Seeking Social Justice

At its meeting on September 17, the Sojourners Church Council voted to send the following letter to John O. Wynne, University Rector and chair of the search committee for the new president of the University of Virginia.

This letter grew out of the work of a group then called the University Community Racial Reconciliation Project, now renamed the University Community Action for Racial Equity. This group had written a letter to Mr. Wynne asking for issues of racial justice to be part of the discussion in the search for a new president. They welcomed signers from the community at large. Sojourners, however, decided to write its own letter, which was approved by and sent on behalf of our church council.

Dear Mr. Wynne,

We are aware that the University of Virginia is beginning a search process for the person who will succeed John Casteen as president of the university. We write not as members of the university community but of the larger community of which the university is a part. We believe the university and the community live in a relationship of mutuality. The health of each depends on the other.

We write particularly as the church council of Sojourners United Church of Christ, a faith community that is concerned about matters of racial equity in the Charlottesville region and committed to working for racial justice. We want to affirm the enormous benefits the University of Virginia brings to the surrounding community. We further affirm the positive steps the university has taken In acknowledging its role in past injustices as well as the resources it brings to helping improve the lives of Charlottesville residents.

However, we are also acutely aware of how much remains to be done. For all its positive contributions to the community, the university has also been deeply involved in a history of discrimination and racism. Acknowledgment and apology will need to be accompanied by consistent and dedicated efforts to repair the past and build a different future. This time of transition offers the university an excellent opportunity to demonstrate that it is serious about working toward racial justice both in its own institutional life and in the surrounding community.

We know that the university will be looking for financial and academic leadership. We urge that it also consider moral leadership in relationship to racial justice to be of utmost importance. We are aware of the questions put forward by the University Community Racial Reconciliation Project and have taken the liberty of attaching them for easy reference. We believe they are good questions for discussion with candidates for the presidency of the University. Indeed the issues raised are important points of discussion for all of us as we move forward.

Yours truly,

Krissy Lasagna Rebecca Garrity Jim Bundy
Co-moderator Co-moderator Pastor

The Questions (from University Community Racial Reconciliation Project)

• The proportion of service/maintenance staff that is African American is about 50 per cent. There are members of the staff who were hired when African Americans were being tracked into hourly wage positions while working full time, even as whites performing similar jobs were hired with full-time benefits. This legacy means that even today we have employees, eventually placed into full-time positions, who have reduced retirement benefits. What would you do to address this inequity?
• Along similar lines, there have been alumni willing to pledge substantial funds to support a living wage for all UVA employees. That offer has been denied to date. Given that such arrangements of supplemental funding are commonly made for other positions, such as recruited faculty and athletics coaches, how would you respond to similar offers today? What would you do to ensure equity in working conditions?
• The proportion of African American faculty ranges between 3 and 4 per cent. How can you learn of factors causing African American faculty to leave or not to apply at all? What would you do to recruit, support, and retain such faculty? How should success or failure in doing so be evaluated for those with responsibility for hiring and firing?
• In the mid-1900s UVA harbored a number of leading proponents of the eugenics movement, including the Dean responsible for admissions and the Dean of the Medical School. The name of the medical school auditorium, Jordan Hall, continues to honor that former dean, yet few people who work or visit there realize that. What is the responsibility of a University to address such incongruities? What would you do with Jordan Hall and other buildings and places that may reflect histories that have been hidden or ignored?
• A common saying among African American community members is, “our youth are more likely to see the University through the emergency room than through the admissions office.” How would you address that issue?
• Many people in the community, from wage laborers to City Council, believe that the University actively discriminates against them and does not want their presence other than as workers. What would you do to make the University a place that was known for welcoming, rather than for excluding, the local community?
• Visitors as well as employees may never hear of the history of slavery, segregation and discrimination. Several other universities have memorialized the painful aspects of their history with significant public recognition. What are your views of those efforts occurring at places such as Brown University and the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill? What role would you play in understanding and memorializing that history at UVA?
• What concrete actions would you take to support the recommendations of the Presidential Diversity Commission, including a Chief Office for Diversity & Equity who reports to the President; the “Day in the Life” Program, which matches UVA students with local at-risk youth and brings them to Grounds to participate together in academic, cultural, social and athletic events; and other recommendations which may not have yet been implemented?
• The region surrounding the University continues to have severe racial disparities in health care, housing, employment, education, and criminal justice, to name some of the most significant. What is the responsibility of a public University to address those issues specifically, as well as public problems in general?
• What other ideas do you have to support relationships between the University and adjacent communities, in particular in ways that address the legacy of slavery, segregation and discrimination, as well as efforts that challenged those wrongs? What ways would you commit to supporting these principles identified by the W. K. Kellogg foundation for working towards racial equity:
• Principles of fairness and justice
• Actions designed to address historic burdens
• Ways to remove present-day barriers to equal opportunities
• How to identify and eliminate systemic discriminatory policies and practices
• Specific remedial strategies, policies and practices

This entry was posted on Monday, October 5th, 2009 at 4:28 pm and is filed under Racial Justice, Uncategorized.