To the Boston University English Department,
 
     The undergraduate students of the English department are greatly saddened and angered by the police shootings targeting Black people and the continued brutality, violence, and racism against Black and Brown people throughout the country. With that being said, we want to hold the English department accountable for the lack of the development of a truly inclusive environment for black and POC students on campus, and we urge the department to make this a primary and lasting goal for both students and faculty to work towards daily. To the undergraduate class, these goals are not abstract thoughts and outlines, but rather changes that we believe are necessary within the department and the university as a whole. Our main concern as students and as members as the BU community is the improvement of our livelihood through greater diversity in both our classes and our faculty makeup, and we believe these issues should be at the forefront of the department’s initiatives.

     In referring to diverse hires, we are not exclusively referring to a lack of racial diversity in the department, but additionally a lack of diversity in expertise, financial background, and education amongst the faculty. We believe it is vital to incorporate faculty from different walks of life in order to show students the value of having individuals who can bring more to the table in the terms of experience in addition to academic background. Additionally, as the English department is predominantly white (in the terms of student and faculty makeup), many students of color, and students from differing backgrounds feel excluded, misrepresented, or misunderstood by faculty, further increasing the importance of incorporating more faculty who look and share many of the same experiences of the diverse classes of students they teach.  This issue extends to the undergraduate class as a whole, as many feel that because of the lack of racial and social diversity, overall communication with faculty has become extremely one-sided and intimidating for students. A push for more diverse hires, in addition to transparency about hiring practices and initiatives, will lead to a more accessible department for students and develop a closer, more understanding relationship between students and faculty.

     Another issue noted by students is the extremely limited course offerings of the department as a whole. Many of the courses that students are required to take consist of literature and theory developed with Eurocentric, White male ideals, and leave little room for exploration and education on authors from diverse global, economic, and racial backgrounds. As a result, we feel as though students are limited to an extremely narrow outlook on literature and thus come out as less informed and wholly educated. With the inclusion of more diverse authorship, students and faculty will gain access to a wider range of writing earlier in their academic career, allowing them to feel more secure in their education as English students, and to feel well-equipped to apply their knowledge in different spaces. Additionally, authors of color who have been marginalized deserve to have their work featured and respected in the curriculum as creators in their own right, and it is up to the department to make sure their humanity and their work is respected in educational spaces. The push for inclusive literature outside of the “Diverse Literatures in English” requirement, and instead as a foundational part of understanding literature as a whole, is urgent to us. It should be prioritized now, as the steps to creating an inclusive academic space which reflects the world around us should occur without putting pressure on potential diverse hires and students of differing backgrounds.

     We, as the undergraduate class, want to refrain from suggesting any specific steps or guidelines for hiring as we cannot fully understand the complexities, financial and logistical, that go into that specific process. Yet, we feel it is necessary to speak openly about our concerns as the addressing of the issues is imperative in making us feel included, comfortable, and well-rounded in our academic and personal explorations of literature. We fully support the English department in their initiatives, we know more can be done to make the department a truly inclusive space. We are open to working together, but we need these issues to be made a priority in order to promote anti-racism and inclusivity within the department. To the undergraduates, action speaks louder than words, and we are pushing these issues in order to seek real and sweeping change, and to create an environment that will benefit both faculty and students for years to come.
 
Sincerely,
 
The Undergraduate English Class