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Statements & Letters

June 03, 2020,

Dear Students + all of our Toro family,

The disturbing and tragic killings across the United States—most notably Ahmaud Arbery, Breonna Taylor and George Floyd—have affected families of color in profound ways and added to our collective grief. We acknowledge that these acts of violence are the product of long-term structural and systemic racism. We also acknowledge the heartbreak, fear, exhaustion, and anger that is affecting our students, staff, faculty, administration, and community. Raising our voices in protest is critical, as is channeling our energies into the productive broadening and sustaining of organized nonviolent actions toward effective change.

The past few months have created extraordinary challenges for all of us and especially for you, our students, as we navigate the realities that the novel coronavirus and COVID-19 have brought with them. Though the university is open, you have been strangely and suddenly shorn from usual contact with us. We know many of you have taken on new roles--care-givers to your family, only earners, teachers of children also schooling remotely, and coping with new realities—staying home, sharing space and equipment, losing jobs, and coping with illness. Without the familiar choices and routines, including access to our beautiful campus and the physical connections with each other, we have created new meaning together. Determined, you finished Covid Spring strong.

We want you to know that your faculty honor your humanity, families, dreams, and communities. We respect your courage, dignity, feelings, protests, strengths, struggles, and vulnerabilities. We are committed in our roles as CSUDH community members, faculty leaders, educators, advocates, and activists to free speech, shared decision making, and taking meaningful action. As part of the CSU system, the largest and most diverse university system in the United States serving nearly 500,000 students through 50,000 faculty and staff, and of the Toro family, we will continue to live the CSU motto – Vox veritas vita/ speak the truth as a way of life. We encourage each of you to embrace the spirit in our original 1977 CSUDH logo by using this moment to “move from darkness to light.”

We are with you and for you.

Your CSUDH Academic Senate Executive Committee

Laura Talamante, Chair
Ivonne Heinze-Balcazar, Vice Chair
Rita Anderson, Non-Tenure-Track Faculty Representative
Salvatore (Sam) Russo, Chair, Educational Policy Committee
Terri Ares, Chair, Faculty Policy Committee
Dana Ospina, Secretary
Hal Weary, Parliamentarian
Kirti Sawhney Celly, Statewide Senator
Thomas Norman, Statewide Senator

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