Students seek answers at Dec. 9 forum
More than 200 students, as well as faculty and staff, gathered in Fraser Hall on Friday, Dec. 7 to seek answers from WWU administrators on questions regarding what they perceive as campus safety issues, threat notification, continued institutional racism, and more.
On hand to answer the questions at the forum were WWU President Sabah Randhawa, Provost Brent Carbajal, all WWU vice presidents, as well as college deans and other administrators.
The forum lasted over two hours; at its conclusion, students presented a list of requests they viewed as steps forward on the issues discussed at the forum; that request is online here.
In addition, the Black Student Union and African Caribbean Club requested the following:
- Hire and support more black faculty
- Cluster hire faculty
- Prioritize alignment of identity and subject matter in teaching assignments
- Show active support for clubs supporting students with marginalized identities
- Fund an annual WWU Black History Month
- Support student group programming for Martin Luther King Jr. Day and Black History Month
- Administration needs to meet quarterly with African Caribbean Club and Black Student Union representatives
- Recognize that the Board of Trustees and the senior administrators do not understand the experiences of black students
- Evaluate tenured professors who use hateful language
- Recruit and retain black students at WWU at the level of national share of population (about 14 percent)
- Create a task force to support all minority students
- Hire black counselors of all genders
- Support students of color in club leadership roles.
President Randhawa and the administrators took the comprehensive lists of requests and will begin working through those in advance of the next student forum scheduled for Jan. 18.