GSO Statement Against Systemic Racism and Police Violence
Black Lives Matter. The leaders of the Graduate Student Organization at Stony Brook University declare this unequivocally and unapologetically.
The GSO pledges to work against the white supremacist society that systematically devalues, excludes, exploits, and commits other forms of violence against Black people. We mourn the lives stolen by police and extrajudicial violence, including Breonna Taylor, Elijah McClain, Ahmaud Arbery, George Floyd, David McAtee, Tony McDade, and Rayshard Brooks, among many, many others. We stand with the protest movement in support of Black lives and for reimagining policing to create community-based and non-violent alternatives. We further stand in solidarity with other communities that also routinely face violence at the hands of militarized state agents, including immigrants who are subjected to raids and inhumane conditions in detention centers and Indigenous people who are brutalized by law enforcement as corporations scheme to seize their sovereign lands.
We also accept that it is our responsibility as graduate student leaders to demand change within our own University community. The GSO commits to advocating for inclusion at all levels of the University in the coming school year, from pedagogy and research practices to admissions, the faculty, and the administration. Everyone at Stony Brook deserves to study, work, and build community in an environment where they feel safe and supported, where they can see themselves represented in the faculty and administration, where they are wholeheartedly valued for who they are, and where they can be themselves without fear. Only when this is accomplished can we dissolve the barriers to equity in education for all of us.
We commit to working with the graduate student community and University officials to better understand the realities of racial disparities at Stony Brook so we can fight for more equity in resources, support, and academic success. Our first action step is to hold a series of virtual town halls as platforms for graduate students of color to share their experiences as Stony Brook students and residents of Greater New York. In these town halls, we will come together as graduate students not only to share our stories, but also to collaboratively design solutions to create a better Stony Brook. Expect more specific information about these virtual events in the coming days and weeks.
In addition, the GSO calls for Stony Brook University to terminate all relations with the Suffolk County Police Department, the New York State Police, and the New York State University Police. The rise of university police forces coincided with the increase of Black and Latinx student populations, subjecting them to further surveillance and control. Given the historical foundations of American policing and well-documented patterns of racially biased enforcement, we recognize that our students may feel threatened by police officers, rather than safe in their presence.
We further call for the University to cancel all contracts with companies that utilize prison labor and, moreover, for University leadership to publicly demand the abolition of prison labor in New York State. Profit-driven penal labor is a form of modern slavery made possible by the racist over-policing and over-incarceration of Black and Brown people. Stony Brook routinely and knowingly buys products made by prisoners who are paid as little as sixty-five cents per hour and face even further punishment if they refuse to work under these conditions. It is appalling that our University should care more about getting cut-rate deals on exam booklets and office and classroom furniture than it does about promoting human dignity and racial equity.
Lastly, in keeping with the SUNY system’s shared governance model, we call for the University to include graduate and undergraduate student representatives in all present and future diversity planning efforts. If the University administration truly values its students, then it must recognize us as equals in the decision-making process.
We recognize that everyone is at different stages of learning about the realities of systemic racism and police violence in the United States and around the world. We recommend that anyone interested in learning more about about these topics explore the following resources:
BLM LinkTree: https://linktr.ee/blacklivesmatter
BLM Syllabus: http://www.blacklivesmattersyllabus.com/
Charleston Syllabus: https://www.aaihs.org/resources/charlestonsyllabus/
Signed,
The Executive Council and Senate of the Graduate Student Organization