Dear CSU Administration,

In the wake of current events we, as a coalition of students, are writing to express our solidarity and support of Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, and Accessibility (DEIA) programs, entire departments such as the RGE Department (Race, Gender, and Ethnic Studies (formerly known as Women and Gender Studies/ Ethnic Studies)), and Cultural Resource Centers housed under the Office of Inclusive Excellence. It’s our firm belief that a more diverse, more equitable, and more inclusive Colorado State University provides a more robust and richer experience for students, staff, and professors.

We, the undersigned, fully support the Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, and Accessibility (DEIA) efforts at Colorado State University. Many DEIA measures are implementations of the Colorado Department of Education’s Culturally Responsive and Sustaining Education framework coming down from state leadership in Denver and for good reason. The introduction to this framework states:

“Culturally Responsive-Sustaining (CR-S) Education draws on decades of research in asset-based pedagogies that recognize that cultural difference (including racial, ethnic, linguistic, gender, sexuality and ability) should be treated as assets for teaching and learning. This approach to education, according to Dr. Django Paris, counters dominant narratives about difference as deficits or as characteristics of students and families that should be remediated or assimilated.”

In other words, this framework encourages and guides schools to create a welcoming environment for all students; to teach children age-appropriate, accurate history; to connect students across cultural differences and through similarities; and to promote critical thinking skills so students can be informed and compassionate American and global citizens who respect and explore a diversity of ideas from a variety of vantage points. DEIA measures are simply standard 21st-century pedagogy.

Still, in recent months, a campaign to halt DEIA efforts has surfaced in our communities. These efforts are grounded in mistruths and a coordinated, national propaganda campaign. The erroneous foundations of the arguments against DEIA measures have gone unchallenged by some of our school boards- or even endorsed and supported.

Diversity, equity, and inclusion efforts and the CO CR-S framework are not an embodiment of critical race theory. Critical race theory is a body of scholarly work that examines the racial dimensions of American law and other institutions in society. This conceptual framework was developed after a substantial amount of highly scrutinized academic work was presented in peer-reviewed journals.

Critical race theory does not appear in K-12 curriculums and is not being proposed. Creating welcoming classrooms and critical thinkers is not “indoctrinating” students with “critical race theory”– it is teaching our children well.

On February 14th, the U.S. Department of Education sent a letter explicitly and misguidedly claiming that DEIA has been a tool utilized by institutions for “smuggling racial stereotypes and explicit race consciousness into everyday training, programming, and discipline.” The letter backs this labeling under the notion that they aim to “reaffirm the nondiscrimination obligations of schools and other entities that receive federal financial assistance.” Colorado State University is a public land-grant institution that receives federal funding, and therefore it is directly impacted by the letter’s implications. CSU’s students, faculty, and staff will be subject to regulations they do not agree to, that directly target them on the basis of identity, violating their rights.

The letter notes that it will begin taking measures against entities that do not meet their demand to eradicate all identity (race, gender, sexuality, religion, etc.) based practices 14 days after the release date, on February 28th.

We, the undersigned, are appalled by the Department’s mischaracterization of discrimination within higher education in all its stages, as the letter’s references to historical documents and provisions such as the Civil Rights Act of 1964 entirely distort - even erase - their intrinsic intentions. The letter relies on what academics and non-academics alike refer to as reverse racism - the idea that folks with racial privilege experience racism. Racism is, however, the systemic oppression of people based on race, which DEIA and historical measures like the Civil Rights Act aim to challenge. DEIA ameliorates a portion of the traumas and grievances that already exist as legacies of the United States’ history with racism and oppression; DEIA does not claim superiority nor preference for any identity. The Department of Education’s verbiage indicates an unawareness of the persistence of racism, sexism, homophobia, etc. that affect marginalized groups today, as they assume that anything identity-specific will inevitably result in supremacy of the group. This is not the case when said group faces institutional oppression.

In the letter, the Department reprimands programs and actions designed to achieve “diversity, racial balancing, social justice, or equity.” Here, we would like to emphasize two of Colorado State University’s Principles of Community: inclusion and social justice. We therefore expect nothing less than continued support from the institution for the programs, people, and practices we rely on to reify these principles. The fact that equity and social justice are, for the Department of Education, a point of critique and a marker of discrimination, is entirely nonsensical and disturbing.

Many individuals already understand systemic racism— and systemic sexism, classism, and heterosexism– because they experience it, and because they have emergent critical thinking skills. Many of these students have spoken in front of their school boards about their experiences of discrimination in their schools and communities, which encouraged administrators to begin or accelerate DEIA efforts. School staff need support as they lead classroom efforts to include all students– not cameras and McCarthy-esque witch hunts- and students need factual information and opportunities to discuss historical and contemporary systemic issues as they arise.

America is a work in progress, a country dedicated to democracy, to doing better, to being better. Here, we make space for everyone to create and experience the promise of liberty and justice for all. And all means ALL. As patriotic Americans, we are compelled to denounce the attack on DEIA. We denounce the vilification of inclusivity. We denounce the attacks on truth, democracy, and civility. And we denounce unfounded attacks on CRT. We will not move our communities backward and allow misinformed community members to silence these attempts to address bigotry and exclusionary practices in our public schools.

We urge you to please renew your commitment to education, and resist the tide of anti-intellectual fascism that threatens our futures and the lives of future generations.
Solidarity Forever,
CSU Student Coalition for Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, and Accessibility (DEIA)