Thank you all.

We just wanted to take a moment to thank you all for supporting this petition and struggle with Bryn Mawr's administration to demand that our colleague Kristin be allowed to walk at graduation. We have learned that this policy is called the "marching rule" which bars any student from walking at commencement without completing courses for any reason whatsoever and has been voted on by the faculty and that because of this vote, that there are no exceptions to this marching rule without full course completion. In our meeting we expressed our disappointment with the college administration's inability to acknowledge and repair the harm done and we were told repeatedly that this was a college policy, not the administration's. We supporters see that the combination of this policy with the "required" white-centric Multiculturalism B540 course, that ironically permits racist macro and microaggressions, continues to unduly burden Students of Color (SOC) and isn't required for everyone. To suffer through this course, SOC have 2 choices: to silently check-out by putting on a mask of inauthenticity that slowly eats us alive inside, or, to continuously do the work to confront and educate White professors and classmates in their ingrained biased frameworks. (Not only is this unpaid labor for SOC and students of marginalized experiences, but we pay nearly $5000 in tuition for the "privilege" of sitting in this harmful environment. We SOC and students of marginalized experiences did not come here to do the work of teaching about power and oppression to White professors and students; we expect allied-professors to carry that load and allied-students to do that for each other.) We supporters still maintain that despite a longstanding college policy -- some nebulous entity that we see as a means behind which administration pretend to be powerless -- policies are made by people, and at some point people can change policy. The decision remains that our colleague will not be permitted to walk at Commencement, however we express our gratitude for your support.