Views expressed in opinion columns are the author’s own.

From April 1 to 3, University of Maryland students will vote on an SGA referendum that calls upon the University System of Maryland Foundation and the University of Maryland College Park foundation to “divest from companies that … directly facilitate and enable state violence and repression, war and occupation, or severe violations of international law and human rights.” As faculty and staff at this university, we join the call for divestment.

While we do not vote in this election — undergraduate students are eligible to vote — we are invested in its outcome. As scholars, workers, educators and fellow members of  this university’s community, we care about how our employer invests in corporations and funds that have an impact both locally and around the world. As members of Faculty and Staff for Justice in Palestine, an independent coalition of faculty and staff at this university, we are particularly concerned with the university’s complicity with the ongoing genocide perpetrated against Palestinians, all with U.S. material support and diplomatic cover.

In our current political environment, the federal government is attempting to place unprecedented constraints on educators and researchers, while actively punishing students and scholars who have spoken out against inequality, violence and repression. In this context, we note the particular importance of taking an institutional stand against corporations and governments that blatantly contradict the university’s stated strategic commitment “to advance the public good.”

We note with special concern that this university’s financial support for energy, security, defense, military and prison industries risks making it complicit in war crimes, destruction or theft of Indigenous lands, international law violations and environmental disasters. The current context of Israel’s mass displacement, land expropriation and targeting of civilian populations and infrastructures, alongside the U.S. government’s militarization of border control and immigration enforcement, make it urgent for students and the broader public in Maryland to take a stand.

The forms of violence that concern us are not limited to Palestine or other locations where violations of international law have recently been in the news — such as the U.S.-Mexico border, Lebanon, Syria and Sudan — but also affect us locally, as our university community and state are also impacted by climate change, war, xenophobia and incarceration.

Recent campaigns show that it is possible to have a productive campus conversation about divestment. Building on the storied activism of faculty, staff and students who courageously fought for divestment from apartheid South Africa in the 1980s, the SGA and student activists over the last decade led an important campaign to ask the university system foundation to commit to socially responsible investments.

In response to the SGA campaign, the university system foundation agreed to meet with SGA representatives to discuss how the student community’s concerns could be brought into dialogue with the nonprofit, which operates as a separate institution.

Although the university system foundation publicly committed to abiding by international standards for socially responsible investing and to specifically divest from fossil fuels in 2016, it scaled back those promises in subsequent years, qualifying commitments to socially responsible investment standards with reference to financial goals. In addition to our concerns about the investments that the university has made, we fear that the quiet withdrawal from commitments signals a lack of interest in transparency and accountability.

How can stakeholders in university system foundation investments — including the students, staff and faculty who the investments are supposed to serve — be brought into the process meaningfully? We see the divestment resolution as one step in a larger process to encourage a more democratic approach to these major decisions that the foundations make.

The proposed divestment referendum asks that the campus community restart a serious conversation about what type of university we want: one that quietly assents to war, environmental destruction and large-scale violations of human rights, or one that takes seriously its stated commitments to ethical forms of research, teaching and public engagement. Investment strategies that operate in the name of students cannot be ethical or justified if they are opposed to environmental and social justice.

Neel Ahuja is a professor in the Harriet Tubman Department of Women, Gender and Sexuality Studies.

Elsa Barkley Brown is an associate professor in the Department of History and Harriet Tubman Department of Women, Gender and Sexuality Studies.

Alejandro Cañeque is a professor in the Department of History.

Kimberly Anne Coles is a professor in the Department of English.

Solomon Comissiong is president of the University of Maryland Black Faculty and Staff Association.

Anny Gaul is an assistant professor of Arabic Studies in the School of Languages, Literatures and Cultures.

Eva Hageman is an assistant professor in the Harriet Tubman Department of Women, Gender and Sexuality Studies and Department of American Studies.

Christina Hanhardt is an associate professor in the Department of American Studies.

Marcus Johnson is an assistant professor in the Department of Government and Politics.

Ahmet Karamustafa is a professor in the Department of History.

Fatemeh Keshavarz is a Persian Studies professor in the School of Languages, Literatures and Cultures.

Lucille Kline is an interlibrary loan specialist at the University of Maryland Libraries.

Alexis Lothian is an associate professor in the Harriet Tubman Department of Women, Gender and Sexuality Studies.

Matthew Thomas Miller is an assistant digital humanities and Persian literature professor in the School of Languages, Literatures and Cultures.

Nancy Mirabal is an associate professor in the Department of American Studies.

