some of these demands are astonishing:
http://www.blackliberationcollective.org/our-demands/
University of North Carolina Chapel Hill
Board of Governors
1. We DEMAND the immediate firing of Margaret Spellings. And any future President of the UNC system must be decided collectively by students, staff, faculty, workers, and those living in North Carolina who are marginalized by the University space.
a. Margaret Spelling was chosen behind closed doors. The secretive firing of Tom Ross was done with the purpose of instituting someone invested in the corporatization of the University system.
b. She has shown herself to be homophobic, describing LGBTQIA+ people’s lives as “those lifestyles.”
c. She was one of the architects of the No Child Left Behind Act as Secretary of Education under George W. Bush, and thus was responsible for pushing standardized testing that has cemented institutionally racist practices into schools across the country.
2. We DEMAND that students and workers of our choosing will be included in all committees commissioned for the hiring of top tier administrators (i.e. Chancellor, Dean, President). The current president of ASG, the student body president, and president of GPSF are already involved in some of these processes, and clearly we cannot rely on a few tokenized students.
3. We DEMAND that every Board of Governors meeting have a session for public comment and petition.
4. We DEMAND that students, non-academic workers, academic workers, and other North Carolina Constituents be given a vote on the Board of Governors. As it currently stands, even issuing a single student vote is insufficient to shift the balance of power.
5. We DEMAND that University cafeterias, gym memberships, libraries, and class registration be free to all residents of North Carolina regardless of admittance into the institution.
6. We DEMAND increased funding for historically Black colleges and universities (HBCUs). Throughout North Carolina, the majority of HBCUs have experienced decreased enrollment over the past few years as a result of precarious state and federal support.
Endowment
1. We DEMAND that the UNC Management Company and the Board of Trustees should begin researching and carrying out an immediate divestment from:
a. Private jails, prisons, and detention centers
b. Israeli Apartheid
c. Coal
2. We DEMAND that the investments made on behalf of the University should be made with more transparency to ensure the endowment of the University can be tracked according to the industry, company, and funds that are being invested in. This information should be made available to the public via an online database.
3. We DEMAND an endowment oversight committee of students and workers of our choosing be immediately instituted in order to create a framework for ethical guidelines that will facilitate University investment decisions.
Financial Ties
1. We DEMAND the University stop contracting with Aramark and all other corporate entities. Aramark is a corporation deeply invested in the expansion of the prison industrial complex (PIC) and hence the massively growing prison economy, which is targeted at criminalizing and caging working class Black people.
a. The University should re-hire all current employees of Aramark.
b. We know the history of the 1970 Lenoir Workers Strike, where 200 Black cafeteria workers went on strike in response to management attempts to crush union organizing. UNC privatized food services in 1971, just one year after the strikes. We know that UNC contracts with Aramark in order to avoid providing decent working conditions, benefits and pay for Black and Brown workers, while undermining their ability to unionize and collectively bargain.
c. All other current contracts should adhere to the same or better standards of labor as the University and UNC Hospitals until these institutions stop contracting with other corporations and begin employing workers directly.
2. We DEMAND that the University NOT privatize UNC Student Stores, whether with Follett Corporation or another group. We stand with the workers who have given years of service to the campus and have demanded UNC reevaluate its push for privatization.
3. We DEMAND that the University evaluate all companies it is currently licensing with, and make decisions to cut contracting with corporations proven to have deeply exploitative and abusive track records toward workers. Given that, we DEMAND UNC cut its current licensing with:
a. VF Corporation
i. Signing the Accord on Fire and Building Safety in Bangladesh is insufficient, because VF Corporation, which makes UNC apparel, has moved their sites of production outside of Bangladesh, effectively nullifying the Accord.
b. Nike
i. The University signed a near $40 million 10-year contract with the corporation in 2009. Follow the lead of the University of Wisconsin, which cut ties amid labor concerns.
