Listen — I’m a Jewish, Islamic, and Middle Eastern Studies major, and I’d be lying if I told you that our campus climate has consistently fostered comfortable, informed areas for dialogue about Israel and Palestine. 

If we keep spreading the narrative that WashU is a place of suppression of expression, then yes, it will be a space of uncomfortable silence. We, the student body, have both passively and actively created that perceived reality for ourselves.

As a coalition of affinity groups representing Black, Latine, and Asian students at WashU, we are deeply disappointed by the substantial decline in students of color enrolling at WashU.

I deeply value the intellectual community I have found at WashU, and am regularly struck with admiration for the students, faculty, and staff who constitute it. That is why it pains me to see our community represented in a national news outlet by such a morally unserious statement. WashU deserves better.

Roan’s speech brought Midwestern queer kids to the national stage — Midwestern queer kids who don’t have the representation of their coastal and metropolitan counterparts, queer kids whose families don’t always fully understand or accept them, queer kids who brought the fight for their rights in the face of transphobic legislation into their own hands.

I do not share my own opinion about what side students should take in their personal politics because that is not my place.

I am deeply in support of the expansion of university resources and the long-term sustainability of higher education. I am not convinced, however, that tying up billions of dollars in private capital is the best way to fulfill WashU’s obligations as an educational institution.

We look forward to getting back to business, but not business as usual. After a 65-year-old man was nearly beaten to death by WUPD cops, after a hundred of us were violently arrested at a peaceful protest on our own front lawn, after the Board of Trustees has made clear it will not respect the will of student and faculty democracy, there can be no more business as usual.

As I think about the current situation, I wonder if the students that Chancellor Martin is deriding and threatening will have the same reflection at their reunion weekends. Then I think, with the experience they are having, would they even come?

As we learn to advocate for our clients and communities, to further social justice, and to challenge institutional and systemic oppression, we find the Brown School’s silence on the genocide in Palestine fundamentally hypocritical and thoroughly in opposition to our institutional values.