I am here to talk about the racist incident that happened in Towers that attacked all Indigenous students with racist slurs, and how institutions of bullshit coddling of snowflake racists have led us to this moment (again).
Here, I will outline points that were brought up during the conversation that I would like to address for everyone, especially administrators and staff out there as to why UWEC (AND ALL OTHER PWIs) do not deserve students of color:
- the continuation and perpetuation of racist ideologies through policies and practices
- the persistence of hiring and/or elevating SHITTY FUCKING PEOPLE to positions of power
- the constant fucking repetition of “we need to do our jobs so students can be students” while simultaneously repeating the actions of doing nothing
- the way universities always say “change takes time” when they have the fucking power to change it and make it go by fucking faster, and finally,
- it's been years since I fucking graduated and we're still doing/saying the same shit that they told me when I was here.
I will leave you at the end with a list of demands that I believe students, faculty, and staff should adopt and probably send en masse to the administration until they fucking listen. But what do I know about organized protest????
1. The continuation and perpetuation of racist ideologies through policies and practices
Racist incidents continue to exist,
survive, perpetuate, and continue through the racist ideologies that
universities have engrained in their existence. People of color (I mean, staff,
faculty, administration, and students) and all marginalized folx were never
meant to make it this far into the education system. It was not built for
people with marginalized identities. We were just kinda added and expected to
adapt. We are not here to adapt. We are here to claim what is ours. We are here
to be loud, proud, and fucking annoying.
Administrators have the audacity to say “this
is how we have always done it and this is how we will do it” or do some stupid
shit like “this is not a value of our university.” Bitch it is now, cause it
was perpetrated by one of your students. You are breeding peoples’ ability to
spread, spew, and violently harass others with oppressive, hate-filled language
and actions by abiding by “the rules” all the time.
FUCK. YOUR. RULES.
FUCK YOUR POLICIES.
Your bureaucratic means and ways of
conducting investigations and the intricacies of the channels means literally nothing
without the actions. This event is one event of the many that have been
reported over the years.
Do you know what happens to the victims
typically? I’ll tell you: they report, get an apology email, go through the
investigation that requires them to retell their experience 39304850945 times,
get interrogated about their experience, and did I mention they still have to
be students? If they live on campus they still have to live on a floor that is
unsafe. They have to walk the halls, walk outside like it won’t kill them. And
by the end, they are just so exhausted with everything that they just want it
all to stop.
That’s what administrators want, because it
is always too much work to do actual social justice work in pursuing perpetrators
and hunting down people. (Additionally, I’d like to add that the people who are
typically responsible for actually doing the ground work for these types of
Hate/Bias response organizations are marginalized folks, and the responsibility
and burden gets put on them. This is shitty because they also have full-time
jobs that require attending to, and Hate/bias response organizations and the
people who make up these teams are only supposed to dedicate 15-20% of their
time to Hate/Bias response. THIS. NEEDS. TO. BE. A. FULL. TIME. FUCKING.
POSITION. IF. YOU. CARE. SO. MUCH. ABOUT. CATCHING. PERPETRATORS.) #Duh
2. The persistence of hiring and/or elevating SHITTY FUCKING PEOPLE to positions of power
Speaking of people who inhabit/are a part
of hate/bias teams, we need to sit down and have a little fucking talk about
this. I’d like to give you a little story time: Once upon a time, I was a
student at UWEC and was almost sexually assaulted RIGHT OUTSIDE of my dorm (in
front of a male RA who was at the front desk and making eye contact with me at
the time and did nothing to stop it but whatevs). I remember distinctly someone
within the group of guys calling to their group of friends and saying someone’s
name. After I submitted a report to our response team, someone reached out and
after a long string of emails, gave me a few individuals to pick out as this person
whose name the group of guys called out. The individual that stood out to me
was NOT the individual that tried to sexually assault me, but was a witness/friend
who was in the friend group who was watching when this happened. He was a
bystander. The individual who was conducting the investigation told me that in
order for the team to bring in the individual for questioning, I had to accuse
him of being the person who tried to sexually assault me. This individual also
told me that they had gone and talked to this guy’s RA and the RA said that this
guy “didn’t hang out with” that type of crowd and “would never” do something
like that. Sounds like someone’s siding on the side of perpetrators, hm….
So instead of pursuing it further, I
decided to fucking stop. I was fucking tired of telling the same old story
again and again and getting nothing out of it but institutional road blocks.
