SENT on 06.13.2020. All editors are removed from this document and it is purely archival. This link will stay open, feel free to download or share. Contact me at calebwrandall@gmail.com for questions or concerns.
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to: architecture@ttu.edu, james.p.williamson@ttu.edu, dora.epstein@ttu.edu, clifton.ellis@ttu.edu, ma.torres-macdonald@ttu.edu, darrick.wade@ttu.edu, lesley.nall.washington@ttu.edu
cc: president@ttu.edu, lawrence.schovanec@ttu.edu, provost@ttu.edu, diversity@ttu.edu
Texas Tech College of Architecture et al.,
We, a group of students, alumni, and community members at the Texas Tech College of Architecture, are emailing today to call for further action by the TTU CoA in response to the institutionalized dehumanization of Black People of Color, brought again to international attention by the racist murders of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, Ahmaud Arbery, Tony McDade, and thousands of other Black People of Color.
The College’s slow response, sent nearly 3 weeks after the death of George Floyd, illustrates your performative allyship and disorganization; this will no longer be tolerated. We, a group of students, faculty, alumni, and community members, petition that the CoA continues to acknowledge that architecture and its institutions are actively complicit in the socioeconomic discrimination of People of Color. As an institution that educates the future architects of the United States, the College must assert architects’ social obligation to dismantle institutionalized racism. The College must continue to express its complicity and how it is actively working against this, or else your complicity will be greater. Furthermore, we request that the College say the names of these Black Americans whose lives were taken as a result of systemic police brutality, and explicitly condemn the acts of the police responsible for their deaths. George Floyd is not a single martyr. We have attached an incomplete list of Black Americans killed by the result of police brutality in the United States for your reference and hope they will be shared by the College.
The Black Lives Matter movement asked that we amplify Black voices in this time, and we request that the College amplify their voices through the student body. The voices of marginalized communities, such as the Black community, are muted by institutionalized racism. Colleges of architecture are historically and currently complicit in this silencing. Your social media feeds are anemic and uninvolved with the student, professorial, and outreach programs. The College could use its presence to amplify the voices, work, and expressions of students within its College by reposting relevant student work, being intentional in showing diversity, and amplifying minority students. Also, specifically amplify the voices and posts of NOMAS, which directly represents the diversity in your college.
The architectural literary canon is dominated by white male voices, who have historically been the only demographic of licensed architects across the world. To expand our design mentalities as students, the promotion of architecture of other races, nationalities, and cultures is crucial. The intention of a required study abroad experience in many colleges of architecture is to facilitate this engagement. The College should also be intent on encouraging this engagement in our domestic design studios. We start this conversation by improving accessibility to these types of resources through the Architecture Library and other required studio readings. The College should create initiatives to facilitate diversity within required and suggested readings for studio and non-studio courses. We have compiled a list of books at the end of this email relating to racial injustice in architecture that we believe the Architecture Library should adopt into its current collection.
In conjunction with these actionable calls, which the College can enact in the short-term, the College should also reform the following existing and longstanding structures within itself.
We call for a reorganization of design studio environments and topics to directly address relevant architectural issues pertaining to underprivileged peoples, particularly those of racial injustices. This begins with the diversification of studio precedents to increase exposure to architectures of other races, nationalities, and cultures. While a few professors have begun this practice, the College should make initiatives to require this of each studio that intends to study precedents (whether buildings, readings, or any other sourced information) in order to amplify the voices and architectures of the historically muted.
Larger curricular changes need to occur not only in the studio, but also in your undergraduate History of World Architecture I, II, and III courses. These history courses, while intensive in their study of western architectural history, disregard the histories and architectures of more than half of the world. We call for more academic exposure to architects and architectures typically disregarded by colleges of architecture because of their nationality, race, or culture and dissimilarity to western architecture; the number of these architects we are taught can be counted on one hand. While the teachings of western architectural history are important to understand how we must advance as a field, we cannot discredit the histories of those whose voices were buried by historically discriminatory practices in architecture. The College should lobby, on behalf of the students, with NCARB, NAAB, and other agencies within the architectural community to enact curricular changes that empower minority students and architectures. The aforementioned curricular modifications should be given top priority in these conversations.
In addition to these changes within the existing course structure of the College, we call for the establishment of initiatives, funding, and expanded research opportunities that educate about architectural injustices. These endeavors should be prioritized and made public so you are held accountable for these actions. The profession of architecture will not change without explicit and concrete steps to combat complicity in the system; funding research initiatives that publicize and broadcast racial injustices in architecture is one of these steps.
