webpage<\/a> that offers opportunities for people to advocate and donate to causes, while also listing resources for people to educate themselves and find ways to take care of themselves and other community members. <\/p>\n Dr. Conerly commented that while the initial response from the wider campus administration has been respectful and impressive, she hopes to see more movement around actively identifying systemic racism and white supremacy on campus, and offering Black community members the spaces to be more involved in decision making. <\/p>\n
“Anti-blackness is cancer,” says Dr. Conerly. “And to treat cancer you will need to look at the structures, the policies, the lack of representation and diversity, the unconscious bias that perpetuate white supremacy at the expense of other people. The website, the vigil, the brave spaces are the bare minimum the campus can do, but that’s only like offering cough syrup for cough symptoms, but you are dealing with something much larger here. You need to be looking deeper. That’s the move I’d like to see – and if that move happens, that’s when we will know that this momentum is actually moving us forward.” <\/p>\n
Other staff members also expressed the need for more internal change within the campus. <\/p>\n
“I’ve been here a really long time and I know the lay of the land, I know all the buttons, the bones, the trauma that I’ve been through for being Black,” says Jan Barker Alexander, assistant vice provost of Student Affairs, Centers for Equity, Community, and Leadership. <\/p>\n
She adds, “There are two different paths from this; there are cynicism and skepticism, and then there’s hope. As a woman of faith, my faith is important to me and it teaches me to be hopeful about the future; but there’s also all the lived experiences, the history, that tells me that despite all the marches and the support – look how long it took us to get voting rights, and look, still, where we are today. Some people will be pacified by small spaces, but us who have been around longer, we want to keep pushing for bigger, more structural change within the institution.” <\/p>\n
Despite the air of uncertainty and skepticism, the staff members also shared moments of hope that were brought around by the campus’ response to the moment. <\/p>\n
“Our inboxes are on fire,” says Alexander. “We are continuously receiving so many messages of hope and support. One person, she graduated from Stanford Class of ‘92, and now she works here, and her father’s a professor here too. She wrote to us about the vigil and said, “I never thought I’d see anything like this on campus.” <\/p>\n
She adds, “And that means so much to us that a lot of people around us don’t seem to understand – that this is not just a moment for us, this movement, this is what we’ve been dealing with our whole life. We are not brave or courageous just today, but Black people, especially Black women, have had to be brave all their life.” <\/p>\n<\/div>\n
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