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Students of marginalized identities have continued working to implement recommendations they presented to Syracuse University administrators a year ago following racist incidents on campus. 

After a series of more than 30 hate incidents took place on campus during the 2019-20 academic year, multiple groups of marginalized students submitted lists of demands, concerns or recommendations to the university. Some of those groups are still struggling to work with SU officials to make progress, organizers behind the groups’ demands said. 

SU has tracked its progress on those recommendations, along with demands made by #NotAgainSU, on a webpage. 

Here’s the progress SU has made toward each group’s demands, according to organizers:

Indigenous student demands

Indigenous students submitted concerns to the university alongside other groups in November 2019. But those concerns, along with commitments made to Indigenous students signed by Chancellor Kent Syverud, were only recently posted to the site on Nov. 10, said Ionah Scullly, a doctoral student in SU’s School of Education.

“We were one of the last student groups to have our solutions posted to the website,” said Danielle Smith, an SU alumnus and member of the Onondaga Hawk clan who has continued working on the list of solutions through the Ongwehonwe Alumni Association. “It was frustrating at points during the negotiation phase and just kind of feeling like we were getting pushed to the backburner.” 

Scully, who is Cree Métis of the Michel First Nation, said Syverud didn’t sign the Indigenous students’ concerns list, which was presented to the university in December 2019 and then again in July 2020, until Oct. 8. 

The concerns include keeping the Native Student Program in its Euclid Avenue location, hiring at least two Indigenous mental health counselors and revising the university’s land acknowledgment, which the university reads at events to acknowledge SU’s presence on land traditionally belonging to the Onondaga Nation. 

SU has already hired an Indigenous-identifying counselor in the Barnes Center at The Arch, the university’s website shows. 

When SU announced it would renovate the Schine Student Center and move many Office of Multicultural Affairs programs into the new space, Indigenous students speculated the Native Student Program and Indigenous Students at Syracuse would relocate there too, said Maris Jacobs, an SU graduate and former co-president of Indigenous Students at Syracuse. 

Maintaining the programs’ existing space on Euclid Avenue was important, Jacobs said. 

“That’s kind of our space,” Jacobs said. “From the very beginning it was really important to have that space from your freshman year all the way to your senior year. It fosters a kind of community for us on campus.”

Smith said SU is currently working on renovations to the building on Euclid, including the addition of a bathroom and making the building accessible in compliance with the federal Americans with Disabilities Act.

Indigenous students have also spearheaded the construction of a new art installation honoring the Onondaga Nation on campus and have also revised the university’s land acknowledgment, Smith said. The Onondaga Nation Council still has to approve the acknowledgment before students will present it to the chancellor for approval, she said.

“We’re in the process of finalizing the wording for that,” Smith said. 

Indigenous students will continue working to expand funding for Indigenous graduate students and create a Native American and Indigenous Studies major, which SU currently only offers as a minor. 

Organizers have also been working with Keith Alford, SU’s chief diversity and inclusion officer, and other professors to incorporate subjects such as settler colonialism and Indigenous erasure into the SEM 100 curriculum. 

“We need these kinds of curricular changes at SU,” Scully said. 

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Jewish student demands

Jewish student leaders have also made progress on their list of concerns and proposed solutions this semester. Syverud signed their list of concerns and recommendations in November 2019. 

Recommendations presented by Jewish students include proposed changes to the university’s religious observance absence forms, anti-Semitism training for students and the creation of an Inclusion, Diversity, Equity and Accessibility Coalition.

“The purpose of (the IDEA Coalition) is to bring students together in an open forum style to have people share their concerns and experiences on campus and then pushing those concerns up the funnel to the administration,” said Sam Aaronson, a junior political science and public relations major, who has worked with SU administrators to implement changes. 

Aaronson expects the coalition’s first open forum meeting to take place sometime next semester, she said. 

Hendricks Chapel representatives participated in a test anti-Semitism training session in October that all SU students will eventually take part in, Aaronson said. 

Rebecca Sereboff, a junior who has worked alongside Aaronson, said the training focuses on microaggressions Jewish face on campus. Anti-Semitism on campus isn’t always as blatant as what the SU community witnessed last semester, when swastikas and hate speech were graffitied on and around campus. 

“A lot of what the training focuses on is, what actually is anti-Semitism, and how do we not only identify it but combat it,” Sereboff said. 

SU will host more pilot training sessions during the spring semester with the goal of implementing the training university-wide by next fall, Aaronson said. 

International student demands

International students also presented SU officials with a list of concerns and recommendations, which Syverud signed last November. Students asked administrators to revise the Code of Student Conduct with a zero-tolerance policy for hate speech and hire more multilingual resident advisers, among other recommendations. 

The university lists its progress toward meeting international students’ recommendations as “substantially complete” or “complete,” the university’s website shows. 

Published on November 15, 2020 at 11:58 pm

Contact Madison: mntyler@syr.edu