An Open Letter to Marquette University
June 17, 2020
Dear Marquette University,
Recently, Marquette University set forth a strategic plan oriented around social justice, community engagement, sustainability, and a culture of inclusion. The project, language, and mission of Catholic social justice is written into all of these themes, unsurprisingly, given that the Catholic church has a long tradition of advocating for social justice among those oppressed. Catholics, such as Dorothy Day and the Plowshares Movement, have even acted radically, and have engaged in civil disobedience for the sake of prophetic witness.
The identity of Marquette University as “the difference” is coiled into our strategic plan, but for who are we really the difference? For who are we the salt of the earth? For who does our light shine? At this moment, as per our diversity and inclusion dashboards, Marquette University has 8,515 students, of those 2,383 are under-represented people of color (28% of the student body). However, we need to be clearer, of those 2,383, only 333 are black (3.9%). As Marquette launched a goal of becoming a Hispanic Serving Institution (HSI) it has successfully managed to recruit Latinx/Hispanic youth that now accounts for 1,200 (14.1%) students. However, our black student body has stagnated. In fact, our black student council reported this week that currently Marquette has fewer black students than it did ten years ago, a reminder they should not have to make. We witness parallel trends with faculty. We have 741 full time faculty members, 130 are people of color, but more importantly 31 are black and 31 are Hispanic, accounting for a mere 8.4% of the full-time faculty. Experientially, this means that students can make it through their college education and never cross paths with faculty of color, and those that do, gravitate to us (faculty of color) for support every single time the university fails them, and it fails them far too often: when it erases their presence in history and philosophy books, when it contributes to the disconnection from the city it lives in, when it fails to fund efforts that truly serve students of color in the name of “safety” (MUPD) and preserving the status quo.
For any institution with Christian roots, service is an essential ethical requirement. But what does it mean to serve? The Gospels make it clear, over and over again, that service is owed to the oppressed. How can we begin to serve our students in an environment that is historically predicated upon the exclusion of students of color? How can we in good conscience recruit them and nourish them? I am pained by the fact that I have to ask: in what world does serving Hispanic students present itself at odds with serving our black students? …in this one. When did a mission of social justice turn its back on the most vulnerable in society? We are in the middle of a pandemic that is systematically killing people of color, specifically its elders, as a result of racism and economic disenfranchisement that manages healthcare as a privilege. COVID-19 is a crystallization of systematic inequality, and amidst these times the message from our administration continues to be focused on the management of profit. Lives are waged against their financial value and let us be clear that the lives that have been and will continue to be most affected are those of color.
Today you have invited me to speak about racial justice, but in order to do that I have to tell a different story. I speak to you today from the 21st century, from the year 2020, which has and continues to asphyxiate, lynch, kill, cage, murder, deport, bomb, and silence people of color. I speak to you today from Milwaukee, Wisconsin, the most segregated city in the United States. Please let that sit with you as a predominantly white institution and consider how we can work to end our segregation. As an institution of higher education, as one of the oldest institution of higher education in Milwaukee, we are still living in a city that reports itself as one of the worst cities in the United States for African Americans, we are walking through a city where people of color are murdered at the hands of police regularly, where the school to prison pipeline is reflected in our student body and in our faculty. Look around at the faces on your screen today, we are part of this story — all the while we continue to participate in a system of education that is constructed around the idea that to be educated is an accomplishment of the elite who can afford a ticket entry into our halls of so-called learning as we profit off of death of color.
Show us Marquette, that Black Lives do Matter, show us that social justice is racial and economic justice. Remind yourselves that the history of your social justice mission can do more than generate profit. Do better, a conversation is not sufficient, a town hall is not sufficient, implicit bias training is not sufficient, a dialogue is not sufficient, symbolic gestures are not sufficient, personal narrative is not sufficient, a statement will not be sufficient, more committees and commissions will not be sufficient, we need collective action, this is not a matter of resources it is a matter of political will:
1. We need a curriculum that centers anti-racist struggles in global contexts. No student should make it out of this university without a clear view of the way racism, exploitation, and colonization are part of contemporary global structures, ourselves included.
2. We need more faculty and staff of color across racial, ethnic, gendered lines: our faculty should reflect the place we live and the students we vow to serve. Where is the racial diversity of Milwaukee represented in your faculty?
3. We need funding for the offices and faculty across the university that have been trying to do this work with scraps of resources: Office of Diversity and Inclusion, Center for Engagement and Inclusion, CURTO, Center for Peacemaking, LGBTQ resource center, The Latinx/Latin American Studies Program, the Center for Race, Ethnicity, and Indigeneity Studies (to name just a few). Do not tell me there are no resources, because our campus, our buildings, our administrative salaries tells me a different story. Rather, tell me how you are going to re-funnel those resources with a mission to actually serve our student body as an institution of higher education.
4. We need resources that prepare our students of color for success, the world is racist and racism is not just ideological it is visceral, and it continues to murder, how are we preparing our students for that world?
5. White faculty, where are you right now? Jesuits, where are you right now? We are outnumbered, we are screaming, what are you doing to turn up for your students of color who are screaming and hoping for a world where professors do not, as they report, “use the n-word in class”?
6. We need a redefinition of community engagement. Our communities of color need to be treated with respect: people of color cannot continue to be objects of extraction for social justice missions.
7. We need a complete reorientation of what it means to serve a Hispanic community which centers poly-ethnic experiences and the struggle of undocumented students on our campus and in our communities.
8. We can not continue to make knowledge and learning a privilege of the few, especially in communities of color, which have systematically been taught that black, brown, and Indigenous people have no knowledge or the capacity to reason.
I should not have to tell you what needs to be done. The resources are there, the question is whether the university as a collective can reckon with its active practices that continue to ensure that the student body, faculty, and staff at Marquette not reflect the city that it has settled. The answer to the questions we are here to ponder are already out there, listen to the screaming voices of people of color (past and present), of students, faculty, and staff of color and on this very campus, before they are choked — and do something! We are tired. I should not have to be the one to remind you of the fact that our exhaustion is predicated on a collective lack of action of those in power.
In closing, I am still left wondering, from a university that profits from a marketing campaign of social justice and difference what that difference really looks like because in this moment it really sounds like a prayer aligned with white supremacy. I hope I am wrong.
Sincerely,
Dr. Stephanie Rivera Berruz