Health and Well-being of Students of Color
1. We DEMAND that the University’s Counseling and Psychiatric Services (CAPS) be directed by a task force of our choosing which would oversee the hiring of mental health care providers, with a strong mandate to aggressively recruit and hire mental health professionals of marginalized backgrounds, especially people of color. We DEMAND that all hiring of therapists should make the utmost priority to hire people of color with a strong structural analysis of mental health and anti-oppression. Students should be able to attend counseling sessions that do not reinforce and antagonize them based on oppression that is already forcing them into the counseling session in the first place.
2. We DEMAND that the limit of 6-8 individual counseling sessions be lifted and that all students regardless of full-time or part-time enrollment may receive mental healthcare services through CAPS according to their needs. All outside referrals should ensure that the cost of care will be truly affordable or free to the student.
Housing
1. We DEMAND Gender Non-Specific housing and bathrooms across UNC’s campus.
2. We DEMAND that the University take responsibility in stopping and reversing the ongoing displacement of working class Black people out of Chapel Hill and Carrboro and demonstrate this through investment in collectively-owned housing projects.
3. We DEMAND that the University decriminalize sleeping on campus or being on campus after midnight for non-students. We know these policies are primarily meant to police poor, Black, and Brown bodies on supposedly “public” space.
Police and Prison Abolition
1. We DEMAND a task force of students and workers of our choosing be immediately instituted in order to create a timeline and action plan to address the University’s relation to policing and penal institutions. The first initiative of this taskforce is for the University to provide a statement calling for a moratorium on jail and prison construction in North Carolina. We say this in the wake of a new, larger jail being planned for Hillsborough, NC, which will continue the practice of holding Black, brown, undocumented, poor, queer, trans folks and people with mental illness in captivity.
2. We DEMAND that cameras surveilling students, workers, and white supremacist monuments on campus be deactivated and removed.
3. We DEMAND that police are trained on de-escalation techniques, so that they avoid the use of force in seemingly antagonistic encounters. Similarly, we DEMAND that campus police participate in the University-wide political education in order to learn about how our institutions of policing, prisons, and the courts have their roots in racism.
4. We DEMAND an end to the list of people banned from the University campus, who we are certain are disproportionately poor and homeless people of color.
5. We DEMAND that UNC not privatize its police force and/or contract with other security or surveillance firms now or in the future. Still, a public police is no better, if not worse. Policing as an institution must be abolished, and must be replaced with restorative and transformative justice practices, rather than functioning as a mouth into our penal system.
6. We DEMAND that no additional funding be provided to the UNC Department of Public Safety and call for a divestment from policing on our campus.
7. We DEMAND the complete disarming of the UNC Department of Public Safety (UNC Police) and UNC Hospital Police.
8. We DEMAND that the University take it upon itself to take demonstrable actions to decrease police harassment, arrests, and general police contact with working-class, poor, and homeless Black and Brown people. The University as a form of white space necessitates intensified policing and surveillance in all of Chapel Hill and Carrboro, particularly on campus and on Franklin Street.
Tuition and Financial Aid
1. We DEMAND the elimination of tuition and fees for all students. In achieving this, we call for an immediate moratorium on tuition and fee increases, decreases until all students are graduating without student debt, and the establishment of financial aid that is loan-free and labor-free (no work study). These demands cut across study abroad programs outside of UNC and need-based initiatives such as the Covenant Scholars Program. We know that merit scholarships reproduce inequality as they primarily benefit wealthier, white students. Hence, we aim to end the mythology of meritocracy that is pervasive in higher education.
2. We DEMAND in-state tuition and full financial aid for all residents of North Carolina, regardless of immigration status.
3. We DEMAND a tuition task force of students and workers of our choosing be immediately instituted in order to create a timeline and action plan to create this reality.
Workers: Academic and Non-Academic
1. We DEMAND more aggressive recruitment of Black faculty and faculty of color. This includes positions in CAPS and Campus Health practitioners.
2. For all faculty, administrative, and staff positions, make formal priority to hire formerly incarcerated people, refugees, Black, Indigenous, and Latina/o people.
3. We DEMAND a faculty-hiring and tenure task force of students and workers of our choosing with full decision-making authority be immediately instituted in order to create a timeline and action plan for hiring procedures and practices.
