We urge the SU community to submit feedback to the Fast Forward Syracuse Academic Strategic Plan’s comment period, which expires on April 10. At www.thegeneralbody.org we have compiled suggested comments you can alter or copy and paste in the comment boxes sent by Fast Forward here. Here’s the Fast Forward Proposal. They gave the community only eight days to submit.

While the university has made an impressive effort to accord Fast Forward a veneer of transparency, on the whole the Academic Strategic Plan offers minimal concrete recommendations and reveals an alarming lack of concern for social justice issues at the university, community and society more broadly. Allowing the SU community to comment on a condensed version of the plan with no tangible recommendations for change does not qualify as meaningful, democratic participation. This condensed version also leaves out many troubling details that were presented to the SU community during the open forum several months ago.

Responding to “the challenges of the day” means putting the need for socially-just education at the center of what it is that we do at SU. As a first step, we encourage the administration to respond to students’ grievances and needs as laid out in THE General Body’s comprehensive document. Students had to sit-in for 18 days to have any input on the Fast Forward, and even then, were only allowed in a couple of the meetings that had been going on for months, preventing any meaningful impact. As part of the Fast Forward plan, we ask that you include an explicit commitment to student input on decision making and implementation of this plan.

“Maintaining pride in our location and history” means recognizing Indigenous People’s Day and taking responsibility for SU’s relationship to the city of Syracuse and global influence. When we talk about “impact,” we need to make sure that we’re talking about positive impact, not contributing to the concentrations of capital at SU — e.g., the over $1 billion endowment — which has nonprofit status and thus does not pay taxes in the city of Syracuse. Including a commitment to diversity and the university as public good is a symbolic move in this direction.

We suggest that SU move away from the language of trickle-down economics and adopt an ethic of reciprocity, collective decision-making — via meaningful community representation, not just in lip-service — and accountability to the Syracuse community.

Sincerely,
THE General Body