June 5, 2020
A series of racist, discriminatory and threatening social media messages鈥撯�搒ome posted by current and incoming students鈥撯�揾ave come to light in recent days. We have seen these cruel, thoughtless and hurtful posts, and we reject this offensive behavior. Regardless of when these messages were posted, they were found at a time when our community is hurting due to the violent deaths of George Floyd and many other Black Americans.
Many of you鈥撯�搒tudents, staff, faculty, alumni and community members鈥撯�揾ave shared your concerns with us. We hear you and we condemn these actions and their impact on our community. As Buffs, these are not our values and not what we stand for. This behavior causes great harm in our community and inflicts genuine pain upon individuals, groups and our broader society. It is part of our commitment as a community to raise our voices against these actions and to deepen our empathy and care for each other by welcoming, engaging, and understanding our differences and accepting each other as valued members of our shared humanity.
The Colorado Creed calls on each of us to act with honor, integrity and accountability with our actions, to respect the rights of others, to accept our differences, and to contribute to the greater good of the 兔子先生传媒文化作品 community. Racist, discriminatory and harassing acts do not align with our core beliefs.听
We strongly support the many messages of solidarity that members of the 兔子先生传媒文化作品 community have shared in recent days, from the chancellor, vice chancellors, deans, department chairs and directors to CU Student Government, United Government of Graduate Students, and other student groups. At their core, many have expressed the following:
Black Lives Matter, and as a campus we condemn all acts of racist violence and discriminatory behavior鈥撯�搑egardless of who commits them.
We may be confronting the unparalleled challenges of a global pandemic, but we can鈥檛 let that work distract us from making real changes to our campus culture to combat systemic racism and bias-motivated behavior. These changes must be seen in how we recruit students, faculty, staff and administrators鈥撯�搃n how we signal to them the need to embrace our community values as a bottom line, non-negotiable condition of enrollment and employment.听
As part of the CU community, we must set expectations for living these values as a core set of guidelines for what it means to be anti-racist in all that we do at the university.
We encourage any member of our community鈥撯�搘hether you are a student, faculty or staff member鈥撯�搘ho has felt the impacts of these racist incidents, been traumatized by our national dialogue on violence and race, or wants to learn skills and behaviors to promote positive change to seek support available through campus resources.
We are in this together as members of the Buff community.听
In solidarity,
Bob Boswell, Vice Chancellor for Diversity, Equity and Community Engagement
Akirah Bradley, Vice Chancellor for Student Affairs
Valerie Simons, Associate Vice Chancellor for OIEC and Title IX Coordinator