I am a St. Louis local who has spent my whole life in the great state of Missouri. I didn't have the financial resources to go to Washington University in St. Louis (WashU), a private university consistently ranked among the best 50 universities in the nation. This petition is a humble request to ask WashU, our beacon of knowledge in the greater St. Louis area, to make some of its library resources available to the general public. 

There is a rich set of e-learning resources curated by the WashU Library System, in subjects such as Arts & Science, Finance, Engineering, Social Studies, just to name a few. For example:

Arts & Science

• American History
• Film & Media Studies

Finance

• Financial & Economic Research
• Private Equities

Science & Engineering

• Proxy Server & Computer Networks
• Technical Writing

Social Studies

• Gun Violence in America
• Human Rights Research

I recently asked WashU if they could make the digital archives available to the St. Louis community, for two reasons:

1. Public access to high-quality educational resources is key to the US educational system and US's competitiveness in the world as a thought leader
2. Many private universities around the country have already made their teaching and research available online (e.g., MIT). I don't want St. Louis to be a desert of knowledge while there is actually a world-class university in our backyard. 

So far, I have got no response from WashU. Hopefully this petition can lead to a fairer distribution of educational resources in the St. Louis community, if not the nation in general.