Students and faculty alike have faced many challenges this semester, including mass faculty layoffs, threats of condensing major programs, and general insecurity in the midst of the attack on academia. It’s times like these that we especially need to support and foster community.

Tenured faculty aged 60 or older with five or more years of experience at WashU received an email on Oct. 31 asking them to consider retiring. The email was sent from the respective deans of WashU’s seven schools on the Danforth Campus. Faculty who accept the offer would receive 1.5 times their annual salary plus $43,500, according to the email obtained by Student Life.

There has been a lot of discussion among students about the impacts of funding cuts on our daily lives, such as the lack of toilet paper and printers in some residential buildings. While these changes are significant, we must acknowledge that most of our places at WashU are secure. We must take actions to support those in our campus community who face a more uncertain future.

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. 

On Friday, Biomedical Engineering (BME) professor Dennis Barbour sat down with Student Life for an interview about his role as Chair of the Faculty Senate Council (FSC). Barbour first became the chair in 2023 and will step down at the end of this year because he is going on academic leave next year.

Those of us whose relationships to power are more contingent, more conditional should wield those tools at our own risk or, perhaps, not at all. Instead, we should model for our students what it looks like to destabilize the truth claims made by those in positions of power — with deep respect, but rigorously.

I can only imagine the fear young Jewish college students felt when they were abruptly shaken from their studies to such violent chanting by unknown strangers who had descended upon their campus.

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.

But it appears even with positive reviews and evaluations from students, strong teaching-track faculty can be let go without any clear rhyme or reason. We call on the University to extend a new contract to Dr. R and all other well-deserving TRaP faculty who are foundational to the excellent education that Washington University provides.

We must protect the value universities offer as spaces for mobilizing against injustice and critiquing ongoing forms of oppression.