In the spring of 2021, members of the Multi Identity-Based Union presented a list of demands to the university administration. The students who labored over the demands spent hours researching, discussing, writing, and editing a 60-page document that not only listed their demands but backed each one up with research and narratives. Following the public release of the demands, a march and rally in support of them was held on April 3, 2021. Throughout the spring a series of meetings were held to take up the issues presented in the demands including a painful town hall meeting. Members of the campus community signed a petition in support of the demands and students unaffiliated with MIBU formed a group to support them as well. The first demand was not met, which caused MIBU Demand authors to doubt the sincerity of the President and his Cabinet’s response to the rest of them. Over the summer a handful of faculty organized open meetings to take up the demand about mandatory diversity training for faculty and staff.
In the fall of the 2021-22 school year, more work was done on the part of MIBU in conversation with the now-defunct Student Association for the Race and Pedagogy Institute (SARPI) to revisit the demands striving to keep up the momentum of campus support garnered during the spring and summer of 2021. In an email from SARPI inviting students to the public weekly MIBU demand readings they hosted in the fall, a SARPI leader stated that these events were an “acknowledgment and appreciation for the radical, visionary change student writers illuminated in their extensive research and writing.”
A town hall held at the end of October was framed through an invitation email as a time for “community building and conversation.” This town hall caused more harm and furthered students’ feelings of frustration and anger with the administrative response to the demands.
This frustration and anger was transferred into action during the walkout from classes that MIBU hosted in November of 2021. An Instagram post from the MIBU account stated the purpose of the walkout, “We are walking out for students of color, for gender nonconforming and queer students, for sexual assault survivors, for all those mistreated and exploited by this university. We are walking out for progress. We as students don’t have a problem using our voices, the administration has a problem with listening.”
The labor that MIBU put into speaking up is an invaluable part of the diversity, equity, and belonging work on this campus. The student leaders of MIBU invested countless hours of their personal time and emotional energy into this work. This work is ongoing and there are many ways for students to come alongside faculty and staff to be involved in it this year and beyond.
On April 3rd, 2021 hundreds of UPS students marched in a circle around the campus protesting the University's lack of response to the MIBU demands. The Instagram caption posted advertising this protest stated, "Join us for our protest this Saturday! We are protesting against the inadequate response to our demands, and the failure to meet demand #1. The University has claimed that they are listening and learning, and interested in collaborating yet they have already shown us they are not attempting to meet the demands in full. The university must change."
https://www.instagram.com/tv/CNOF_etlawp/?utm_source=ig_web_copy_link - link to the video of the speeches and chants at the MIBU protest
MIBU Walkout 11/10/21:
Link to the live stream video taken during the walkout
“We are walking out for students of color, for gender nonconforming and queer students, for sexual assault survivors, for all those mistreated and exploited by this university. We are walking out for progress. We as students don’t have a problem using our voices, the administration has a problem with listening. Call us dramatic again President Crawford…”
(Caption from the MIBU Instagram)
This slide from the original demands Instagram post put up on the MIBU account on March 2, 2021. The caption stated:
"MIBU Demands Part 1: MIBU just issued demands to UPS admin. We are now reaching out to you - students - to read our demands and share them with everyone you know.
At the very least, we ask you to read the opening letter and the shorthand demands. The document itself is long because the pain we’ve felt being here at UPS is enormous.
Things at UPS need to change and that change needs to start now. Stand with us and do the right thing."
