To the UChicago campus community,

We write as members of the UChicago Student Activist Network (USAN), a coalition of student and community organizing groups, to unite against the University of Chicago. From its inception, the University has thrived off of stolen land and the exploitation of labor. It declares war against marginalized communities through a private police force that terrorizes its Black neighbors, and with trustees who have major shares in defense contracts that kill people of color abroad. Not only does UChicago’s actions maintain its commitment to white supremacy, its physical presence is also a reminder of displacement, gentrification, and ongoing violence to students and South Side residents. That’s why UChicago United, University of Chicago Student Action (UCSA), Students for Disability Justice (SDJ), Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP), Dissenters UChicago, and the University of Chicago Against Displacement (UCAD) have come together through USAN to declare that enough is enough! Our struggles are interconnected through a common target: the University of Chicago.

UChicago actively impedes the existence of healthy and sustainable communities and intensifies feelings of isolation. Unforgiving and punitive academic conditions are normalized at an institutional level, all while the University fails to provide the structural spaces and resources necessary to support students’ physical and mental health. Furthermore, the administration builds walls to hoard their resources and keep the larger South Side community out - walls that have been fortified by exorbitant tuition fees and a violent police force. USAN rejects this University and the toxic culture of individualism. We know that intentional relationships and solidarity are what directly threatens the University’s power. Moreover, we recognize that the struggles we organize towards are bound up together in the larger fight against white supremacy, racial capitalism, and imperialism. We aim to co-create an Abolitionist University that affirms life. To that end, it is necessary to build student and community power to overcome the existing administrative hierarchy. USAN is our life-affirming solution to this death-making institution.

We are here to continue the decades-long legacy of student organizing on this campus. Joyfully, we announce our intention to make trouble, cause problems, and expose the rot behind this institution’s pristine facade. The University of Chicago as a hedge fund, real estate speculator, healthcare predator, and private army must come to an end. We will forge a community in which we care and provide for each other. We as USAN demand the following:

  1. Reparations to Black, Brown, and Indigenous community members
  2. Abolish all forms of policing
  3. Abolish the University administration and Board of Trustees and replace them with a student-staff-community council

Our individual organizations also demand that the University of Chicago:

  1. Release the budget, disclose investments and endowment spending, and give students control in determining where University money is spent (UChicago Student Action)
  2. Cut all University ties to Israel and adopt BDS principles on campus (Students for Justice in Palestine)
  3. Fully-fund student and community-led Community Centers and an Ethnic Studies department (#CommunityCentersNow & #EthnicStudiesNow)
  4. Defund, disclose the budget of, disarm, and disband the University of Chicago Police Department. (#CareNotCops)
  5. Allocate money for affordable housing and end University expansion (UChicago Against Displacement)
  6. Create a truly accessible University that includes physical, academic, and digital accommodations, with a fully-funded and community-led Disability Community Center (Students for Disability Justice)
  7. Divest from all systems of war and militarism, domestic and international, including UChicago’s Crime Lab that works in service of the Chicago Police Department (UChicago Dissenters)

With love and solidarity,

USAN