While the College is deservedly proud of its impressive diversity statistics of Hispanic/Latinx populations in the student body, you fail to extend this diversity into other underrepresented populations. The College must develop initiatives that provide specific funding for Black professors, instructors, teaching assistants, and establish scholarships for Black students, in addition to its efforts with other minority and underrepresented populations. We have included a statement below by the National Organization of Minority Architecture Students at Lubbock Chapter, the direct liaison for diversity within the College.
“NOMAS at Lubbock Chapter enhances the voices of all underrepresented peoples within the College through dialogue, transparency, and empathy. As our bylaws declare, we must act as the founders of conversation; we will proudly encourage others to join us in addressing and dismantling systemic racism within the College and surrounding environments. NOMAS believes our continued involvement in the selection of CoA guest speakers and lecture series topics is imperative in order to maintain diversity and representation. We also call for further minority representation within the faculty and staff of the College, particularly in establishing initiatives for recruiting and retaining Black faculty and staff. To continue improving diversity and racial equity in the College, NOMAS requests that the College continues to seek active conversations with its executives and organization members throughout the semesters. Additionally, the College should continue to allocate resources and funding to our organization to promote awareness of diversity measures, foster conversations which tackle issues such as racial injustice in architecture, and establish community outreach programs regionally and nationally to specifically increase the Black minority population in order to expand the ethnic diversity in our college. Along with these efforts, we wish to see further integration of all other ethnic groups and minorities. We seek diversity from people across all different cultures, religions, and beliefs. We believe that together we can establish long-overlooked conversations and take initiatives towards change. Together, our work illustrates our commitment to this community and the values we represent as your student minority organization.”
There are reports of racism and bigotry in the faculty and student body, particularly in regard to racial and gender discrimination by faculty members towards minority students. We call for more intensive training efforts and significant repercussions for faculty and staff in addition to frequent announcements to incoming and existing students of the university-wide reporting procedures, of which many are unaware. The College should also initiate required racism training within the student body at a college and university level. This should be done particularly in the orientation of new students, many of whom are coming from places with little exposure to these ideas. In conjunction with intentional training and exposure efforts, the College should facilitate open dialogues between students and faculty which address issues of discrimination within our own college, primarily through the explicit declaration of safe spaces within the College.
The mission statement and core values of the College, as stated on the TTU CoA website, fail to recognize any of these aforementioned injustices within the profession and academia. Your current core values are as follows, in order and taken from your website: intellectual curiosity, questioning and challenging the status quo, pursuing excellence, treating each other with respect, and personal accountability. We request that the College includes a specifically anti-racist and anti-discrimination core value. We also request a message about inclusivity within the mission statement to reflect this new core value.
The College of Architecture, as with other architectural institutions, will continue to be complicit in the discrimination and oppression of Black People of Color if left unchecked. The steps that we, as your College of Architecture community, have outlined in this call to action will aid the College in reducing and recognizing its complicity. Your students, your professors, your alumni, and your community are listening.
Proposed Additional Books:
“African American Architects: Embracing Culture and Building Urban Communities” by Melvin L. Mitchell [ISBN: 1734496002]
“Black Built: history and architecture in the black community” by Paul Wellington [ISBN: 1732965102]
“The Color of Law: A Forgotten History of How Our Government Segregated America” by Richard Rothstein [ISBN: 1631492853]
“The Death and Life of the Great American City” by Jane Jacobs [ISBN: 067974195X]