This person who told me I had to accuse a
witness of sexually assaulting me is still currently on the BIRT team at UWEC.
This person also has a history of threatening students of color with their future
endeavors and implying that they can jeopardize it. I’ll just let that speak for itself.
BUT ADDITIONALLY: we have to fucking stop
elevating shitty fucking people to positions of power where they do EVEN MORE
DAMAGE. I’m calling out the entire campus for its lack of diversity in hiring
unless it’s for a diversity position. I’m looking @ u UWEC Housing and Res
Life. I’m looking at the ways in which
WE PROTECT SHITTY FUCKING ADMINISTRATION AND FACULTY WHO DO NOTHING BUT DO
THESE THINGS:
- -
play devils advocate. Last time
I checked the devil didn’t need a fucking lawyer
- -
show graphic and traumatizing
video for the sake of trauma porn (aka traumatizing people into believing
racism/genocide existed and STILL EXISTS). It is only for the benefit of the
majority population at the detriment of marginalized folks.
- -
Entertain the idea of “both
sides.” You want to entertain the “good side” of slavery? How about you meet my
fucking fist? Or better yet, meet a letter calling for your resignation!
- -
Sit back and do nothing. (“If
you are neutral in situations of injustice, you have chosen the side of the
oppressor.” –Desmond Tutu). You are just as bad as the perpetrators of these crimes
if you let them happen ON YOUR WATCH, IN FRONT OF YOUR EYES, AND ON YOUR DAMN
DIME! Stop paying pieces of shit.
- -
Rely on students to do the
educating. (I thought you got a PH.d? Why the fuck are you having students
teach? Are you paying them to do your bidding?)
- -
There’s probably more. Feel
free to add.
3) the constant fucking repetition of “we
need to do our jobs so students can be students” while simultaneously repeating
the actions of doing nothing.
Faculty, staff, and admins are always
saying “we want to do our jobs so students can be students” but then continue
to do nothing? If students are doing your job so well, why don’t you just give
them your job?
Students are constantly performing
emotional, mental, and educational labor for the sake of everyone else and
rarely for themselves. The reason why students of marginalized identities are
advocating for themselves is typically because their lives are at stake and
their own humanity is on the line if they do not speak up.
During the panel, we heard students say that
they are willing to educate others on it. This should not be their jobs. This
should be the jobs of the administrators and faculty who have students in their
class, to do the fucking educating. Students should not be performing labor FOR
FREE for the sake of the university and giving a “cultural experience” for
their white counterparts. We are not knowledge machines that shit bricks of
cultural awareness.
When I say PAY STUDENTS FOR THEIR LABOR, I
fucking mean it. I don’t mean with shitty food, I mean cold hard fucking cash
(in a way that in no way, shape, or form, fucks up their scholarships or
financial aid awards).
This I the fucking least you can do.
4) “Change takes time.”
It wouldn’t take so much time if you did
your job correctly, and you held your colleagues and supervisors and bosses to
a higher standard. It wouldn’t take so much time if white people were willing
to sacrifice their jobs and legality for the sake of a better future for their
students that they claim to care about so much.
“Change takes time.” Is a copout. It is a
FLAT FUCKING LIE. If you think about it, realistically, if you threw the
bureaucracy out the window and had enough people to back you up on it (*cough*
unions) you would be able to change the fucked up policies and make change go
fucking faster.
Change takes time is a copout because it is
THE NUMBER ONE WAY UNIVERSITIES WILL WAIT STUDENTS OUT. IT’S WRITTEN IN STONE FOR UNIVERSITIES TO SAY
THIS FUCKING SHITTTTTTT. THEY WILL WAIT YOU OUT BECAUSE THEY KNOW THAT AFTER
YOU, THE PEOPLE AFTER YOU WILL BE QUIET, AND THAT EVEN IF THEY’RE LOUD THEY
JUST HAVE TO PRETEND TO MAKE LITTLE CHANGES UNTIL YOU GRADUATE AND ONCE YOU
GRADUATE THEY’RE OUTTA THE CLEAR OR THEY JUST HAVE TO WAIT UNTIL THEIR CRUSTY
ASSES RETIRE AND THEN THEY’RE OUTTA HERE SO THEY CAN REPEAT THE SAME BULLSHIT
OVER AND OVER AGAIN BECAUSE “THIS IS HOW WE’VE ALWAYS DONE THINGS” AND “THIS IS
WHAT THE POLICIES SAY” AND “WE ARE TRYING OUR HARDEST” AND “CHANGE TAKES TIME”
IT ALL COMES BACK FULL CIRCLE AND WHY DO I SAY THIS?
