting from this new position, would only be another result of white male achievement; and that the process—the practices of this institution which continue to deny the full participation of marginalized peoples—would only be encouraged. Dan Martin, you have missed the point almost entirely. In our exclusion, the institution has tacitly announced that it does not need our participation, and that justice (assuming justice is its aim) can be achieved through the hard work of people with power. In other words, that justice is based on merit, not on cooperation with the oppressed. As with so many other colonialist approaches to reform, you have presumed, without listening, that you know what is best for us.
It is difficult to imagine a better analogy for the systemic exclusion of marginalized people than a President (an attorney, at that) explaining to a group of marginalized people how policy dictates that they not be permitted into the creation of their new home, and the choosing of their new representative. Still we remain hopeful, and active, but less naive. Although our partnership with upper administration has reached a dead end, our work at the university is not over. Instead of focusing on partnership with upper administration, we will focus on our people, on the students of SPU who continue to suffer with no recourse (email address below). One way or another, the policies of this institution will be changed, and its unjust practices exposed. The “whirlpools” will continue to grow, and we will disrupt the order maintained by the policies that subjugate us while we anticipate the arrival of the “Vice President,” whose position is already built on a misconception of equity and inclusion.
“I have almost reached the regrettable conclusion that [oppressed people’s] great stumbling block in the stride toward freedom is not the White Citizen’s Council-er or the Ku Klux Klanner, but the white moderate who is more devoted to “order” than to justice; who prefers a negative peace which is the absence of tension to a positive peace which is the presence of justice; who constantly says “I agree with you in the goal you seek, but I can’t agree with your methods of direct action;” who paternalistically feels he can set the timetable for another [person’s] freedom…” - MLK
They tried to bury us. They didn’t know we were seeds,
— The SPU Justice Coalition
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