This message was sent to Deans, Associate Deans, and Department Heads

Dear Colleagues,

I am writing to share an update on two recent bias incidents on the Storrs campus.

On Friday, a swastika was found drawn on the wall of the men’s bathroom in the Biology/Physics Building. Later that day, the University was also informed of graffiti of an anti-Black racial slur discovered in the same facility. These actions are abhorrent and harmful to the diverse students, faculty, and staff who call UConn home.

We are appreciative of the individuals who reported the graffiti to the University through inform.uconn.edu. The UConn Police are investigating the incident and University administration is following bias response protocol. The graffiti has been removed, after the police were able to document it. At this time, the individual or individuals responsible have not been identified. Although it is likely that additional investigative leads will be limited, should the individuals responsible be identified, we will share that information.

Our bias response protocol has several objectives, including raising awareness when these incidents occur, providing information about the University’s response, and offering resources to support affected communities and educate our community. Given the public location of this incident, we cannot determine all of the populations who may have encountered this graffiti, so we are reaching this broader group to ask for your help in sharing this information and resources with your faculty, staff, and students.

A list of resources to consult:

InForm
Office for Diversity and Inclusion
African American Cultural Center
Africana Studies Institute
Dean of Students
Faith at UConn
Hillel
Center for Judaic Studies and Contemporary Life
These incidents are troubling and show we still have work to do in building a community and culture that is inclusive of all our diverse members. We appreciate your partnership as leaders in identifying bias incidents and connecting your communities to resources to recognize and respond to acts that threaten the safety and well-being of members of our community.

If you have further questions, you are welcome to reach out to any member of the Provost’s Office leadership team, the Office for Diversity and Inclusion, and the Dean of Students.

Sincerely,
Carl

Carl Lejuez
Provost and Executive Vice President for Academic Affairs

To the UConn Community:

As you know, last weekend the word “Black,” in the “Black Lives Matter” message that was painted on the Spirit Rock on the Storrs campus was scratched out and replaced with “All,” altering the statement to read “All Lives Matter.”

We write to share an update: After reviewing the incident, including video footage in which the license plate of the individual responsible was visible, the university determined that the person has no known current connection to UConn – meaning they are not a student or an employee – and they do not live in Mansfield.

While we are relieved that the person responsible is not a member of our community, that doesn’t change what took place, which we saw as an unmistakable attempt to antagonize and demean people on our campuses, especially in the context of national events. We deeply regret the harm that this incident has had on members of our community.

After consulting with the state’s attorney’s office, it was determined that this harmful act didn’t constitute a crime under state statute and no charges would apply. Even so, painting the Spirit Rock is a campus tradition that is intended solely for UConn students and student organizations. We will update our policy on the rock to reflect this. While that by itself won’t prevent something similar from happening, it is our hope that it will give the university greater leverage in addressing it.

Sincerely,

Franklin Tuitt, VP & Chief Diversity Officer

Michael Gilbert, VP for Student Affairs

The Africana Studies Institute, the Asian and Asian American Studies Institute, the American Studies Program, the Center for Judaic Studies, El Instituto (Institute of Latina/o, Caribbean, and Latin American Studies), the Human Rights Institute, the ​Institute for Collaboration on Health, Intervention, and Policy (InCHIP), ​the Thomas J. Dodd Research Center, the Women’s, Gender and Sexuality Studies Program, the African American Cultural Center, the Asian American Cultural Center, the Puerto Rican/Latin American Cultural Center, the Rainbow Center, and the Women’s Center are in solidarity with our international students affected by the new U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) regulations that restrict students who are on F-1 and M-1 nonimmigrant visas. We find these draconian measures to have little to do with public health, especially as they impact students who have never left the country since the pandemic began. Rather, they are an extension of the Trump administration’s “zero-tolerance” policies on immigration. We are outraged by the continued racist and xenophobic language used by the President and his administration to blame the pandemic on Asian peoples, as well as the implicit and explicit demonization of immigrants as a threat to national security through the following policy attempts during his administration:

● Undermining asylum

● Banning Muslims

● Reducing refugee admissions

● Attacking the diversity visa program

● Imposing a “wealth test” for immigrants with legal status

● The pregnancy ban

● Increase in denying and delaying worker requests

● Slowing green card applications

● Closing overseas USCIS offices

● Pushing large numbers of people into deportation hearings.

