Building on months of conversation, planning and proposals, Portland State’s 2021 Winter Symposium once again brought together hundreds of faculty, staff and students to envision a more equitable and racially-just campus.
“I think we all understand that this is a time of reckoning, a time when we must weigh in. There is nothing more present for us than the brutal and lethal consequences of racism in this country as we were reminded yet again of that in this last week,” said Provost Susan Jeffords, speaking of Daunte Wright who was killed by a police officer in Minneapolis on April 11. “It is our responsibility as members of the PSU community to make sure that we are confronting issues of racial equity and justice at our own institution and moving forward. The conversations today I think will be a pivotal platform for us to do so on the academic side.
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The symposium provided participants with several opportunities to meet in virtual breakout rooms and discuss what accomplishing racial justice looks like at PSU and learned lessons that can be integrated into the forthcoming work.
“The events and racial injustices and push back in the last year have taught me that I needed to help more. I needed to get more involved. I needed to challenge my own biases and see the structural racism that exists in Portland and in society-at-large and on our campus,” said President Stephen Percy. “We need to do the work ourselves to work in partnership with people of color and to be an ally in the fight against oppression. It takes effort, it takes time and it takes humility.
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Percy added that the hard work and commitment to the work is leading to real change.
“We are making the journey from talking to planning to taking action,” he said.
At the October 2020 Equity Summit, Percy announced a new $1.5 million Racial Equity Fund that supported the work of five task forces formed at the summit.
The five task forces are: Leadership & Infrastructure; Student Access, Success and Equity Education; Scholarship and Service; Campus Climate and Intergroup Relations; and Employee Access, Success and Equity.
Ame Lambert, vice president for Global Diversity & Inclusion, said because the Winter Symposium was delayed — the event was originally scheduled for February but cancelled amid a devastating snow and ice storm — some of the days’ discussion was restructured to ensure the visioning work done in October still reflects the desires and feelings of the campus.
“It’s really important that we have a vision and we have a ‘why’ that we hold on to when it gets hard, when we get tired, when we get distracted because all of that will continue to happen,” Lambert said.
Feedback from the April 15 symposium will be reviewed by the task forces that will then propose the first three recommendations for Portland State to begin work on in the next year.
Lambert invited participants into the work and asked folks to step back and imagine the system that creates racial injustice and inequity.
"No one can do everything, but each person has access to one or more levers to interrupt and dismantle the system and can pull on that lever," Lambert said. “In the meantime, what we're going to try to do is support current sites and spaces and create other sites and spaces that really support BIPOC (Black, Indigenous and people of color) centered and BIPOC-led efforts.”
Percy added that as the university continues its work to create a more equitable space, mistakes will be made, but that won’t deter the movement.
“The time is now to act,” he said.
The task force recommendations and opportunities to provide feedback are available on the Equity and Racial Justice Priorities website.