5) because the events that unfolded in the
Woodland Theatre on September 18th, 2019 were the exact (I mean like
almost 200% verbatim) words and promised actions I was given when I was a
student.
My name is Kab Vwj and I was a student at
UWEC from Fall of 2013 to the Fall of 2017.
Before I come to UWEC, there was an
incident in Towers that was publicized that targeted Hmoob people. It was a
sign that was taped to a bathroom mirror that said Hmoob people made smelly
food, take Hmong pictures, and only hang out with Hmong people. When I was at
UWEC, I was aware of even more incidents that had occurred before my time, and
during my time, some of which was directed towards me. Signs written on doors,
signs being slipped into showcases, n
words being screamed across the halls, Trump enthusiasts spewing their BULLSHIT
all over campus, being spit on, being told we needed to calm down, being told
we were threatening, making people cry and having them come for us, staging
protests and being told we were “fire hazards”, experiences in class being
invalidated, faculty and staff being told to take on more mentees of color,
white saviors coming out of their White Savior bat cage to save us poor POC, a
merging of OMA and BB that ended only with horizontal oppression of the most
vulnerable and visible students of color on campus. All orchestrated and perpetuated
by the institution.
This incident is not new. Racism, sexism,
xenophobia are not new to UWEC. It is woven in the fabric of UWEC and their
policies.
These policies have not changed, though
people have come and gone.
During my time at UWEC, I died. There are
deep, dark, parts of me that I will never speak of when it comes to UWEC. UWEC
haunts me to this very day in the ways that it forced me to change who I was to
become stronger and more resilient. My personality is not something I am proud
of, it is something I had to morph myself into in order to survive and stay
alive. My spirit, my soul, and my well-being was damaged there in ways that are
irreparable. I wanted to die when I was there; UWEC is a black hole of trauma,
and its ancestry can be felt through every inch of its fake beauty. Every time
I come back to UWEC, I am drained by simply being there. That place has a lot
of reconciliation to do with the spirits that it has trapped there and the
hauntings of the ancestors they have pissed off. A part of my spirit still
exists there and it is not a piece I enjoy visiting until reconciliation has
been done.
I want to leave a part of me at UWEC that
is good though. A little nugget that I hope people continue, not as a part of
my legacy, but the legacy that Mizzou taught me when I was at UWEC.
During my time at UWEC, we created a list
of demands that were never met. It may have been the vague nature of the
bulletpoints, but I have better ones now. @University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire,
please see below.
- Create a CAMPUS WIDE land recognition statement, but only if you’re actually committed to the lives and well-being of your Indigenous students. If you aren’t, then don’t even fucking bother. If you want to be super high speed, you might also want to add something about recognizing that the US is built on enslaved Africans and genocide of Indigenous peoples…???
- Update your policies on smudging in the residence halls. Actually, jk, do better than that. You are on Ojibwe land—enable smudging for all buildings on campus.
- How can you honor Indigenous peoples? Give them back their land.
- Wearing the Washington team’s mascot is hate speech. Simple as that. White people wanna be angry about not being able to be racist? Hmm I thought you said you supported your Indigenous students. @Chancellor Schmidt.
- I do not care about the processes that you have in place for finding justice. Tear down those policies and processes that do no good to victims, and only protect the racist.
- Expel students for being racist, sexist, xenophobic pieces of shit. You want to increase your diversity on campus? Let racists know they will not be tolerated there.
- When hiring, you might want to know how candidates will contribute to a safe environment for students of marginalized identities to thrive. Just a thought. MAKE. IT. A. MANDATORY. QUESTION.
- When hiring individuals to teach EDI courses, they should have the correct qualifications to teach it such as: demonstrating an ability to do anti-racist work within communities, have members on committees that are already invovled in these efforts (not just your typical joe) AND INVOLVE STUDENTS.
- WHEN YOU HIRE DIVERSE FACULTY AND STAFF, YOU TAKE ON THEIR DIVERSE ISSUES. YOU MUST BE PREPARED TO FUCKING PROPERLY SUPERVISE AND MENTOR THESE FACULTY AND STAFF AND NOT FORCE THEM TO LEAN ON EACH OTHER FOR EMOTIONAL SUPPORT *ALL* THE TIME. THERE SHOULD ALREADY BE POLICIES IN PLACE TO PROTECT THESE FACULTY AND STAFF BECAUSE THEY WILL BE SCRUTINIZED FOR EVERYTHING THEY DO AND SAY.
