In Solidarity

4/19/18

To the Campus Community:

Teaching, learning and doing in the Women’s and Gender Studies Department at Cal Poly is designed to promote scholarly inquiry, education and activism. On behalf of the Women’s & Gender Studies Department and Triota – Cal Poly’s Womxn’s & Gender Studies Honor Society and Feminist Activist Community – we write to share the Solidarity Statement released by the National Women’s Studies Association (NWSA) in January 2015 and to affirm our commitment to, as the NWSA describes in this statement, “an inclusive feminist vision that is in solidarity with Indigenous peoples and sovereignty rights globally, that challenges settler colonial practices, and that contests violations of civil rights and international human rights law, military occupation and militarization, including the criminalization of the U.S. borders, and myriad forms of dispossession.” 

As scholar-activists in Women’s & Gender Studies we stand in solidarity with the BSU and the Drylongso Collective. We write to publicly commit to amplifying the voices, experiences, and knowledge of students, staff, faculty, and alumni of color in our social change work at Cal Poly and in the San Luis Obispo community. We further publicly commit to centering the work of scholar-activists of color in Women’s & Gender Studies as a field, and, specifically, in all components of Women’s & Gender Studies at Cal Poly. Finally, we publicly commit to supporting all actions necessary to create a more just and equitable Cal Poly and world.  

Leilani Hemmings Pallay (she, her, hers)
President, Triota

Katie L. Ettl (she, her, hers)
Vice President, Triota

Dr. Elizabeth Adan (she, her, hers)
Interim Chair [Winter/Spring 2018], Women’s & Gender Studies
Professor, Art & Design

Dr. Jane Lehr (she, her, hers)
Chair [on sabbatical Winter/Spring 2018], Women’s & Gender Studies
Professor, Ethnic Studies