● Attacking DACA and TPS

● Increasing costs for immigrants

This new ruling is yet another attack that targets the most vulnerable in our global communities. It is also a direct assault on universities, which are seen by the administration (correctly) as institutional obstacles to the ideology of white nationalism. The ruling also incentivizes students and instructors to jeopardize their health since individual students risk deportation if none of their classes meet in person, even if they attend institutions like UConn that are not teaching exclusively online.

The Africana Studies Institute, Asian and Asian American Studies Institute, the American Studies Program, the Center for Judaic Studies, El Instituto, the Human Rights Institute, the ​Institute for Collaboration on Health, Intervention, and Policy (InCHIP), ​the Thomas J. Dodd Research Center, the Women’s, Gender and Sexuality Studies Program, the African American Cultural Center, the Asian American Cultural Center, the Puerto Rican/Latin American Cultural Center, the Rainbow Center, and the Women’s Center are committed to supporting the inclusivity of our international faculty, staff, postdoctoral fellows, graduate and undergraduate students. We are concerned that this policy will further reinforce institutionalized xenophobia in higher education and we ask that the university administration join us and do everything in its power to thwart this ruling. We will certainly do everything we can to protect international students, faculty, and staff at the University of Connecticut.

In solidarity,
Melina Pappademos, Director, Africana Studies Institute
Jason O. Chang, Director, Asian and Asian American Studies Institute
Chris Vials, Director, American Studies Program
Avinoam Patt, Director, Center for Judaic Studies
Samuel Martinez, Director, El Instituto (Institute of Latina/o, Caribbean, and Latin American Studies)
Kathryn Libal, Director, Human Rights Institute

Amy Gorin, Director, Institute for Collaboration on Health, Intervention, and Policy (InCHIP)
Glenn Mitoma, Director, Thomas J. Dodd Research Center
Sherry Zane, Director, Women’s, Gender and Sexuality Studies Program
Willena Kimpson Price, Director, African American Cultural Center
Angela Rola, Director, Asian American Cultural Center
Fany D. Hannon, Director, Puerto Rican/Latin American Cultural Center
Kelsey O’Neil, Director, Rainbow Center
Kathleen Holgerson, Director, Women’s Center

First-Year Writing Program, Department of English, The University of Connecticut

Statement in Support of Black Lives Matter

The First-Year Writing program in the Department of English at the University of Connecticut affirms the Department of English’s statement in support of recent protests against police brutality, systemic racism, and anti-Black violence.a)

We acknowledge the long history of and continuing violence against Black, Indigenous, and People of Color, most recently the murders of Ahmaud Arbery, Breonna Taylor, and George Floyd. We acknowledge, as well, the long history of both named and unnamed victims of racism in the United States.

We recognize that writing program instruction and writing program administration are disproportionately white. Recent scholarship in Writing Studies/Rhetoric/Composition has drawn attention to the lack of antiracist practices in writing classrooms and in writing program administration, to the detriment of students and instructors (see García de Müeller and Ruiz, 2015). As a group of Writing Program Administrators (both graduate and faculty) who are white, we recognize that we are in a privileged position and cannot represent those who have been shut out of positions of power like ours and whose voices have been silenced by racism in our institutions. We are committed to dismantling anti-racist practices in our classrooms and our program.

However, rather than taking over the conversation, we would like to hear from you. We ​invite you to contribute to this shared document​. We want to avoid speaking ​about​, and instead create a space in which we can speak together. We envision this document as an evolving set of practices for an anti-racist classroom. Please add your suggestions for how First-Year Writing can support you or work with you to support and foster antiracist teaching and administrative practices during the coming academic year.

We have compiled a list of resources below on writing instruction and racial justice — all of which are available for free online — and we strongly encourage you to review them as a first step toward developing and sustaining anti-racist classroom practices.