- WHEN HIRING, CHALLENGE YOURSELF TO MOVE BEYOND "QUALIFICATIONS" AS REQUIREMENTS, AND LOOK AT BACKGROUND EXPERIENCE AS A SUPPLEMENT TOO.
- This is just general good practice and accountability for you shitbags who just hire people cause you know them and overlook qualified candidates: When you do not hire a candidate for a position, write a statement for that individual as to why they did not receive that position or why they were not selected. This is just a professional courtesy.
- When admitting students, it’ll be easier off of the bat if you just ask “Are you a white supremacist/racist/Nazi piece of shit/rapist or a sympathizer to any of the above?” to save you the heartache of having to expel them later. (You might also want to reflect the demographics of the community that surrounds your university...hmm what a fucking thought).
- Hire more staff/faculty of marginalized identities. These marginalized faculty/staff/administration will more than likely be seen as mentors for the marginalized identity that they inhabit so…why don’t you just offer them more money off of the bat???
- Want to hear student voices? Put them on your committees, your hate and bias response teams, and pay them for it. Give them class credit. Stop asking for student voices and shrugging when they have to leave because you’re inadequate at retaining them.
- Recruiting is not the same as retention. You should be more worried about retention at this point. Students of color are telling other students of color not to come to UWEC. Be worried.
- Mandatory training for everyone. Every. Body. HR will make it work. And not a ONE TIME deal. CONTINUOUS. Talk about Queer theory, Critical Race Theory, and the complexities of identities within the 21st Century (IN AND OUTSIDE of the US)
- Education is not enough. Education paired with action is necessary. We are beyond the point of letting racists be safe or comfortable anymore. If you claim to want to make it safe for HISTORICALLY MARGINALIZED FOLKS you have to be okay with taking risk on the white people you will lose in the process. Your actions will speak louder than your words.
- Allocate proper funds to the offices that serve marginalized folks. We all know they're always fucking struggling.
- Take a stance. Are you anti-racist or not? Are you a sanctuary school?
- The student and faculty code should have a section on anti-racist/sexist/homophobic/transphobic/classist...ETC. behavior and SPELLED OUT consequences that come with the violation of the code. Too many "types of behavior" to count? Why don't you use your hate/bias response team to highlight the most common and start from there?
- Police accountability. Have you thought about what that relation looks like to students/faculty/staff/admin who have been historically abused at the hands of the police? What does that relationship look like on a campus and what is the role?
(If anyone wants more ideas for Lists of
Demands, please visit thedemands.org)
These points are not just for UWEC. They
are for the entire UW system, the entirety of the United States education
system too. I am exhausted with having the same fucking conversations ever
fucking year about the same fucking shit. Of being told by my peers who are
still at UWEC that nothing has changed. I thought that by now, everyone on
campus who has had to live through these conversations would be fucking tired
too. But I guess they’re just waiting for the next incident to tell us how
sorry they are, or they’re waiting for us to fucking die before they do
anything about it.
Universities are lucky to have students of color choose them. We bring color into their lives and celebrate life in ways that white people can only yearn for (that's why they're so keen on stealing so much fucking shit...and people). We were never meant to be here and yet we are, and we are fucking killing it. We are ready to replace the administration that enabled racists to get away with taking our humanity, and we are not letting anyone, anything stand in our way (so get the fuck out of the way). PWIs may need us, but we do not need them.
And lastly, for those of you who read this far,
I want to point out this: I’m not doing this out of hatred for my alma mater.
It may seem that way. I am doing this out of love. I am doing this out of
disappointment for the glorious university that I thought would know by now,
how to answer the call when it comes to accountability and justice. I see and seek out so
much more potential out of UWEC than I ever got out of it. I made it a point to
make that place better than when I arrived, and I feel disappointed in every
administrator I’ve come into contact with since graduating that they are still
upholding practices that I thought had died when I was a student. I’ve had such
negative experiences at UWEC and I grew into a badass bitch despite all of the
trauma (no thanks to the individuals who attempted to and/or inadvertently tried
to stop me from succeeding). But if it is true that y’all are on a new path to
accountability, transparency, communication, and true change…then you need to
get rid of your bureaucratic legacies and replace them with truth and radical
policies that will make racists afraid, not empowered.
