Student Council passed a resolution last night to support the creation of a student-initiated memorial site that will formally acknowledge the slaves who helped construct the University.
"The problem is we don't talk about how slavery really is the cause of all the things that are going on this country in terms of racial inequality," said College Rep. Eugene Resnick, who sponsored the resolution. "This resolution states the fact that we need to acknowledge and embrace our history and then we can move forward in tackling these things."
Eugene said the memorial will fulfill a variety of cultural goals shared by Council members.
"It's a 10-fold purpose," Resnick said. "It's not only showing that kind of statement but also [serves] to initiative awareness, start a memorial and bridge gaps between the University and the community."
Council's Diversity Initiatives Committee also emphasized that unlike similar resolutions passed by the Board of Visitors and commonwealth legislators in 2007 to formally acknowledge the efforts of slaves during the University's construction, this resolution seeks to produce a more concrete symbol of that appreciation, Resnick said.
Diversity Initiatives Co-Chair Carrie Filipetti noted that the Committee hopes the memorial will supplement the one already in the walkway in front of the Rotunda.
"The Diversity Initiatives Committee has always been, and especially this year, focused on getting an appropriate memorial to commemorate the slave laborers who contributed to the University," Filipetti said. "The current memorial is very inadequate. It's on the ground and people step on it all the time and most people don't even know it's there, so we want to create a slavery memorial that's centrally located and expresses the thanks the University had for those who contributed to the University and making it what it is today."
Filipetti also emphasized the importance of student self-governance in the creation of the memorial.
"We wanted people to understand that we're able to acknowledge that the University was built largely by slave labor," Filipetti said. "This is not just the University issuing an apology but actually commemorating what was done, and we decided the best way to do that would be to make it a student-initiated project."
Fellow Diversity Initiatives Co-Chair Ishraga Eltahir, meanwhile, plans to couple the memorial resolution with ways to better familiarize students with the University's history.
"The proposal is something that would engage students with the history of the University in its entirety in a more inclusive way because we feel the history here has been comprehensive and we have a lot of pride, but we have a tendency not to highlight the darker parts of our history," she said. "Through our memorial, we'll be constantly reminded of a crucial part of our University's history and embrace and actually learn about it."
To further facilitate student involvement, the Committee also hopes to introduce a design competition for the proposed memorial with a $500 prize from University and Community Action for Racial Equity, a group of local and University community members who seek to reconcile the legacy of slavery with racial equality. Resnick said the Committee will begin a large publicity push after Thanksgiving break and will formally launch the competition next semester.
Resnick noted that it is still too early to forecast the costs associated with the project. "Budgeting is something we have to work out," he said. "We don't know what kind of proposals we're going to get or how much money we need."
Apart from the memorial and design competition, the Committee also plans to issue a survey to ascertain the extent to which students know about the role slaves played in the construction of the University.
"This is a larger initiative that encompasses educational awareness of the University," Resnick said. "A survey disseminated to students will examine how much students know about the University and whether they know enough."
The results of the survey will be used to make suggestions to University administrators to increase cultural and historical awareness on Grounds, he said.
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