September 1, 2017
An Open Letter to Our Students:
You are uniquely capable of making a difference in this world, and we are fully committed to supporting you. As members of the faculty and staff at the School of Arts at California State University San Marcos, we are feeling at once excited to be engaging with you in the new academic year and horrified by the recent events in Charlottesville and the growing number of racist and white supremacist hate crimes around the country.
The mission of the School of Arts is to provide an inclusive, collaborative community where artists, scholars, and students actively engage in developing artistic practices, critical thinking, cultural intelligence, and creativity. Research underscores the vitally important role arts play in developing empathy, critical thinking, and cross-cultural understanding. The arts also nurture hope and resiliency, and cultivate tomorrow’s leaders: you.
We are committed to fostering an environment for making art, sharing ideas, and exchanging views in an open fashion. As a faculty, and staff, we are artists, advocates, activists, researchers, and scholars. We are Asian, Black, Chicano, Latino, Native American,White; we are gay, straight, and bisexual; we are agnostic, atheist, Christian, Humanist, Jewish, and Muslim. Some of us are immigrants, and some of us are first generation in this country. We include grandchildren of WWII, survivors of pogroms and the holocaust, as well as liberators. Some of us served in the military, or had parents who did. We are mothers and daughters, fathers and sons. Some of us are grandparents.
We often disagree with one another. Though not always easy, this is how it should be, as it leads us toward greater understandings. There are some fundamental issues, however, for which we have no room for disagreement – and the condemnation of white supremacy is one of them. We know that white supremacy is not unique to our time. This does not diminish our outrage. We condemn in no uncertain terms the acts of abhorrent and racist white supremacists, including the wielding of confederate and Nazi flags, and the chanting of blatantly anti-Semitic, anti-immigrant, and homophobic slogans.
Silence is not an option we choose. You are safe in our classrooms and offices.
Sincerely,
Tony Allard
Henry Lesperance Alvarez
Christie Ashley
David Avalos
Judy Bauerlein
Jonathan Berman
Bill Bradbury
Dana Burnett
Anya Cloud
Kristine Diekman
Judy Emaus
Eduardo Garcia
Merryl Goldberg
Julie Goldstein
Randy Griswold
Jason Heil
Judit Hersko
Chad Huggins
Mtafiti Imara
Jacquelyn Kilpatrick
Jean Lowe
Marcos Martinez
Kristin Moss
Linda Muse
Karen Schaffman
Tatiana Sizonenko
Deborah Small
Lucy HG Solomon
Sandra Wascher