Ariana Nadia Nash is a lecturer in the Department of English.

Nathaniel Pearl is a faculty assistant in the College of Education.

Michelle V. Rowley is an associate professor in the Harriet Tubman Department of Women, Gender and Sexuality Studies.

Anita Sanyal Tudela is a senior lecturer in the College of Computer, Mathematical and Natural Sciences.

Nadine Sahyoun is a professor in the Department of Nutrition and Food Science.

Janelle Wong is a professor in the Department of Government and Politics and Department of American Studies.

This guest column was written on behalf of Faculty and Staff for Justice in Palestine at the University of Maryland. Faculty and Staff for Justice in Palestine can be reached at UMDFSJP@proton.me.

In Spring 2021, Jude Maloney, a close friend to co-author M Pease and an advocate and cornerstone of the LGBTQ+ community at the University of Maryland, tragically died. 

In navigating their grief and watching those around them grieve, Pease noticed that while many instructors were well-meaning, some often hesitated to offer meaningful support or flexibility, unsure how to react when a loss falls outside of traditional notions of immediate family members.

Student bereavement is more prevalent than many might realize. Research suggests that 40 to 50 percent of college students report the death of someone significant to them — such as family members or close friends — in the last two years, and 22 to 30 percent of college students are in the first 12 months of grief. Despite these realities, this university has no formal student bereavement policy to support them in their time of need. Instead, this university’s excused absence policy vaguely lists “death in the family” as a “compelling [circumstance] beyond the student’s control.” 

This leaves grieving students to navigate an inconsistent and often unsupportive system, where compassion hinges on the discretion of individual professors and ultimately requires profound self-advocacy during a time of grief. This practice is overwhelming, confusing, inefficient and harmful for students and instructors alike. 

Inspired by Maloney’s advocacy and the experiences of our community, we, the authors of this opinion column, have sponsored legislation in the University Senate to establish a formal student bereavement policy. 

The absence of a comprehensive student policy contrasts the university’s stated values of inclusivity and respect, especially given the disproportionate impact on students from marginalized communities — particularly LGBTQIA+ students, students of color and international students.

Under this university’s bereavement policy for non-bargaining employees, leave is provided for losses falling under a definition of immediate family, such as a spouse, parent, child, grandparent, grandchild, sibling, in-law or step relative. While the existence of this policy for certain employees is a step in the right direction, it is still concerning that it does not apply to all employees and, critically, no policy protections exist for the unique needs of students in the wake of loss. 

Furthermore, this definition of immediate family is based on a white, Eurocentric and heteronormative nuclear family model that is decreasingly common across the U.S. and inherently fails to capture a culturally diverse understanding of family in recognizing chosen family members not defined by biological or legal relations, particularly for LGBTQ+ people and people of color. In a survey of 750 trans people across Maryland, chosen family was listed as part of 70.1 percent of respondents’ support systems while family of origin was listed only for 47.5 percent of respondents. 

Defining bereavement policies in terms of immediate family or leaving the decision up to individual instructors as to what constitutes a valid loss unjustly limits the people one is officially sanctioned or “allowed” to grieve. In effect, students whose losses fall outside the confines of immediate family are left disenfranchised.

Professors already shoulder numerous responsibilities. To place the responsibility on them to decide the appropriate amount of leave for grieving students only adds to their burden and creates inconsistencies across different classes. A clear policy that guarantees consistent support for bereaved students removes any guesswork and ensures greater equity. 

Imagine a professor who is unwilling to accommodate students’ needs by strictly adhering to the letter of the law when it comes to university policy. Under the current excused absence policy, providing little to no accommodation for grief is ultimately permissible, which could cause serious academic and financial consequences. This system falls short of embodying the “community of care” this university aspires to be.

The policy would also bring us in line with other Big Ten universities, such as Purdue, that have successfully implemented one. Doing so would guarantee every student is granted leave for a death loss without declaring what types of losses qualify, just as its colleagues do.

Without an inclusive bereavement policy, the university risks repeating a pattern of falling short in supporting students during one of the most challenging times in their lives and potentially denying educational opportunities, especially to marginalized students, simply because of loss. Addressing this need of our student body is about more than just implementing a policy — it’s an opportunity for this university to foster a more inclusive, equitable and compassionate environment to truly embody its commitment to building a community of care.

Karoline Trovato is a counseling psychology doctoral student at this university. She can be reached at ktrovato@umd.edu.

