Public Statement of Protest to the BOT

Today I delivered the following public statement of protest to the Board of Trustees on behalf of GAU leadership:

My name is Kristi Brownfield, vice president for communications of the GAU. I am here this morning on behalf of our union to raise a matter of urgent and grave concern to GAU leadership.

During this difficult time on campus, we and many others in the university community have discovered that the administration has put in place new practices such as threatening to arrest students engaged in peaceful sit-ins, restricting the university’s free press, and censoring perfectly appropriate public comments and questions from students and alumni about the university and its policies.

To be specific, the administration purposefully restricted access to its Facebook page, locked the doors of Anthony Hall to keep students out, and even advised student reporters not to interview employees of the university without first submitting their questions to the administration for approval.

That kind of policy change is unacceptable.

We and all other employees come to you as full participants in the vitality of SIUC – as students, as employees, and as valued members of the SIUC community, with a vital interest in keeping a free press at the university and thereby enhancing its reputation as a place where the free exchange of ideas is encouraged.

Graduate assistants are here for two to six years. During that time we participate in the governance of the institution, conduct award-winning research that enhances the reputation of the university, and teach many of the classes undergraduates require to finish their education.

We, together, make the environment we work and learn in.

When that environment is threatened by instituting practices as archaic as putting restrictions on media freedom, stifling free and open expression, unwillingness to hear legitimate public criticism and questions, then we believe that practice harms the university now and in the future.

Censorship marks a shift in policy that must be addressed in order to build a better university. GAU wants to formally protest the actions of the administration which produced that shift.

We protest against the attempted restriction of a free press. We object to the restriction of free speech and the administrative sanitizing of free expression on Facebook. We abhor the misuse of mass communications to create an environment of fear, hostility, and division. While the administration has taken steps to correct one example of wrong-doing by unlocking Facebook comments, their continued public insistence that only “inflammatory posts” were removed despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary and the continued ban from that page of the people who made perfectly innocuous comments further undermines the trust we have in SIUC’s administration or any of their future attempts to correct what they did wrong.

This administration seems more interested in power than people. Any policies that protect the established power of the status quo over the expressive power of a free people are policies that must be overturned. The students here recognize that. It was our voices inside the Student Center, outside of Anthony Hall and the Stone Center, throughout campus, on Facebook, and online — calling for accountability, fairness, and transparency. That is what we want from this university. That is not what we have been getting. We expect better and in the future we hope to work with the administration to ensure we get that better. Together we can heal this damage to create a better SIUC for today and tomorrow.

Thank you.