ACTION NEEDED - Petition for Institutional Support for Black Lives at MIT
Sent: June 12, 2020On June 2, 2020, the Tech published a student-led evaluation of the progress of the 2015 BSU/BGSA recommendations. This evaluation found that while some of the 2015 recommendations have seen progress, 5 years later, several of the recommendations remain at 0% completion. The evaluation points to the lack of an institute-wide strategic plan as the primary bottleneck for the completion of these recommendations.
In this season of national and global unrest in response to the wrongful deaths of Black men, women and non-binary people, we must look critically at the ways that MIT's historical and contemporary policies and structures, or lack thereof, harm Black members of the MIT community. The MIT BGSA Exec, BSU Exec, along with Black and POC student leaders across the institute, write this petition calling on MIT leadership to be proactive in making MIT a place where Black people can exist safely and thrive. The objectives of this petition are two-fold to:
Objective 1: Establish demands for the development of a 10-year strategic plan to address racial bias at MIT by accomplishing the remaining tasks of the 2015 BSU/BGSA recommendations AND new addendums to the recommendations
Objective 2: Make MIT safe for all students by disarming day-to-day MITPD operations and establishing robust oversight of MITPD use of force
The full petition can be found here. Please do not share this petition outside of Black spaces at this time. This petition does NOT claim to be conclusive of the needs of all Black MIT community members. It is a starting point for inspiring change at MIT. Thus, the BGSA has created multiple community forums to discuss and debate the ideas presented here, crowdsource other ideas not represented, and to include everyone who wants to be involved in this action:
The first option to contribute is to comment directly onto the document. Comments will be accepted until Sunday at 9:59pm ET. You can also email comments directly to bgsa-exec@mit.edu.
The second option is through this anonymous forum where MIT community members can share stories of their experiences with racism & policing at MIT. This forum will be open for one week and then will be publicly shared with the MIT community.
The third option is by attending an emergency General Body Meeting on Sunday the 14th, 7 - 9pm ET. Here is the Zoom link.
There will be sustained opportunities for discussion beyond these three immediate options and we believe that the demands of the petition will empower our community to have more leverage for future needs and policy asks that may come of long-term discussions. The petition will be released for the larger MIT community on Monday. This fast petition timeline was chosen for several reasons. First, BGSA has a meeting with the administration next week and we felt it was important to enter that meeting with the weight that a petition holds in demanding respect and building power. Secondly, many ally groups have already been working to release their own recommendations and statements which has led to a very decentralized response, in some cases with little input from Black students. We believe a centralized institute-wide coalition of Black voices should lead. To do so effectively we must get out a response quickly. Third, we felt that we could honor the opinions of our community members by creating opportunities for dialogue in parallel with the petition release, without losing this critical moment where there is institutional momentum behind addressing racial bias at MIT.
We hope that you will support this initiative and join us for the multiple opportunities for discussion and critique.
-BGSA Exec