SUNY must loudly and clearly protect its undocumented students and staff!
Send an email to SUNY leadership demanding they implement clear guidance that directs SUNY to not comply with ICE without a signed judicial warrant, and direct staff to contact the general counsel's office to help & implement mandatory KYR trainings and material for SUNY staff and faculty! Our full list of demands is as follows:
1. The SUNY Chancellor, John King Jr., and each SUNY campus president sends out a university wide email stating that SUNY will abide by their previous resolutions and publicly call SUNY a sanctuary campus system.
2. When corresponding with ICE and responding to other immigration inquiries, all official responses from SUNY and individual universities must be in written form sent via USPS Parcel Select ground service.
3. If a University is required by law to give information to ICE or other immigration services, the University must provide the students and staff, whose information they have disclosed, with a notice within 24 hours via email or overnight delivery service that they have disclosed information regarding the individual to an immigration agency, the nature of the request and the information disclosed.
4. SUNY and each campus implements yearly mandatory Know Your Rights training for all students during orientation, all faculty and staff, and university police regarding protocols for what to do if ICE requests a SUNY affiliates’ information (ie do not disclose any information and immediately contact the General Counsel’s office who will only disclose information after being provided a signed judicial warrant). In addition, SUNY must implement additional Know Your Rights trainings for residents assistants/advisors, and all others working within dorm buildings, specifically related to not allowing ICE into dorms.
5. SUNY and each campus post signage related to “Know Your Rights” protocols for SUNY in all dorms and classrooms on each campus, and distribute materials in departmental offices, student centers, and to student governments.
6. Clarify that SUNY affiliates are directed to contact their campus’ general counsel’s office, and not UPD, if ICE or federal agents attempt to interact with them.
7. SUNY advertise, through email, existing confidential immigration legal services that are available to students and to expand those services to allow students and staff to call for legal support at any point.
8. SUNY implement full time immigration legal services offices on every SUNY campus similar to CUNY’s citizenship now program, as well as establish an emergency legal defense fund, all without raising the price for the students going to the schools already.
9. SUNY must not preemptively comply with apparent DEI orders that lack definition, scope, and specificity.
10. SUNY must not send names of non-citizen students to the DOE, DHS, or the Secretary of State in response to the students’ expressive, First Amendment protected activity.
Current endorsing organizations include: Global Voices SBU, Disability Alliance SBU, SBU Graduate Student Employees Union, Latin American Student Organization SBU, Native American and Indigenous Student Organization SBU, Stony Brook University Peace Action, SBU Socialists, Black Student Union SBU, SBU Graduate SJP, SBU Students for Justice in Palestine, UBuffalo YDSA, UAlbany YDSA, UAlbany SJP, Puerto Rican Student Organization at Cornell, Raise the Consciousness at Purchase, New Paltz YDSA, FIT SJP, JVP Purchase, UAlbany Bangladesh Students Association, Community Action Network SBU, SJP Oswego, UAlbany MSA, UAlbany Building Ladies Up, Purchase Solidarity Coalition, UAlbany Disabled Student Union, UAlbany Association of Southeast Asian Students (ASEAS), Albany State Indian Alliance (ASIA), SUNY BDS Alumni, SUNY BDS, Philosophy Graduate Student Body at Stony Brook, and CWA Local 1104 Education Division.
To endorse this campaign, please email sunybds1@gmail.com or DM @sunybds on instagram!
