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Thank you, Sarah for work you've done with BSEC!
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$13,466 raised of $10K
219 donations
Dear community,
The small number of Black scientists at academic institutions not only have to endure systemic racism, but are often expected to do the work of solving this racism by performing diversity, equity and inclusion work on behalf of their universities. This work is done in addition to their research, often without support, recognition, or compensation for their labor. This appropriation of labor is a form of exploitation that has been deeply embedded in academic culture, and Caltech is no exception.
In the midst of 2020's resurgence of the Black Lives Matter movement, BSEC president, Sarah Sam, along with other BSEC leaders and several other grad students at Caltech, mobilized to organize the Caltech community:
- They wrote and disseminated the BSEC letter on suggested actions and petition to members of the Institute, collecting over 1,000 signatures of support across faculty, staff, postdocs, students, and alumni.
- They organized a Caltech-wide town hall on Antiracism: What Can Caltech Do? which had over 900 attendees.
- Additionally, Sarah served on the Naming Task Force (NTF) from which she was forced to resign after two months of committee members minimizing BSEC's role in the committee's very formation, as well as the minimization of harm caused by Caltech's eugenics involvement. The committee, which renamed itself to the Committee on Naming and Recognition (CNR), neither named nor recognized Sarah or any other Black student in its final report.
As a result of their work, Caltech announced plans to remove the name of five former eugenists from Caltech buildings and assets of buildings and committed to: doubling the number of WAVE fellowships, creating graduate fellowships to support diversity, growing the Freshman Summer Research Institute, and building on AGEP to identify and support postdocs of color.
Despite having immense impact on the Caltech community, Sarah has never been compensated for her work. She has made personal and academic sacrifices, spending countless hours of labor despite Caltech as an institution failing to publicly acknowledge her, and going as far to imply she was “impatient with the renaming process,” after shamelessly exploiting her labor.
Due to the erasure and abuse she has endured, Sarah is taking an unpaid leave of absence to recover before reprioritizing research.
Please join us in protesting the pervasive erasure of Black student activism by demonstrating what this work is worth. Together, we can provide our colleague with the acknowledgement that Caltech has been withholding, and the financial compensation to match the investment that she has made in the community.
Thank you everyone for your contributions.
#RefundTheBlackTax
#CompensateBlackLabor
The small number of Black scientists at academic institutions not only have to endure systemic racism, but are often expected to do the work of solving this racism by performing diversity, equity and inclusion work on behalf of their universities. This work is done in addition to their research, often without support, recognition, or compensation for their labor. This appropriation of labor is a form of exploitation that has been deeply embedded in academic culture, and Caltech is no exception.
In the midst of 2020's resurgence of the Black Lives Matter movement, BSEC president, Sarah Sam, along with other BSEC leaders and several other grad students at Caltech, mobilized to organize the Caltech community:
- They wrote and disseminated the BSEC letter on suggested actions and petition to members of the Institute, collecting over 1,000 signatures of support across faculty, staff, postdocs, students, and alumni.
- They organized a Caltech-wide town hall on Antiracism: What Can Caltech Do? which had over 900 attendees.
- Additionally, Sarah served on the Naming Task Force (NTF) from which she was forced to resign after two months of committee members minimizing BSEC's role in the committee's very formation, as well as the minimization of harm caused by Caltech's eugenics involvement. The committee, which renamed itself to the Committee on Naming and Recognition (CNR), neither named nor recognized Sarah or any other Black student in its final report.
As a result of their work, Caltech announced plans to remove the name of five former eugenists from Caltech buildings and assets of buildings and committed to: doubling the number of WAVE fellowships, creating graduate fellowships to support diversity, growing the Freshman Summer Research Institute, and building on AGEP to identify and support postdocs of color.
Despite having immense impact on the Caltech community, Sarah has never been compensated for her work. She has made personal and academic sacrifices, spending countless hours of labor despite Caltech as an institution failing to publicly acknowledge her, and going as far to imply she was “impatient with the renaming process,” after shamelessly exploiting her labor.
Due to the erasure and abuse she has endured, Sarah is taking an unpaid leave of absence to recover before reprioritizing research.
Please join us in protesting the pervasive erasure of Black student activism by demonstrating what this work is worth. Together, we can provide our colleague with the acknowledgement that Caltech has been withholding, and the financial compensation to match the investment that she has made in the community.
Thank you everyone for your contributions.
#RefundTheBlackTax
#CompensateBlackLabor