On Identity-Based Harm, Healing, and Education
A statement cannot heal a community but it can help set work into motion.
The recent anti-Semitic graffiti found scrawled in a stairwell in Piano Row and the racist language used to demean Asians and Asian-Americans written on the front doors of residents of the Little Building should serve as a wake-up call for our community. These identity-based hate crimes are not new to our campus (as the Berkeley Beacon has reported) and they aren’t new to communities and college campuses all across our country. It is disgusting, disparaging, and, luckily, it has set work into action. This action will hopefully set our campus up for both immediate and long-term solutions to these hate crimes.
In a recent discussion during a Joint Session meeting on Tuesday, January 22, a SGA member stated that our college (and colleges across the country) need to stop placing the burden of solving these hate crimes on the shoulders of those who are survivors of trauma. The very people still healing from these hate crimes are often the same people who now must figure out solutions for the rest of the community at-large. We’re fortunate that our college administration has taken action of their own devices and has begun the process to look into solutions surrounding these issues. Whether it be immediate action or long-term education, solutions are being sought out. And the solutions are out there.
We, as the Student Government Association, plan to hold the administration accountable. As the weeks and months pass and we move along from these two hate crimes, we will not forget them. We will continue to hold conversations surrounding what is being done to ensure continuous education and change on our campus. We will continue to demand action and insist that all students, not just those who are survivors of this trauma, are involved in the process of finding solutions. We as a community must lift each other up after attacks like these and not allow each other to “comfortably” forget what has happened. Every single one of us must seek action and Student Government Association hopes to bring as many people as possible into the conversations that will take place in the coming months.
We will fight hard together and demand that change happen. Our community is a place for everyone and we won’t allow these two hate crimes, or any hate crime, to disrupt the values that we all share for our college.