Dear President Jenkins,

As Notre Dame graduate students, we were pleased to read your “open letter” in the Observer and appreciate your personal commitment to upholding the values of this institution. We affirm your call “to embrace vigorous dialogue” and join with you in renewing “our commitment to treat one another with respect even in our most passionate disagreements.” Thank you for sending a clear message that supports engaging in respectful, civil, compassionate dialogue on difficult issues.

We strongly believe, however, that creating a “community that honors the human dignity of each member,” requires more than a call for civil discourse. The email that your letter references invoked historical caricatures that demean and dehumanize students on this campus. We hoped that your letter to the campus community would explicitly name and denounce those elements of the email for what they were--racist and classist. Without such naming, transformative and “vigorous dialogue” about these important issues is not possible. While we celebrate the legacy of Notre Dame’s support for racial and economic justice, we acknowledge that our work is not complete, evidenced nowhere more clearly than by recent events right here on our campus. Such experiences raise the question: where can we go from here?

We are writing today to offer our wholehearted support for a sustained, campus-wide conversation on the abiding impact of racial and economic injustice on our society and our campus. We recognize the ways in which you and the administration are taking concrete steps to uphold the values of this institution. In particular, we acknowledge and appreciate the ways that you have welcomed undocumented immigrants to be part of our community, worked toward increasing the diversity represented within the faculty, established the Oversight Committee on Diversity and Inclusion, and supported implementation of the 21 new diversity recommendations by the Division of Student Affairs.

In your capacity as the leader of our university, we urge you to take additional concrete steps to foster dialogue on issues of racial and socioeconomic marginalization here at Notre Dame. True dialogue--the kind that transforms those who participate--is profoundly uncomfortable. Dialogue of this kind cannot and will not emerge without concerted effort and support on the part of many players in our community, especially your administration. To this end, we wish to make two specific recommendations.

First, we encourage you to discover and support those individuals and groups who are courageously heeding your call to engage in vigorous dialogue. Just as you have supported the Show Some Skin performances in the past, we encourage you to publicly acknowledge the valuable contribution that the powerful photography project, I, Too, Am Notre Dame, is making to our community. This project, which emerged from a small class assignment, provides a profound example of the many ways the values of this institution inspire students to actively care for the common good in their everyday lives. Such efforts offer an important opportunity to build and sustain a culture on campus that values diversity. Nurturing a culture that values diversity at Notre Dame requires sincere collaboration between student efforts and those of the administration. Likewise, we are aware of an effort by students to revive the chapter of Sustained Dialogue on campus; as that initiative progresses, your support will be invaluable.

Second, we recommend that your administration work proactively to establish more spaces for dialogue on race and class. For example, you might consider making race and diversity the focus of the 2014-15 Notre Dame Forum. Your administration might also designate a “Day of Dialogue” in which professors and teaching assistants are encouraged and supported--though not required--to discuss campus race and class issues in their classes. For example, they might start the discussion using images from the I, Too Am Notre Dame project or monologues from Show Some Skin to begin a conversation with students about their experiences with race on campus, the barriers to addressing race issues in everyday interactions, and the relevance of dialogue on race to the university's values and mission.

We share in your vision of Notre Dame as a leading Catholic university, a “healing, unifying, enlightening force for a world deeply in need.” The current moment presents a tremendous opportunity to realize that vision. We are eager to join you in a transformative campus-wide dialogue on racial and economic justice, diversity, and inclusion.

Sincerely,