4. We DEMAND all department heads and deans of African, African American and Diaspora Studies, Asian Studies, American Indian Studies, Latin American Studies, and other similar departments and programs MUST be faculty of color.
5. We DEMAND that priority must be given to hiring and tenuring of faculty of color over white faculty in those departments, to the extent that 80% of the faculty of said departments must be made up of faculty of color. White professors must be discouraged from leading and teaching departments about demographics and societies colonized, massacred, or enslaved under white supremacy.
6. We DEMAND a University and hospital-wide minimum wage of at least $25.00/hour that is commensurate with the living costs of downtown Chapel Hill plus full benefits for all workers regardless of temporary, permanent, part-time, full-time, or contracted status. For a household with a single working adult and three children $32.86 is the full-time minimum wage required for a family to live decently in Durham/Chapel Hill. People should not be compensated for their labor so that they can merely get by, but so that they can thrive. We DEMAND that an increase in wages should never result in a cutting of hours. Workers must be paid enough to live, work, and care for family in Chapel Hill, as white supremacist, patriarchal capitalism has made housing prices skyrocket and rendered the town unaffordable to one too many.
7. We DEMAND that all administrators be compensated at the same rate as workers. UNC-Chapel Hill Chancellor Carol Folt currently receives a base salary of $570,000. Her pay is symptomatic of the way universities have a bloated administrative system with numerous over-paid workers in executive positions.
8. We DEMAND that all workers at the UNC system & UNC Hospitals have the right to unionize and collectively bargain. We DEMAND that the UNC-System and UNC-Chapel Hill advocate for the right to unionize and collectively bargain for workers on a state and national level.
9. We DEMAND a minimum compensation of $15,000 per course for all adjunct faculty.
10. We DEMAND that the University and UNC Hospitals stop employment discrimination against formerly incarcerated people. Numerous scholars and activists have pointed out how the U.S. criminal punishment system has racism ingrained in its roots, as it has been tasked with the duty of criminalizing and caging primarily working class Black people.
a. “Ban the box” on University and UNC Hospitals job applications.
b. Stop criminal background checks for all faculty, staff, and administration.
11. We DEMAND that free childcare and after school care is provided to all staff, students, and faculty at UNC and UNC-Hospitals. We DEMAND transportation from Chapel Hill-Carrboro City Schools to afterschool programs at UNC. We DEMAND that the University and hospital actively advocate for all staff, students, and faculty be eligible to enroll their children in Chapel Hill-Carrboro City Schools.
12. We DEMAND that student-athletes are recognized as University employees, paid a base salary $25.00/hour with benefits, and, further, compensated in accordance with the level of revenue that they bring to the University. We recognize that men’s basketball and football, via the exploitation of Black men, are central to the athletics industrial complex (AIC) that runs the University. Hence, we DEMAND a complete dismantling of the AIC in the long term — education should not be a mode of racist, capitalist accumulation.
13. We DEMAND that sexual violence and all forms of racist, gendered violence should be seriously addressed in employment practices on this campus, particularly against women of color in the Housekeeping Department.
a. Former Housekeeping Director Bill Burston sexually abused refugee women from Burma: they traded sex for jobs and he actively tried to hire these women in place of Black women.
b. UNC failed to protect María Isabel Prudencio-Arias from retaliation for speaking out against the case.
14. We DEMAND that all workers receive free monthly GO Passes and free parking through employment with UNC or UNC-Hospitals. We know that workers in the Triangle and particularly in Chapel Hill are forced to live far away in order to afford housing and pay astronomical costs for transportation.
