Dear Editor,

This past year, the Student Association, Graduate Student Organization and the Faculty Senate have all passed resolutions calling on our Board of Trustees to publicly commit our university to invest in no for-profit prison company or any of their major suppliers.  This represents a strong, community-wide consensus on an important piece of university business.

Nonetheless, at its meeting this month, the Board of Trustees rejected this call, on the grounds that such a public commitment is “unnecessary.” “Unnecessary” to what end? To answer this question, one might search the minutes of the Board’s meeting to discover their reasoning.  However, university policy prohibits the release of Board meeting minutes for the ensuing 50 years. So, unless this university policy is reversed, the answer is and will remain a secret and an interested party is left to speculate.

We do know; however, what the answer cannot be.  It can’t be: “Unnecessary to comply with the will of the faculty, graduate student, and undergraduate governing bodies.” Being responsive to will of these principle stakeholders in our university community requires a public commitment to divestment.  

The answer also cannot be “to meet the concern that animated all of those resolutions.” That concern was a desire that our university join Columbia University, Georgetown University and the entire University of California system in demonstrating moral leadership by publicly dissociating itself from an industry that actively promotes mass incarceration.

So, we are left to wonder: What are the goals of the Board, if not to heed the call of the university community to demonstrate our university’s commitment to justice?

 

Sincerely,

Jan Dowell

Head, Syracuse Divest

Professor and Director of Graduate Studies

Faculty Senator (beginning Fall 2018)

Department of Philosophy

Published on May 24, 2018 at 9:07 pm