Students for Change at Binghamton List of Demands
Attached is a list of 25 demands the Students for Change came up with at the end of the Fall 2014 semester. An article will be released tomorrow night putting these demands into a context but it came out of protests students have been engaged in here for the past few years.
1. Members of the Binghamton University administration, faculty, and staff are mandated to attend cultural competency training.
2. In place should be a mandatory cultural competency course as a General Education requirement for all Binghamton University students in order to be eligible for graduation.
3. In place should be a mandatory interactive cultural competency training for all student employees of Binghamton University.
4. Binghamton University Resident Directors, Resident Assistants, and student councils must be mandated to attend cultural competency training.
5. There should be students involved in the planning, input, development and evaluation of the cultural competency training and courses.
6. Provide access to bathrooms that are both gender-neutral and inclusive of people with disabilities in all buildings on-campus to better accommodate the needs of students, faculty, and staff with disabilities as well as transgender, gender variant, and gender non-conforming individuals.
7. There should be a zero tolerance policy for discrimination on an individual or group based on age, color, race, sexual orientation, gender identity, gender expression, disability, martial status, national/ethnic origin, religion, veteran status, sex (pregnancy), political affiliation or family medical or genetic information and university status.
8. There needs to be protection of gender identity and transgender/gender non-conforming people written into the discrimination policy currently already set into place in the Student Code of conduct.
9. Added to the Student Code of Conduct, students caught using offensive or subjective language to an individual or group based on age, color, race, sexual orientation, gender identity, gender expression, disability, martial status, national/ethnic origin, religion, veteran status, sex (pregnancy), political affiliation or family medical or genetic information and university status should be subject to prompt and severe sanctioning for violating a University policy.
10. A diverse and inclusive student board with students who identify with the aforementioned identities (listed in demand 7) should be created solely responsible for sitting in on these hearings and determining the sanctions as they apply to each offender.
11. There needs to be more urgency and responsiveness in matters regarding race and discrimination from the administration.
12. There needs to be more members of color in senior staff and administration at the university.
13. There needs to be more Native American and minority representation of faculty and staff and set ways in which to keep the retention of these members at the University.
14. All of the pre-professional schools must be more diverse.
15. The Multicultural Resource Center and the Office for Diversity, Equity and Inclusion should be two departments that other university divisions train their workers in. (Admissions, the University Call Center, Discovery Center Advisors etc. )
16. Administration must highlight and be knowledgeable of the programs of different organizations on campus.
17. The Greek Life director must support fraternities and sororities of color.
18. The Greek Life director must be mandated to go through cultural competency training.
19. The Greek Life director should not also be the advisor to any of the councils present in Greek Life organizations.
20. The university Police should report the racial background of students that they stop or rooms that they are called to for incidences.
21. There needs to be marketing strategies created to increase diversity in UPD.
22. Students should have access to the knowledge of the militarization of the campus and know what weapons the University Police Department has access to.
23. Policing on campus must be revamped and fair to all students and student groups.
24. Sodexo employees are being maltreated and overworked and their is a lack of representation of minorities in their senior management. The University should not stand behind any outside contractors that mistreat their workers and should not renew the contract with Sodexo.
25. The Multicultural Resource Center and the Office of Diversity Equity, and Inclusion have a limited amount of members in their office for a large amount of work that needs to be done in regards to inclusivity on this campus. There needs to be an expansion of this office as well as audits and student evaluations on each member representative of the office (new or old) to determine the effectiveness of the offices.