Chancellor Mark Wrighton released a statement on the Wash U Voices website Friday with the message, “we agree.” The Washington University contingent of STL Students in Solidarity is hesitant to accept that claim. We thank Chancellor Wrighton for accepting our demand for a meeting in January to discuss more detailed and tangible demands with the Washington University administration. However, we find the Chancellor’s response to the protest on campus Thursday night to be inadequate.

The meeting was just one of our demands. We also demanded that Washington University make a public statement regarding the University’s stance on the events of Ferguson and the protests that have followed. By remaining neutral, Washington University has chosen complacency in a time of urgency. We ask the Chancellor to make clear the University’s stance, either supporting or condemning the recent grand jury decision not to indict Darren Wilson for the killing of Michael Brown, the nature of police brutality against people of color and racial inequity in the St. Louis community and across the United States. STL Students in Solidarity demands that our universities and our police do better and be better to protect the lives of people of color in our region and beyond.

We look forward to the upcoming meeting. In the meantime, we challenge the administration, and the Chancellor himself, to begin to look at how our University implicitly contributes to inequity in the St. Louis region. Finally, STL Students in Solidarity believes that black lives matter. Chancellor Wrighton has yet to acknowledge the value of black life. So, in the name of productive meetings, let us ask ourselves before January: “Do we agree?”