M Pease is Vice Chair of the Maryland Commission on LGBTQIA+ Affairs and a counseling psychology doctoral student at this university. They can be reached at mpease1@terpmail.umd.edu.

Greta Jankauskaite is a UMD alum, a licensed counseling psychologist and postdoctoral research fellow at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, Harvard Medical School. She can be reached at gjankaus@terpmail.umd.edu. 

Near the midpoint of a tense semester, I joined other graduate students to meet with University of Maryland administrators. That meeting turned tear-filled, with graduate workers trying to convince administrators of what workers need to thrive.

One graduate worker asked how they were supposed to support their partner when they don’t make what they need to survive.

The room’s safety shattered under a buzzing projector. The silence broke only as administrators departed. I didn’t take this lightly — I took it as a call to action.

On Nov. 6, as the University Senate prepared for a discussion about our campus climate, I read an edited resolution from the senate’s student affairs committee. If passed, the senate resolution would signal support of democratic efforts for graduate workers to collectively bargain with the university.

I’ve spoken about these problems before. Graduate students take on multiple jobs to pay medical bills while expected to thrive in their field and still make rent. The devastating effects our current political climate could have for minorities prompted me to write on this issue months ago.

Even so, I fear the opposition’s arguments have stayed the same.

Administrators have testified to the Maryland General Assembly multiple times saying unions harm student-mentor relationships and make graduate work more about employment than mentorship.

It’s an argument that strikes me as either unjustified or downright fearmongering. Is collective bargaining really going to damage healthy student-mentor relationships?

Years in journalism have only provided me with union experiences that, at absolute worst, slightly improve my well-being and supervisor-employee relationships. Moreover, I’m sure administrators of our R1 university — the highest rank for research schools — have read studies and stories since 2000 that find no evidence of damage brought about by unions.

I’ve never been able to understand these claims.

What I have been able to understand, however, is just how many graduate workers want this: a supermajority, as of October.

I’ve found pressure in my heart when speaking to potential graduate students, because I cannot ethically justify bringing more people into economic hardship. It would be unconscionable.

And I’ve been most deeply hurt when I hear people say Maryland law doesn’t allow graduate workers to bargain collectively. It hurts because it’s both true and preventable.

Administrators at this university argue annually against laws to allow graduate labor unions. They don’t just respect laws blocking a union. They actively advocate for those policies to remain in place.

Graduate workers such as myself travel to Annapolis with plenty of proof a union is taking hold on our campus. With the help of legislators in the Maryland General Assembly and plenty of planning, members of this budding union fight for the right to collectively bargain every year.

And every year, without fail, administrators make this same costly trip to speak on behalf of the university against collective bargaining bills.

But let’s be real. The university’s interest seems a far cry from the community they serve.

The Graduate Labor Union boasts union cards signed by more than half of graduate workers, who organize alongside alumni, staff and faculty across Maryland. When the Graduate Labor Union publicly asked university administrators to forgo speaking against state legislation, the call went unheeded.

What’s worse is that we pay the administrators who lobby against collective bargaining at the statehouse. We paid for administrators who represent our best interest.

That’s why I’m bringing forth this collective bargaining resolution in the senate — to clarify what the community really thinks is in its best interest.

To be clear, my resolution won’t force recognition of the Graduate Labor Union. But it will embody the university community’s position. It will reveal the real distance between the university’s position on collective bargaining and the democratic will of the people.

It is for this reason, with empathy, patience and reverence for democracy, that the senate must pass this resolution.

Ivy Lyons is a Ph.D. Student at the Philip Merrill College of Journalism. They can be reached at ilyons@umd.edu.

The University of Maryland’s Department of Transportation Services is advertising “Safety Starts With You” as part of its Safety Awareness Month campaign, with most events and messaging focused on micromobility users on campus. Certainly, walking, cycling, and driving around campus is stressful and dangerous. But, we didn’t get here by accident — we got here by choice.

This university neglected its cycling infrastructure for decades, and lagged behind hundreds of  universities in establishing protected bike lanes. Instead, university transportation administrators chose shared lane markings, or “sharrows”, which years of academic research indicates does nothing for the safety of vulnerable road users.

It is within this university’s power and considerable budget to design and implement safe solutions for all road users, no matter their chosen mode of transportation.

Finger-wagging emails won’t fix our lack of infrastructure. Fortunately, many cities and peer institutions can serve as models for this university, and cost-effective and equitable solutions can give micromobility users the necessary facilities to improve safety for everyone.

