LOUISVILLE, Ky. — Multiple university presidents have joined together advocating to take action.
This follows as protests continue and expose the racial inequality in the Commonwealth and across the nation.
The eight Louisville-area universities have banded together including University of Louisville President Neeli Bendapudi.
“Our hope in coming together is that we’re speaking with one voice, that it offers some kind of reassurance to our students to young people in this community that wherever they go they are going to be in an institution where the leader understands the complicity of higher education and having created and maybe perpetuated these inequities and a realization that we must do more and that we commit to doing more,” Bendapudi said.
That same commitment is also shared by presidents of:
- Tori Murden, Spalding University,
- Susan Donovan, Bellarmine University
- Travis Haire, Ivy Tech, Sellersburg
- Ty Handy, Jefferson Community and Technical College
- Jay Marr, Sullivan University, Louisville
- Alton B. Pollard, III, Louisville Presbyterian Theological Seminary
- Ray Wallace, IU Southeast
The idea stemmed from a conversation between Alton Pollard, Louisville Presbyterian Theological Seminary and Bendapudi.
In a letter released on Wednesday, college presidents say that in far too many cases Black Americans face obstacles that leave them lagging behind their white counterparts in key areas.
Those areas are education, income, health, and wealth.
They've pledged:
- We believe that by working together we can do more and do better as agents of positive change.
- We pledge to educate ourselves and our college and university communities to recognize and work against structural racism.
- We pledge to work together to improve access to higher education for our African-American and other students of color.
- We pledge to create pathways for African-American and other students of color to meaningful and high-demand jobs and careers and acknowledge the need for more Black professionals in healthcare and education and engineering and law as in many other spheres.
- We pledge to engage fully and meaningfully in the life of West Louisville.
- With our institutional privileges of knowledge, reach, resources, legacy, and more, we pledge to consistently demonstrate our commitment to the objective fact that Black Lives Matter.
Bellarmine University President Susan Donovan echoes the same notion, the need to do more. Donovan said while they strive for access and affordability, working together with others they hope to achieve more results.
“This is not an issue of educating students of color, it’s really educating our faculty, staff and our white students to embrace a community and to have a lived experience of equity and inclusion which is part of our strategic plan but i think it’s most of the institutions strategic plans,” Donovan said.
Elsewhere, in Highland Heights, at Northern Kentucky University President Ashish Vaidya has taken similar actions, building on the core values laid out by the university. NKU has started hosting forums to have dialogue on racial inequality.
NKU Commitment To Diversity Equity and Inclusion
“We have to do even more to ensure that learners from all backgrounds, all races, all ethnicities, gender, sexual orientation really find a place here. This is a place where they belong, they thrive and become active and engage members of the community,” Vaidya said.
Vaidya also said NKU will be joining universities in the greater Cincinnati area to dissolve racial inequality.
Bendapudi said a forum is planned next week to listen to students' concerns.