Think of the best educational experiences you’ve had at WashU: the classes that resonated most with you, the conversations with peers about the world or something you read, the moments that sparked creativity and excitement for you. A true education isn’t simply pouring knowledge from one bucket to another, from professor to student. It’s a lively, unpredictable conversation where professors’ expertise meets students’ intellectual energy, generating new insights and ideas. That conversation requires academic freedom for all of us. And when that freedom is jeopardized, students lose. 

On and off campus, we face the challenges of being overworked, underpaid, and undervalued, never mind our exhausting responsibilities as university students on top of them. If we want to see our conditions improve and create a future we can look forward to, students need to get serious about the fight for labor rights.

This is a university failing its federal legal obligations under Title IX. Students deserve to know the truth.

We call upon WashU leadership to protect our students, staff, and faculty by committing to non-cooperation with ICE beyond the legal requirements of judicial warrants. 

Martin and Diermeier’s hubris becomes even clearer when applied to other university departments. Is the Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies department expected to be neutral on the topic of feminism? The Latin American Studies department on human rights abuses by the U.S. government? WashU’s own WashU & Slavery Project is certainly not neutral on its subject matter, nor should it be! Academic work is often quite political, and that’s OK. 

Americans should be concerned, because America is failing to maintain its significant role, outlined in the Budapest Memorandum, of protecting the safety of my home and my people. 

Despite attempts to include student representation, the board notably lacks direct student-elected and affinity group representation. 

As students, we are here to learn not only from professors but from each other as well. Still, there must come a point where learning turns to action and we justify the energy and resources we consumed to get us here.

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.