#NotAgainSU rejects the depiction of Chancellor Kent Syverud as a ‘white savior’ for finally lifting the sanctions on students peacefully protesting. This narrative is completely incorrect, unacceptable, and harmful to the student protesters to whom the administration has denied food, medicine, and hygiene products as if they were contraband.

While students who were on interim suspension did receive email confirmation from the Office of Student Rights and Responsibilities that the interim suspensions had been lifted and our Code of Conduct cases were “suspended,” it is unclear whether the cases can resume or will remain on our academic records.

#NotAgainSU demands that the administration clarify this language to terminate and expunge the Code of Conduct cases from the records of those who received sanctions. We also condemn the fact that peaceful protesters were even placed on suspension in the first place and hold Syverud responsible as the highest-ranking member of the administration.

The administration claims that DPS is here to protect students, and yet DPS officers have engaged in numerous acts of physical violence, racial profiling, manipulation, and intimidation tactics. On Feb. 17, Deputy Chief of DPS John Sardino, who #NotAgainSU calls on to resign, physically assaulted students of color at the entrance to the building and reached for his holster during the assault. That night, DPS officers instigated an encounter with protesters outside by pushing into the most crowded door without announcing themselves.

Syracuse University rests on stolen indigenous Haudenosaunee land, and while this administration increasingly hands the university to private interests and the military industrial complex, student protesters are taking it upon themselves to create the “150 Years of Impact” this university consistently fails to uphold or create for all students.

Student protesters were accused of disrupting academic spaces. Instead, it was the administration’s lockdown of the building, abrupt relocating of classes, and racial profiling of Black faculty and staff that were highly disruptive to academic activities. Furthermore, the administration’s failure to hold white supremacists accountable for hate crimes is highly disruptive to students of color on campus and signals the administration’s complicity in spreading white nationalism.

#NotAgainSU wants to make abundantly clear: we were never asked to present identification on Monday night. When protesters asked Rob Hradsky, vice president of the student experience, how student protesters were identified, he stated that students’ faces were captured through DPS body cameras and building cameras. These images were then “manually” matched to photos on students’ SUIDs. It is, in fact, highly unlikely that DPS could match everyone’s faces so quickly from a pool of 20,000 students.

During this process, the administration also suspended four Black female students and one Latinx female student who never entered the space after 8:30 p.m. on Monday. This is blatant racial profiling. All of these students are also associated with protesters occupying the space. If the university used facial recognition technology or files on student activists, we want public recognition and accountability.

Two of those students are residents of the Multicultural Learning Living Community. Their resident adviser, along with two residents in the learning community, were part of the occupation. The university is claiming to make a commitment to multicultural experiences; however, multicultural spaces are in direct threat.

#NotAgainSU expresses full solidarity with the ongoing labor strike led and called by Black, indigenous, and people of color graduate workers. Among our 18 demands, we call for the university to establish safe multicultural living spaces in every building, disarm DPS, freeze tuition, and implement programs that directly fund students of color, many of whom have now been starved during this occupation and terrorized by the hate crimes last semester.

#NotAgainSU

Published on February 23, 2020 at 9:38 pm