CSM’s Solidarity Statement of Equity
In a season of pain, the campus community resolves to create a culture that is antiracist and equity-advancing
“Every organization has a particular culture. At CSM our culture is one that does not seek fanfare. ... When there is work to be done, we roll up our sleeves and we get to work. Our work, our fight, is to create a campus culture that is antiracist and equity-advancing. Therefore, we are committed to identifying and rooting out problematic institutionalized policies, procedures, and practices—especially those that are predicated on and support anti-Black and other forms of racism.”
-- From the Solidarity Statement of Equity
The murder of George Floyd in May 2020 plunged CSM teachers and staff into anger, frustration and helplessness. How could they comfort their students and reassure them that they could feel safe -- that justice is real -- when the evidence showed how far from equity America truly is?
Dr. Jeremiah Sims, director of equity at CSM, and Kristi Ridgway, dean of language arts, resolved to create from the pain a new beginning. They drafted CSM’s Solidarity Statement of Equity, a document meant to show allyship with hurting students and employees but also to spur examination on an individual and institutional level of how to improve the piece of America that is College of San Mateo.
“CSM was not initially set up to serve the diversity of students that it has today,” Ridgway said. “The conversation in the last five years has shifted away from ‘What can our students do to be ready for us?’ to ‘How can we be ready for them?’ It’s a much more holistic view of education. We’re here to serve the community, and the community is all of us.”
Campus leaders, in conjunction with the San Mateo Community College District’s Anti-Racism Council, are backing up the Solidarity Statement of Equity with an action plan to make CSM’s policies, procedures and practices equitable for all learners and staff.
“The statement is a catalyst,” Sims said. “We can have a million statements and visions and goals, but if our budgets don’t line up, we haven’t gone very far.”
Students met and brought forward 19 action steps; other contributions to the solidarity statement and to the plan came from groups including the Academic Senate and the Institutional Planning Committee. The plan is a work in progress, but it will look at all phases of CSM’s operations so as to make the sense of campus community that CSM has always valued real and accessible to everyone.
Read CSM’s Solidarity Statement of Equity in full.
