President Mandel’s most recent email titled “Williams will confront and fight racial and social injustice,” makes clear that the school has little intention to do anything of the sort. To respond to William’s inadequacy, this document is intended to provide resources for students to hold powerful members of Williams College accountable to their claims of supporting Black lives. We’ve included templates, contact information, additional reading, and links to other resource documents. Use this information however you wish, but we strongly encourage you to write your own messages, and send them to more people than just Maud in order to amplify the impact of your voices. We also want to emphasize that much of the information and events discussed in this document come from the previous work of on-campus activists, particularly Black-led student movements. Williams, like many colleges and universities, has a largely cyclical history of campus activism, where tensions rise and movements grow before they lose momentum as the semester ends or students graduate. Too often, the administration has relied on these cycles to shield themselves from criticism and keep from implementing meaningful long-term change. We can’t let this happen again. Maud’s most recent statement is pathetic, and we urge you to continue to make your voices heard and keep up momentum in order to make it clear that this is not over and there is no excuse for the school’s violent inaction.

Existing email templates:

  • One click to populate your email:

tinyurl.com/maudemail

Outline for writing your own email:

This outline offers some points you can make when writing emails but is by no means an exhaustive list!

  1. Dissatisfaction with the statements that President Mandel has put out
  1. Vague language and empty, incomplete promises
  2. Only acknowledging anti-Black racism as existing outside of Williams
  3. Relying on education as the sole available tool of anti-racism without acknowledging that academia is inherently racist
  4. Pathetic amount of money offered and no clarity on where it will go
  1. Events of the past two years that are evidence of Williams’ blatant anti-Black racism and failure to support Black community members
  1. Institutional violence against Professors Love and Green that led to their departure
  2. $400,000 donation and easement of land to the Williamstown PD
  3. Terminating the positions of three WOC at the Davis Center and all but dismantling the Center
  4. Failure to take action in the wake of clear white supremacist presence on campus
  5. CSS officers’ repeatedly targeting, intimidating, and surveilling Black students
  1. https://williamsrecord.com/2020/08/lawsuit-brought-by-wpd-sergeant-alleges-sexual-assault-racial-harassment-by-williamstown-police-chief-and-unnamed-officers/
  1. College Council initially rejecting funding for Black Previews programming
  2. Alumni on EphBlog doxxing and threatening students who engaged in campus activism, particularly around Black previews
  1. Short term demands (things to do tomorrow)
  1. Doubling donation amounts at the very least and specifying the organizations they will go to
  2. Unfreezing RSO funds so clubs can donate leftover budgets
  3. Implementing an initiative to match community member donations like Amherst
  4. Expand TIDE grants to support individuals working on anti-racist projects
  5. Make anti-racist and abolitionist literature available to community members
  1. Long term demands (plans to be made tomorrow)
  1. Reform hiring and tenure practices to diversify departments and support Black faculty
  2. Diversify IWS, make it more accessible, and expand its capacity to meet student needs
  3. Rebuild the Davis Center with greatly expanded resources, jurisdiction, and staff support
  4. Defund CSS and redistribute its budget
  5. Implement an Africana Studies major
  6. Implement each and every demand put forth by the CARE Now movement in spring 2019 (bit.ly/dearmaud)
  7. Create additional support spaces and networks and support independent student efforts to do so

Suggested contacts:

Additional resources:

  • Lessons from the Damned (Essay by Dr. G and Dr. Love)
  • CARENow movement instagram page
  • CARENow movement letter to Maud (with detailed demands)
  • Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Draft Report (identifies concrete structural issues)
  • Williams Record
  • Professors cancel courses, cite College’s “violent practices,” “anti-blackness and transphobia”
  • President instructs students to relocate memorial, citing fire safety
  • College helps fund new Williamstown police station
  • Graffiti of neo-Nazi group name found on light pole
  • Graffiti naming neo-Nazi group found in Thompson Hall
  • Why we left the Davis Center: Systemic neglect and structural changes (Op Ed written by former DC fellows)
  • The College has failed the DC (Op Ed by MinCo steering board)
  • Institutional forgetting at Williams: A call for “Testimonies of the Damned” (Op Ed on student activism at Williams)

If you would like to contact anyone about this document, please reach out to ci2@williams.edu, adm3@williams.edu, ccr2@williams.edu, enp1@williams.edu, tsn1@williams.edu, asc6@williams.edu, and/or ik5@williams.edu