February 11, 2008
To the Williams Community,
The student-led group (which includes faculty and staff) that's been working toward a set of responses to recent racist incidents on campus made further admirable progress over the weekend on defining next steps. We encourage you all to visit the group's Web site: pactagainsthate.wordpress.com
The group, now called Stand With Us, will be asking faculty to consider some specific ways to take part over the next few days. We encourage all faculty to think about how best you can be responsive.
To help build momentum for these efforts there will be a special meeting for faculty and President's Staff this Wednesday at 4 p.m. in Griffin 3. This will be a time to bring each other up to date on recent events and to share thoughts on how to support the activities of Stand With Us and on possible faculty initiatives in the short- and long-run.
Patterns of behavior corrosive to our community, such as we've experienced in the past week, persist on campus. Since they harm us all, we all have a role to play in the effort to eliminate them.
We're impressed with the passion, focus, and intelligence of the effort put forth in the past week. We encourage all faculty to attend Wednesday's meeting and urge all of us at Williams to seize this opportunity to make greater-than-usual progress toward making our campus community fully inclusive.
Morty Schapiro
President
Bill Wagner
Dean of the Faculty
Karen Merrill
Dean of the College
Mike Reed
V.P. for Strategic Planning and Institutional Diversity
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