*A huge thank you to everyone who has signed, shared, and donated. If you want to contribute financially, it would be more impactful to our cause if you donated on CEDI's GoFundMe instead of change.org.
PETITION
George Floyd was murdered in Minneapolis, Minnesota on May 5th, 2020; a horrifying continuation of an ongoing legacy of police brutality against BIPOC individuals.
Shortly thereafter, the Chancellor of Antioch University, William R. Groves, and Antioch Chair of the Board, Paul Mutty, declared Antioch an “Anti-racist University."
Since this declaration, Antioch University Leadership has failed to use its power and resources to make Anti-racist systemic, cultural, and campus-wide change into an experienced reality.
We are the Council for Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion (CEDI); a grassroots student and alumni-led cooperative organization formed in response to the need for change at Antioch.
We are holding the following leaders accountable:
William R. Groves, ChancellorPaul Mutty, Carole Isom-Barnes, Teri Cannon, Steve Crandall, Katrin Dambrot, Janet Dewart Bell, Lance Dublin, Gregory K. Finkelstein, Holiday (Holly) Hart McKiernan, Charlene Moore Hayes, William (Bill) Plater, Rich Preyer, Martha Summerville, Eugene (Gene) Tempel, and Lillian Pierson Lovelace,Antioch’s Board of GovernorsChet Haskell,Vice Chancellor for Academic AffairsCraig Maslowsky, Vice Chancellor for Enrollment Management at Antioch UniversityAll other people in positions of power at Antioch who are blocking, slowing, or otherwise failing to take action toward systemic cultural Anti-racist progress.
There is a culture of performative Anti-racism at Antioch. There have been countless unnecessary delays and a pattern of inaction on recommendations made by the Anti-racism Task Force (ARTF), including failures to follow through with hiring/installing a DEI Director, establishing University-wide Anti-racism training, and systemically increasing and ensuring Diversity at every level of the Institution.
Within the current University climate and structure, BIPOC Students, Faculty, Staff, Administrators, and Board Members are regularly harmed by aggressions, tone policing, tokenizing, cultural appropriation, gaslighting, minimizing, dismissing, stonewalling, extra labor, white fragility, white centering, and other methods of white dominance. BIPOC Individuals are therefore forced to navigate interpersonal, cultural, and institutional manifestations of white supremacy.
By failing to take sincere Anti-racist action, Antioch University is fostering and protecting embedded systems of white supremacy and thereby creating harmful environments for BIPOC Community Members.
Additionally, many curriculums, textbooks, hiring practices, matriculation protocols, teaching methods, and administrative processes are misaligned with Anti-racist values and practices.
Students, Alumni, Faculty, Staff, Administrators, and Community Partners demand that Antioch University take significant systemic action to prioritize integrity and hold true to its mission: To provide learner-centered education to empower students with the knowledge and skills to lead meaningful lives and to advance social, economic, and environmental justice.
We demand that leaders at Antioch University take the following actions:
Add “racial” justice to the University's mission statement. The mission statement will therefore read: To empower students with the knowledge and skills to lead meaningful lives and to advance social, racial, economic, and environmental justice.Implement ongoing, mandatory, quarterly, experiential training and skill-building workshops on Equity, Diversity, Inclusion, and Anti-racism for all Students, Faculty, Staff, Administrators, and Board Members. These efforts will be aimed at filling educational gaps at every level of the institution and creating/practicing a genuinely Anti-racist culture at Antioch University.
Require that all classes are up-to-date with Social Justice and Anti-racist focused curriculums, textbooks, resources, teaching methods, and relational practices. This will require the University to provide coaching/mentoring to every Faculty Member, Administrator, and Staff Member.
Establish sweeping and systematic efforts to hire/admit, retain and create a culture of belonging for BIPOC Students, Faculty, Staff, Administrators, and Board Members. Examples include: increasing salaries and benefits for BIPOC employees of the University; creating substantial scholarship pathways for students, as outlined below (#6); implementing community-building resources and creating a culture of belonging for BIPOC Students by a) establishing multicultural sororities and fraternities, such as the Historically Black Greek Letter organizations known as the Divine Nine (Alpha Phi Alpha, Alpha Kappa Alpha, Omega Psi Phi, Delta Sigma Theta, Kappa Alpha Psi, Phi Beta Sigma, Sigma Gamma Rho, Zeta Phi Beta, and Iota Phi Theta) and the National Association of Latino Fraternal Organizations (NALFO) and b) establishing and funding Student Success initiatives (e.g., My Brother’s Keeper, LULAC, NAACP, and SAAB).Commit to shared decision-making, representative governance, and transparency in strategic planning to ensure that Antioch University’s actions and budget reflect its mission.
Raise funds to provide scholarships to BIPOC Students to address the financial inaccessibility of Antioch University. This will require the University to hire additional staff members to focus on securing financial funding sources.
Establish restorative justice initiatives, including a protocol for reporting and addressing racial prejudice and aggressions that occur at every level of the Antioch University system. This will include creating a system for addressing incidents, using restorative circles and other compassionate, education-focused, reparative models that honor and center the experiences and voices of Marginalized Students, Staff, Faculty, Administrators, and Board Members.
Formalize and continually fund BIPOC Affinity, white Affinity, and Anti-racism groups on all campuses. This will demonstrate and actualize structural support for these groups and for the labor that they are doing for the Community.
Share this petition with as many people as possible. Anyone can sign.
By signing this petition, you are standing with CEDI and demanding that Antioch University become a leader in Anti-racism.
*If you want to donate, please donate on our GoFundMe. You can further support CEDI through sharing your personal stories as a BIPOC/Ally at Antioch here.
Here is CEDI's website, Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, and Linkedin!
www.thecedicircle.com