Those improvements shouldn’t take as long as the university claims. Pop-up bike lanes are a widely accepted transportation planning tool, as are temporary bike lanes with movable barriers. The wide southern edge of McKeldin Mall is the primary connection to seven academic buildings and the main library. The popular corridor is full with micromobility vehicles despite numerous “Walk your Wheels” signs. A pop-up two-way micromobility lane with signage and physical separators could reduce conflicts between micromobility owners and pedestrians.

Similarly, roads that the campus already plans bikeways for, such as Preinkert Drive, could be done quickly with the same movable concrete barriers.

Furthermore, micromobility storage and infrastructure is terribly inadequate on campus, particularly for electronic devices. Campus does not offer micromobility storage solutions that comply with its fire safety instructions. Those directions state that storing batteries outside, in heat, direct sunlight, cold, or in unheated garages for extended periods — including a 10 hour work or class day — will shorten the battery’s life and can cause the lithium-ion fires that the university hopes to prevent. This forces owners to choose between risking disciplinary action or unsafe storage.

Campus has far too few sheltered bike racks for its more than 1,700 registered e-bikes and scooters, and only one swipe card protected “commuter lot” in the bowels of Regents Drive Garage for students and workers on a 1,300-acre campus. It goes without saying that publicly reported thefts are common on campus, as are vandalism and accidental damage.

Secure bike lockers or lids are widely implemented at dozens of universities, often for a rental fee, providing improved security and protection from the elements to micromobility users. There’s no excuse for our campus to be so far behind our Big Ten peers such as the University of Washington, University of Wisconsin, and the University of Michigan. If card-accessible facilities are not available in campus garages due to time and funding, many cities and universities offer bike valet services with great success.

Arizona State, the University of Arizona, and recently, the University of British Columbia offer bike lockers full time, and more schools make it a regular fixture of sports events. This university offers the accommodation on Maryland Day.

It’s disingenuous of this university to claim “safety starts with you” when the best solution it can offer its micromobility commuters is all the inconveniences and frustrations of driving, but with the addition of dangerous congestion and the risk that our only transportation will get stolen or damaged. As a cyclist, I know in my bones that someday it might be my body on the pavement, and I take my safety seriously.

I wish my employer did, too.

Kate Dohe is the director of digital programs and initiatives at the University of Maryland Libraries, and a bike commuter of about 15 years in the Washington, D.C., metro area. She can be reached at katedohe@umd.edu.

It is no secret that the University of Maryland runs on graduate student labor. So why won’t this university recognize our right to organize as workers?

Graduate workers receive little support from the university, which deals out pitifully low stipends, discriminatory international student fees and offers little to no recourse if something goes wrong with our advisors. These are some issues that this university’s Graduate Labor Union aims to address.

Graduate workers deserve a union. A recognized bargaining unit is a basic right that University System of Maryland staff, professors at Maryland’s community colleges, faculty and graduate workers at many esteemed peer institutions have already won.

Graduate workers at Michigan, Rutgers, Minnesota, NYU and more have unionized with great success. And graduate workers at all private universities already have collective bargaining rights, a fundamental step in forming a union. However, under Maryland state law, graduate employees have long been prohibited from collective bargaining.

While the University of Maryland is not legally required to engage in collective bargaining with graduate workers, it can and should do so for the sake of all students and our shared learning conditions.

A full-time GA at this university works 20 hours per week on top of a full-time class schedule or dissertation research. This arrangement alone fills up graduate workers’ calendars, but our stipends are so low that additional part-time jobs are often necessary to supplement GA stipends.

Many graduate workers, like me, work additional jobs on top of our GA positions to make ends meet, limiting leisure time to nearly zero and only barely easing financial stress. If we are meant to be students and not workers, then why are our learning conditions so poor?

International GAs are not allowed to work more than 20 hours per week to earn extra money. On top of that, more than 100 international graduate students recently had their health insurance waivers revoked by the university, many of whom made their initial insurance decisions based on affordability. They also pay an additional $125 in student fees each semester. A union contract could offer international students a safety net and support system that the university does not provide.

Research shows that academic unions improve the efficiency and effectiveness of universities. Unions empower workers, increase administrative transparency and strengthen the voices of workers who interact with our students daily.

Despite these realities, the university has tried to stifle our efforts to organize for years. Such an opposition to worker demands does not reflect the university’s stated commitment to the expansion of ethnic and economic diversity for graduate students, nor does it match its goal of investing in our people and community.

