https://dearlafayettecolle.wixsite.com/website/ourdemands

Dear Lafayette College's Administration and the Board of Trustees, 

We, Dear Lafayette College, are concerned, disappointed, and frustrated by our institution. Lafayette College continues to fail in addressing the rampant anti-Blackness and institutional racism on College Hill. For decades, Lafayette College has repeatedly shown us that Black students, Black faculty, and Black community members do not matter. This has continued to go against the values, vision, and mission of our institution. 

We acknowledge the strides taken by the college in recent years to establish a more diverse, inclusive, and safe space for all students. However, these surface-level changes are not and will not be enough. We will not accept hosting continually one-hour racial conversations such as, “A Community Conversation About Racial Injustice”, to be a pivotal milestone in structural progression nor does it support and uplift Black students on College Hill. The low staffing of Black faculty (i.e. 11 out of 259 or 4.2% of full-time instructional staff) cannot provide an adequate academic presence for lasting cultural change to our college environment. Furthermore, the 3rd displacement of the Portlock Black Cultural Center does not show us what “Cur Non” represents. This pattern continues to precede our time at Lafayette and will continue to persist if nothing changes. Over twenty-five years ago, David A. Portlock reviewed the lack of progress made by the college to address diversity and inclusion for Black students. If his questions about the college’s advancement were to be addressed now, it would be as following:

David A. Portlock: “[A half of a century] has passed since the establishment of the Association of Black Collegians...What have we really accomplished in [50 years]? Are we a critical part of the Lafayette community?”

Dear Lafayette College: To answer your question: “Are we a critical part of the Lafayette community?” WE respond with a firm “no”.  What we have accomplished is the continuous cycle of displacing Black students, Black culture, and Black history.

For more than half of a century, WE have been ignored by administration when publishing manifestos, leading critical racial and intersectional conversations and making viable structural changes in policies. Sadly, WE continue to bear the labor of our college’s transformation. Capitalizing off of Black students’ labor is not progress, it has desensitized us to the harm and abuse produced by academia. Black students are forced to be scholars, student leaders, activists, and changemakers, and at the same time, achieve academic success in our classes. Though we are willing to actively participate in the conversation, it is not our job to educate the student body, faculty, and administration. The work is solely up to our institution and their determination to progress towards a better and safer community for all Black and marginalized students. 

This past year alone has shown us that time does not dissipate insidious racism, instead, it unearths the ongoing work that still needs to be done. On May 25th, George Floyd was brutally murdered in front of the world. Four days later, Lafayette College had released a statement against racism and inequality:

May 29, 2020

“It is not enough simply to bear witness to racism and acknowledge that it exists. As an educational institution, Lafayette College has a role to play in revealing and countering its effects. That is a task that I promise you we will take up when we meet again.”

-- The last sentences of Alison Byerly’s Message to the Lafayette Community

Nonetheless, there were no administrative actions to further this conversation. It was and is once again left up to Black students to create campus-wide dialogues on systemic racism. On the 8th of June 2020, three Black women in the Student Government Association had formed a campus-wide campaign known as Lafayette Students for Racial Justice. Fourteen days later, Black.at.Laf, an Instagram account, appeared on students, faculty, and community members’ feed. The purpose of this account was to expose the insidious racial violence and oppression that continues to thrive in our academic spaces. Over 130 personal experiences posted on Black.at.Laf, demonstrated the perpetuation of fascist structures and behaviors on College Hill. Nothing has changed and it is insulting for the institution to think that sustainable progress has been made.

Thus, Dear Lafayette College has solely formed to require that our institution implement immediate structural changes that will reduce the explicit and implicit systemic racism on College Hill. We expect Lafayette College to hold itself accountable and meet the following demands of 1969, 2016, and 2020 brought by members of the Black community. We refuse to give our institution more time and space to harm Black students at the cost of their well being and experience. Lafayette College, we expect you to respond immediately with a proposed timeline for all demands to be publicly announced by 5:00 pm on October 23rd, 2020. If we are not contacted by this time, then we will continue to liberate ourselves through appropriate actions. 

Dear Lafayette College

Black-led Coalition

October 13th, 2020