15. We DEMAND language justice for all workers at UNC. Trainings, materials, and all communication should be made available in all languages that workers prefer. We recognize that the University relies on the labor of a large number of refugee workers and Latin American immigrants, and these workers should be provided with the same access to information and communication as English-speaking workers. Additionally, verbal instructions and communication should be made available in addition to written materials for all workers, as we recognize that workers are often denied proper education, even for English-speakers born in the U.S.
http://www.blackliberationcollective.org/our-demands/
University of North Carolina Chapel Hill
Board of Governors
1. We DEMAND the immediate firing of Margaret Spellings. And any future President of the UNC system must be decided collectively by students, staff, faculty, workers, and those living in North Carolina who are marginalized by the University space.
a. Margaret Spelling was chosen behind closed doors. The secretive firing of Tom Ross was done with the purpose of instituting someone invested in the corporatization of the University system.
b. She has shown herself to be homophobic, describing LGBTQIA+ people’s lives as “those lifestyles.”
c. She was one of the architects of the No Child Left Behind Act as Secretary of Education under George W. Bush, and thus was responsible for pushing standardized testing that has cemented institutionally racist practices into schools across the country.
2. We DEMAND that students and workers of our choosing will be included in all committees commissioned for the hiring of top tier administrators (i.e. Chancellor, Dean, President). The current president of ASG, the student body president, and president of GPSF are already involved in some of these processes, and clearly we cannot rely on a few tokenized students.
3. We DEMAND that every Board of Governors meeting have a session for public comment and petition.
4. We DEMAND that students, non-academic workers, academic workers, and other North Carolina Constituents be given a vote on the Board of Governors. As it currently stands, even issuing a single student vote is insufficient to shift the balance of power.
5. We DEMAND that University cafeterias, gym memberships, libraries, and class registration be free to all residents of North Carolina regardless of admittance into the institution.
6. We DEMAND increased funding for historically Black colleges and universities (HBCUs). Throughout North Carolina, the majority of HBCUs have experienced decreased enrollment over the past few years as a result of precarious state and federal support.
Endowment
1. We DEMAND that the UNC Management Company and the Board of Trustees should begin researching and carrying out an immediate divestment from:
a. Private jails, prisons, and detention centers
b. Israeli Apartheid
c. Coal
2. We DEMAND that the investments made on behalf of the University should be made with more transparency to ensure the endowment of the University can be tracked according to the industry, company, and funds that are being invested in. This information should be made available to the public via an online database.
3. We DEMAND an endowment oversight committee of students and workers of our choosing be immediately instituted in order to create a framework for ethical guidelines that will facilitate University investment decisions.
Financial Ties
1. We DEMAND the University stop contracting with Aramark and all other corporate entities. Aramark is a corporation deeply invested in the expansion of the prison industrial complex (PIC) and hence the massively growing prison economy, which is targeted at criminalizing and caging working class Black people.
a. The University should re-hire all current employees of Aramark.
b. We know the history of the 1970 Lenoir Workers Strike, where 200 Black cafeteria workers went on strike in response to management attempts to crush union organizing. UNC privatized food services in 1971, just one year after the strikes. We know that UNC contracts with Aramark in order to avoid providing decent working conditions, benefits and pay for Black and Brown workers, while undermining their ability to unionize and collectively bargain.
c. All other current contracts should adhere to the same or better standards of labor as the University and UNC Hospitals until these institutions stop contracting with other corporations and begin employing workers directly.
2. We DEMAND that the University NOT privatize UNC Student Stores, whether with Follett Corporation or another group. We stand with the workers who have given years of service to the campus and have demanded UNC reevaluate its push for privatization.
3. We DEMAND that the University evaluate all companies it is currently licensing with, and make decisions to cut contracting with corporations proven to have deeply exploitative and abusive track records toward workers. Given that, we DEMAND UNC cut its current licensing with:
a. VF Corporation
i. Signing the Accord on Fire and Building Safety in Bangladesh is insufficient, because VF Corporation, which makes UNC apparel, has moved their sites of production outside of Bangladesh, effectively nullifying the Accord.
b. Nike
i. The University signed a near $40 million 10-year contract with the corporation in 2009. Follow the lead of the University of Wisconsin, which cut ties amid labor concerns.