In solidarity,

Brenda Brueggemann & Lisa Blansett,
Co-Directors, First-Year Writing Program, Department of English

Réme Bohlin, Alex Gatten, Psyche Z. Ready, Kathryn Warrender-Hill
Assistant Directors and graduate students in Writing Studies and the FYW Program

Resources:

Banks, Adam.​ ​“2015 CCCC Chair’s Address: Ain’t No Walls behind the Sky, Baby! Funk, Flight, Freedom.”​ ​College Composition and Communication,​ Vol. 67, No. 2, 2015, pp. 267-279 (​Video on Youtube.)

CCCC.​ ​“Students’ Right to Their Own Language.”​ ​College English​,​ ​Vol. 36, No. 6, 1975, pp. 709-726

CCCC. “​CCCC Guideline on the National Language Policy​.” Conference on College Composition and Communication (CCCC), March 1988, Updated 1992, Revised March 2015.

CCCC. “​CCCC Statement on Ebonics​.” Conference on College Composition and Communication (May 1998, revised May 2016).

Cedillo, Christina. ​“What Does It Mean to Move?: Race, Disability, and Critical Embodiment Pedagogy,”​ Composition Forum,​ 49, 2018.

Condon, Frankie, and Vershawn Ashanti Young, editors. ​Performing Antiracist Pedagogy in Rhetoric, Writing, and Communication.​ ​Fort Collins, CO, WAC Clearinghouse, 2017.

García de Müeller, Genevieve and Iris Ruiz.​ ​“Race, Silence, and Writing Program Administration: A Qualitative Study of US College Writing Programs.”​ ​Writing Program Administration-Journal of the Council of Writing Program Administrators​, Vol. 40, Issue 2, 2017, pp. 19-39.

Inoue, Asao B.​ ​Antiracist Writing Assessment Ecologies: Teaching and Assessing Writing for a Socially Just Future.​ Fort Collins, CO, The WAC Clearinghouse, 2015.

Inoue, Asao B. ​“Classroom Writing Assessment as an Antiracist Practice: Confronting White Supremacy in the Judgments of Language.”​ ​Pedagogy​, vol. 19, issue 3, 2019.

Inoue, Asao B. “2019 Chair’s Address: How Do We Language So People Stop Killing Each Other, Or What Do We Do About White Language Supremacy?” College Composition and Communication, 71(2), 352-369. (​Video on Youtube.​)

Kendi, Ibram X.​ ​An Anti-Racist Reading List.
Poe, Mya, Asao B. Inoue, and Norbert Elliot, editors. ​Writing Assessment, Social Justice, and

the Advancement of Opportunity​.​ Fort Collins, CO, WAC Clearinghouse, 2018. Scaffolded Anti-Racist Resources

A letter to our students and trainees:

The mission of the Department of Molecular and Cell Biology is to provide an educational and research environment that is supportive and welcoming of all individuals across race, gender, sexual orientation, ability, and religion. We strongly believe that education is a transformative experience for our students and trainees, and that their advances benefit the communities of our department, UConn, the nation and world. We endeavor to foster a learning community that is inclusive to all individuals, and to support you in your educational and personal journeys while at UConn and into the future.

It is not enough to not be racist. We must be anti-racist in our beliefs and in our actions. That is why the Department of Molecular and Cell Biology at UConn continues to support and amplify voices of reason and science at UConn, and the scientific community at large. In this era of misinformation, science and evidence-based critical thinking can help solve national and global issues to make our whole society better.

We are outraged and saddened by the continued violence and discrimination towards Black communities in our society. The adversarial responses to peaceful public protests are outrageous and disheartening. We acknowledge that white privilege and implicit bias negatively impact minority communities. We acknowledge that health, wealth, and educational disparities and inequities of opportunity exist in our society. We vow to continue to work to address these issues in our professional and personal roles in our community. Like President Obama, we see the “limitless potential” in each of you, and you deserve a place to work and learn where you can reach your utmost potential.

Black Lives Matter.

Please feel free to contact us if you should have concerns about any of these issues.