As the Harvard College Student Engagement Office we uphold a mission to support a campus experience where students can thrive both personally and socially at Harvard College, where we build an environment for engagement that is both inclusive and vibrant. As a team, watching current events unfold, we know that our community is not thriving. The killings of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, Ahmaud Arbery, Tony McDade and so many others due to police brutality and systemic racism are unacceptable. We firmly believe that Black Lives Matter. To our Black students, student organizations, staff, faculty, and community members-we see you and we are listening. To others committed to uplifting black voices, dismantling systemic racism, and seeking justice, we are here to support you. In a commitment to that, our team is taking the following steps:
- Continue as a team to learn about Harvard's own history of racism, how our office has been complicit in that racism, and how we can do better in dismantling it
- Continue to educate ourselves with resources and trainings on anti-racism
- Reflect with our campus partners on what barriers might exist to inclusive engagement within the College and overcome those
- Further infuse anti-racist and implicit bias trainings into existing pre-orientation, orientation, and student organization leader trainings
- Make space for diverse student voices in our feedback efforts and assess how our team can better recognize anti-blackness, implicit bias, and racism within ourselves and our work
- Outreach to our Black student organizations and other allied organizations to lend our voices in amplifying theirs and support events/awareness activities they are working to host, both currently and in the future
- Commitment to having conversations with students about standing up to racism both inside and outside of Harvard's gates
We know this list, and our work on these important issues, is not finished. If you have other ideas for us or resources you'd like to share with us, please reach out: studentengagement@fas.harvard.edu.