We members of the Syracuse University Community, here undersigned, register our support for the “Occupy Wall Street” initiative. As students, faculty and staff of an academic institution, we especially want to applaud those groups who have assembled in New York and elsewhere to draw attention to the problems of mounting student debt, diminishing employment opportunities for young graduates, and increasing failure of state and federal governments to support education adequately at all levels. Insufficient attention to these problems has resulted in the lamentable current state of affairs in which academic departments in state university systems are closed and more and more students across the country are priced out of higher education altogether. More generally, though, we want to affirm our solidarity with fellow citizens who are protesting high unemployment, gross wealth inequality, lingering militarism, and the provision of corporate welfare instead of the common welfare. As members of an institution of higher learning, we strongly affirm the free flow of knowledge and the equal rights of all to pursue a happy and secure life. We decry the growing inequality that limits such pursuits for so many. Thus, we encourage Occupy Wall Street’s visible display of non-violent resistance, its coming together in mutual education and its exploration of alternatives to an unresponsive system. We further hope that as the movement grows it will show an ongoing capacity for self-criticism and forge alliances across an even broader set of issues and groups, globally as well as locally, so that our shared aspiration to equality and fairness neither limits itself too soon nor becomes too diffuse to act in the service of our goals.