Health and Well-being of Students of Color
1. We DEMAND that the University’s Counseling and Psychiatric Services (CAPS) be directed by a task force of our choosing which would oversee the hiring of mental health care providers, with a strong mandate to aggressively recruit and hire mental health professionals of marginalized backgrounds, especially people of color. We DEMAND that all hiring of therapists should make the utmost priority to hire people of color with a strong structural analysis of mental health and anti-oppression. Students should be able to attend counseling sessions that do not reinforce and antagonize them based on oppression that is already forcing them into the counseling session in the first place.
2. We DEMAND that the limit of 6-8 individual counseling sessions be lifted and that all students regardless of full-time or part-time enrollment may receive mental healthcare services through CAPS according to their needs. All outside referrals should ensure that the cost of care will be truly affordable or free to the student.
Housing
1. We DEMAND Gender Non-Specific housing and bathrooms across UNC’s campus.
2. We DEMAND that the University take responsibility in stopping and reversing the ongoing displacement of working class Black people out of Chapel Hill and Carrboro and demonstrate this through investment in collectively-owned housing projects.
3. We DEMAND that the University decriminalize sleeping on campus or being on campus after midnight for non-students. We know these policies are primarily meant to police poor, Black, and Brown bodies on supposedly “public” space.
Police and Prison Abolition
1. We DEMAND a task force of students and workers of our choosing be immediately instituted in order to create a timeline and action plan to address the University’s relation to policing and penal institutions. The first initiative of this taskforce is for the University to provide a statement calling for a moratorium on jail and prison construction in North Carolina. We say this in the wake of a new, larger jail being planned for Hillsborough, NC, which will continue the practice of holding Black, brown, undocumented, poor, queer, trans folks and people with mental illness in captivity.
2. We DEMAND that cameras surveilling students, workers, and white supremacist monuments on campus be deactivated and removed.
3. We DEMAND that police are trained on de-escalation techniques, so that they avoid the use of force in seemingly antagonistic encounters. Similarly, we DEMAND that campus police participate in the University-wide political education in order to learn about how our institutions of policing, prisons, and the courts have their roots in racism.
4. We DEMAND an end to the list of people banned from the University campus, who we are certain are disproportionately poor and homeless people of color.
5. We DEMAND that UNC not privatize its police force and/or contract with other security or surveillance firms now or in the future. Still, a public police is no better, if not worse. Policing as an institution must be abolished, and must be replaced with restorative and transformative justice practices, rather than functioning as a mouth into our penal system.
6. We DEMAND that no additional funding be provided to the UNC Department of Public Safety and call for a divestment from policing on our campus.
7. We DEMAND the complete disarming of the UNC Department of Public Safety (UNC Police) and UNC Hospital Police.
8. We DEMAND that the University take it upon itself to take demonstrable actions to decrease police harassment, arrests, and general police contact with working-class, poor, and homeless Black and Brown people. The University as a form of white space necessitates intensified policing and surveillance in all of Chapel Hill and Carrboro, particularly on campus and on Franklin Street.
Tuition and Financial Aid
1. We DEMAND the elimination of tuition and fees for all students. In achieving this, we call for an immediate moratorium on tuition and fee increases, decreases until all students are graduating without student debt, and the establishment of financial aid that is loan-free and labor-free (no work study). These demands cut across study abroad programs outside of UNC and need-based initiatives such as the Covenant Scholars Program. We know that merit scholarships reproduce inequality as they primarily benefit wealthier, white students. Hence, we aim to end the mythology of meritocracy that is pervasive in higher education.
2. We DEMAND in-state tuition and full financial aid for all residents of North Carolina, regardless of immigration status.
3. We DEMAND a tuition task force of students and workers of our choosing be immediately instituted in order to create a timeline and action plan to create this reality.
Workers: Academic and Non-Academic
1. We DEMAND more aggressive recruitment of Black faculty and faculty of color. This includes positions in CAPS and Campus Health practitioners.
2. For all faculty, administrative, and staff positions, make formal priority to hire formerly incarcerated people, refugees, Black, Indigenous, and Latina/o people.
3. We DEMAND a faculty-hiring and tenure task force of students and workers of our choosing with full decision-making authority be immediately instituted in order to create a timeline and action plan for hiring procedures and practices.