“Discrimination by Design: A Feminist Critique of the Man-Made Environment” by Leslie Weisman [ISBN: 0252063996]
“From the War on Poverty to the War on Crime: The Making of Mass Incarceration in America” by Elizabeth Hinton [ISBN: 0674979826]
“Mismatch: How Inclusion Shapes Design” by Kat Holmes [ISBN: 9780262038881]
“Ruffneck Constructivists” by Kara Walker et al. [ISBN: 0985337745]
“The South Side: A Portrait of Chicago and American Segregation” by Natalie Y. Moore [ISBN: 9781250118332]
“Spatializing Blackness: Architectures of Confinement and Black Masculinity in Chicago” by Rashad Shabazz [ISBN:0252081145]
“White Papers, Black Marks: Architecture, Race, Culture” by Lesley Naa Norle Lokko [ISBN: 0816637776]
An incomplete list of Black Americans murdered since Eric Garner as a result of police brutality in the US:
Eric Garner, John Crawford III, Michael Brown, Ezell Ford, Dante Parker, Michelle Cusseaux, Laquan Mcdonald, Tanisha Anderson, Akai Gurley, Tamir Rice, Rumain Brisbon, Jerame Reid, George Mann, Matthew Ajibade, Frank Smart, Natasha McKenna, Tony Robinson, Anthony Hill, Mya Hall, Phillip White, Eric Harris, Walter Scott, William Chapman II, Alexia Christian, Brendon Glenn, Victor Manuel Larosa, Jonathan Sanders, Freddie Blue, Joseph Mann, Salvado Ellswood, Sandra Bland, Albert Joseph Davis, Darrius Stewart, Billy Ray Davis, Samuel Dubose, Michael Sabbie, Jonathan Ferrell, Jordan Davis, Clifford Glover, Claude Reese, Randy Evans, Brian Keith Day, Christian Taylor, Troy Robinson, Asshams Pharoah Manley, Felix Kumi, Keith Harrison McLeod, Yvonne Smallwood, Junior Prosper, Lamontez Jones, Paterson Brown, Dominic Hutchinson, Anthony Ashford, Alonzo Smith, Tyree Crawford, Freddie Gray, Aiyana Jones, India Kager, La'vante Biggs, Michael Lee Marshall, Jamar Clark, Richard Perkins, Nathaniel Harris Pickett, Benni Lee, Sean Bell, Signor, Miguel Espinal, Michael Noel, Kevin Matthews, Bettie Jones, Corey Jones, Oscar Grant, Quintonio Legrier, Keith Childress Jr., Janet Wilson, Darrien Hunt, Randy Nelson, Antroine Scott, Amandou Diallo, Wendell Celestine, David Joseph, Calin Roquemore, Dyzhawn Perkins, Christopher Davis, Marco Loud, Peter Gaines, Torrey Robinson, Darius Robinson, Kevin Hicks, Mary Truxillo, Demarcus Semer, Willie Tillman, Terrill Thomas, Sylville Smith, Alton Sterling, Philando Castile, Terrence Crutcher, Paul O'Neal, Alteria Woods, Jordan Edwards, Aaron Bailey, Ronell Roster, Stephon Clark, Antwon Rose II, Botham Jean, Pamela Turner, Dominique Clayton, Atatiana Jefferson, Christopher Whitfield, Christopher Mccovery, Eric Reason, Michael Lorenzo Dean, Breonna Taylor, Tony McDade, George Floyd. May they rest in power. Black Lives Matter.
Thank you,
Texas Tech College of Architecture Student Union
National Organization of Minority Architecture Students, Lubbock Chapter
CoA Dialogues
Caleb Randall student, Jonah Remigio student, Georgia Thomas student, Mohammad Karkoutly student, Grace Shanks student, Zineb Fokar student, Oyeyemi Adeoye student, Jesus Astorga student, Madeline LaPointe student, Jesus Ruelas student, Efrain Martinez student, Panashé Siachitema student, Ana Garcia Merino student, Dante Lozano student, Andres Armendariz student, Ilia Reyes alum, Evan Gallarneau student, Chioma Nwachukwu student, Mohamed Rezk student, Narsis Holmes student, E. Regina Lechuga student, Xavier Willie student, Mya Johnson student, Kevin Flores student, Mari Sparacino student, Madelynn Plauché student, Clayton Taylor student, Carissa Pérez student, Jessica Horton student, Alexis Martinez student, Jai Shoin Mathis student, Vanesa Aguilar student, Chukwudi Odita-Honnah student, Wesley McGlory student, Isabel Manahl alumna, Adrian Reyna alumnus, Zachary Acosta student, Mariana Luna Valdez student, Madilyn Engelhardt student, Diana Luevano alumna, Stephanie Martinez community member, Guadalupe Mendez student, Aurea López student, Jacquelyn Saucedo alumna, Nishan Khatiwada student, Corrine McKevitt student, Seidy Díaz de León student, Julian Azarani community member, Payton Clemens student, Nathaly Ruvalcaba student, Oscar Olvera alumnus, Jaclynn Herbein student, Rebecca Barnes alumna, Zhaolong He student, Christian A. Mijares student, Sofia Domínguez Rojo student, Lauren Amaro student, Christopher J. Matthews alumnus, Saul Ortega student, Brooke Lindsey student, Nicolas Trevino alumnus, Willie Hood alumnus, Erica Grant alumna, Bharath Mohan student, Leslie Duarte student, Maria Martinez student, Zoe Wall student, Tiankun Kyle Zhang student, Desiray Rodriguez student, Raven Alvarado student, Nadia Pagaduan student, Sarah Aziz community member, Neal Lucas Hitch community member, Alyssa Jarrell student, Harmony Smith student, Christian Samble student, LeAnna Morones alumna