List Of Demands:

1. Support from the University during a bi-annual Stand Up Speak Up Day of Solidarity in which the Suffolk community supports students in reporting injustices they’ve faced from faculty, administration, and/or staff

2. Annual in-person trainings mandated for all faculty, administration, and staff regarding implicit bias and cultural diversity. 

3. A mandatory section (1-3 sentences) on every syllabus where information about how students can speak to their professor and contest their grades must be included. This will create a fair, transparent, process in regards to grading and will support students as they try to navigate the power dynamic without fear of unfair grading as a consequence. 

4. Start the transparent hiring process of a Chief Diversity Officer by the beginning of the Spring semester of 2017. In order to ensure that there is a key point person who is working on these specific issues only.

5. Hire more faculty, staff, and administrators who are of color, or come from other marginalized backgrounds. In order to ensure that students have options of who they can speak to about experiences or difficulties they are having.

6. Suffolk University to review and amend their policies for appointing the position of our new President. All future positions should be determined by the institution’s community as a whole (this includes students, staff, and faculty of diverse backgrounds).

7. Suffolk University to publicly declare themselves as a sanctuary campus to protect students who are undocumented immigrants. 

We are demanding these actions take place because:

1. We  want to stress the importance of holding faculty accountable for the things that go on in the classroom such as:

   • Tokenizing students from marginalized backgrounds

   • Having no consequence that is apparent for their comments

   • Faculty not wanting to open up class discussions about the oppression of certain identities

   • Professors feeling entitled to information about their student’s identities and lifestyles

2. Our goal as a student body is for these changes to come in the near future of Suffolk:

   • Increased programs and resources that will produce higher retention rates for all marginalized students, particularly Black Men.

   • More funding for the Office of Diversity Services and more staff to lead trainings or hold conversations

   • Creating a more accepting space for low income students in classes in which professors expect students to pick up extraneous costs and miss work in order to do outside projects

   • Ensuring that students who speak up against their professor’s transgressions will not be penalized in their grades. Professors should be expected to maintain a professional and appropriate relationship with the student following an incident in order to make that student feel safe throughout the semester.

   • Begin to recognize and acknowledge the ongoing acts of violence and oppression of black lives in our nation as an institution.

   • Faculty and staff having productive and informed conversations with students about matters of social justice and oppression

   • Create and implement an Institutional Diversity Office in order to increase competency issues on race and oppression of different marginalized groups.

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