4. We DEMAND all department heads and deans of African, African American and Diaspora Studies, Asian Studies, American Indian Studies, Latin American Studies, and other similar departments and programs MUST be faculty of color.
5. We DEMAND that priority must be given to hiring and tenuring of faculty of color over white faculty in those departments, to the extent that 80% of the faculty of said departments must be made up of faculty of color. White professors must be discouraged from leading and teaching departments about demographics and societies colonized, massacred, or enslaved under white supremacy.
6. We DEMAND a University and hospital-wide minimum wage of at least $25.00/hour that is commensurate with the living costs of downtown Chapel Hill plus full benefits for all workers regardless of temporary, permanent, part-time, full-time, or contracted status. For a household with a single working adult and three children $32.86 is the full-time minimum wage required for a family to live decently in Durham/Chapel Hill. People should not be compensated for their labor so that they can merely get by, but so that they can thrive. We DEMAND that an increase in wages should never result in a cutting of hours. Workers must be paid enough to live, work, and care for family in Chapel Hill, as white supremacist, patriarchal capitalism has made housing prices skyrocket and rendered the town unaffordable to one too many.
7. We DEMAND that all administrators be compensated at the same rate as workers. UNC-Chapel Hill Chancellor Carol Folt currently receives a base salary of $570,000. Her pay is symptomatic of the way universities have a bloated administrative system with numerous over-paid workers in executive positions.
8. We DEMAND that all workers at the UNC system & UNC Hospitals have the right to unionize and collectively bargain. We DEMAND that the UNC-System and UNC-Chapel Hill advocate for the right to unionize and collectively bargain for workers on a state and national level.
9. We DEMAND a minimum compensation of $15,000 per course for all adjunct faculty.
10. We DEMAND that the University and UNC Hospitals stop employment discrimination against formerly incarcerated people. Numerous scholars and activists have pointed out how the U.S. criminal punishment system has racism ingrained in its roots, as it has been tasked with the duty of criminalizing and caging primarily working class Black people.
a. “Ban the box” on University and UNC Hospitals job applications.
b. Stop criminal background checks for all faculty, staff, and administration.
11. We DEMAND that free childcare and after school care is provided to all staff, students, and faculty at UNC and UNC-Hospitals. We DEMAND transportation from Chapel Hill-Carrboro City Schools to afterschool programs at UNC. We DEMAND that the University and hospital actively advocate for all staff, students, and faculty be eligible to enroll their children in Chapel Hill-Carrboro City Schools.
12. We DEMAND that student-athletes are recognized as University employees, paid a base salary $25.00/hour with benefits, and, further, compensated in accordance with the level of revenue that they bring to the University. We recognize that men’s basketball and football, via the exploitation of Black men, are central to the athletics industrial complex (AIC) that runs the University. Hence, we DEMAND a complete dismantling of the AIC in the long term — education should not be a mode of racist, capitalist accumulation.
13. We DEMAND that sexual violence and all forms of racist, gendered violence should be seriously addressed in employment practices on this campus, particularly against women of color in the Housekeeping Department.
a. Former Housekeeping Director Bill Burston sexually abused refugee women from Burma: they traded sex for jobs and he actively tried to hire these women in place of Black women.
b. UNC failed to protect María Isabel Prudencio-Arias from retaliation for speaking out against the case.
14. We DEMAND that all workers receive free monthly GO Passes and free parking through employment with UNC or UNC-Hospitals. We know that workers in the Triangle and particularly in Chapel Hill are forced to live far away in order to afford housing and pay astronomical costs for transportation.
15. We DEMAND language justice for all workers at UNC. Trainings, materials, and all communication should be made available in all languages that workers prefer. We recognize that the University relies on the labor of a large number of refugee workers and Latin American immigrants, and these workers should be provided with the same access to information and communication as English-speaking workers. Additionally, verbal instructions and communication should be made available in addition to written materials for all workers, as we recognize that workers are often denied proper education, even for English-speakers born in the U.S.
