Marquette Faculty Will Gather on Wednesday (9/28) to Support Unjustly Punished Student Protestors

Milwaukee, WI – At noon on Wednesday, September 28, Marquette faculty will gather in front of the west entrance of the Alumni Memorial Union (1442 W Wisconsin Ave) in support of ten student leaders of color who staged a protest during Convocation in August, and who are now appealing the highly troubling process of punishment here–which will do nothing to ameliorate, and may even deepen, institutional inequalities at Marquette.

“At bottom, the events here reflect a pattern of failure of Marquette to meet the moment and live up to its Catholic educational mission,” said Professor Peter Staudenmaier, of Marquette’s history department. “In the months leading up to Convocation, the student leaders made repeated attempts to engage university administrators in meaningful dialogue over a series of significant concerns for students of color at Marquette. In the absence of a response, the students organized a silent protest at Convocation.”

“Despite the students’ efforts to repair relationships with administrators in the wake of those events, ten of the students involved were investigated for conduct violations in a process that more closely resembled an interrogation rather than restorative justice,” said Professor Chris Stockdale of Marquette’s physics department. “Late on Wednesday, September 21st, the students received the official findings from their conduct “hearings”. The penalties and the process from which they were derived do not reflect the University’s guiding core principle of Cura Personalis, rather they are rooted in a desire for vengeance and to inflict harm and shame on our students. Any moral high ground that University administrators thought they held after Convocation, they completely ceded in the following weeks,” Stockdale said.

“The process here has been anything but restorative or redemptive. Punishing students for their protest in this fashion is, in the end, a way of avoiding blame for Marquette’s own institutional failures,” said Professor Sergio González of Marquette’s history department. “While this year’s freshman class includes the most students of color in the university’s history, Marquette continues to offer them insufficient support, despite their repeated requests for change, while bragging about how they have ‘diversified’ the campus. As a campus community, we can do better than this.”

Marquette faculty will gather to support these students as they file their appeals on Wednesday.

NOTE: This press release was submitted to Urban Milwaukee and was not written by an Urban Milwaukee writer. While it is believed to be reliable, Urban Milwaukee does not guarantee its accuracy or completeness.