Unionization will help diversify the graduate student body. Graduate worker stipends on this university’s campus are at least $11,000 below the cost of living in Prince George’s County. This deficit is hard on everyone, but it makes it especially difficult for students from marginalized and low-income backgrounds to attend this university as they may not be able to count on the financial support of family members.

This university’s Graduate Labor Union launched our authorization card campaign with United Auto Workers this past September, and we are building collective power by organizing a supermajority of graduate workers who can take collective action together. Right now, Graduate Labor Union organizers are asking graduate workers across campus to sign an authorization card indicating that they support the formation of a labor union on campus.

If more than 50 percent of graduate workers sign a card, then the union will bypass a typical election, meaning that this university will have to recognize our union should lawmakers’ consideration of granting graduate workers collective bargaining rights culminate in state law change next year.

We hope that this demonstration of support for our union and its demands will help to change the decades-old law that limits collective bargaining among faculty and graduate workers at public institutions in Maryland. By organizing a union as though we already have collective bargaining rights, we assert our collective power as workers and our civil rights as human beings to have a say in creating a fair and equitable workplace.

As we move forward, the Board of Regents and the University System of Maryland must stop opposing worker organizing efforts, including legislation to enable collective bargaining. They must stop using donor dollars to fund anti-democratic initiatives that stifle the collective voice of academic workers.

Academic workers alone have the right to decide whether we would like to form a union. 

I care deeply for this university, and I write this article in hopes of fostering a more equitable, democratic university system. Education is one of our greatest tools for creating a better, safer future for our community, our state and our world. It is crucial that all workers in Maryland’s universities have a democratic say in their working conditions so that students get the quality education that this university promises and that we deserve.

Rigby Philips is a history and library science master’s student. She can be reached at rigbyphilips@gmail.com.

These are some of the hardest days in the lives of many of your Jewish classmates, friends and teachers. The weekend of Oct. 7, we woke up to news of the largest terror attack Israel has ever experienced — the largest loss of Jewish life in a single day since the Holocaust. 

When we began writing this on Simchat Torah, one of the most joyous days in the Jewish calendar, the extent of the tragedy was not yet clear. As of Sunday evening, we know that more than 1,300 Israelis have been killed and more than 100 taken hostage — the overwhelming majority of them Jewish. This is a loss we feel in our bones. And in a larger sense, we know that violence against Jews in one corner of the world always makes its way into others.

So many people around campus are sharing posts and stories on social media that are relevant to this conflict, relevant to our stories, without an understanding of our trauma, our history and its impact on our mental health.

We are more than used to bearing witness to conversations about us that do not include us.

We shouldn’t be used to this. We shouldn’t have to ask to be involved in discussions of our own story.  All we want is a recognition of the common humanity of everyone affected, and the pain we are all going through.

We’re hurting right now. Many of us are struggling to eat, struggling to sleep, don’t know how to be. Everything feels wrong when our friends, our families are in incomprehensible and unspecified danger, when we’ve spent our time scanning lists of victims and waiting for news that a loved one was hurt or killed.

We’ve found ourselves suddenly grappling with a loss we can’t fully comprehend. We’re grieving for the innocent Israelis and Palestinians alike who were caught in the crossfire of this horrific, antisemitic attack. Our grief is not political. No grief is.

We’re writing this because we don’t know what to do. We’re writing this because we woke up on October 7 and can’t quite shake the feeling that our lives will never be the same — that we might not ever be able to trust in the safety of our loved ones again.

We’re writing this terrified about how the world will perceive us and our pain, struggling to process enough of what we’re feeling to put it into words.

We’re writing this because just as we are terrified for the lives of those we hold dear, we fear that the moment we muster the strength to speak on the hardest day in recent Jewish memory, we will just as soon be silenced.

We’ve seen it happen before. It’s probably happening right now.

Of the 15 million Jews in the world, nearly half live in Israel. Right now, we’re grieving for our cousins, our siblings, our parents and grandparents and our friends. We’re grieving the ability we lost that night to go to sleep certain that those we love most will be there in the morning.

The vast majority of us come from families that have felt this fear in the past. Our parents and grandparents fled from antisemitism in Germany, Iran, Morocco, Syria, Poland, Lebanon, Ethiopia, and nearly any country you can imagine. We’ve grown up around the stories and the realities of our families’ trauma and hoped that we would finally be the ones who could guarantee our own safety — who could take our future into our own hands and guard it. We are afraid that’s an impossibility.

Today, we feel powerless. We have been traumatized and retraumatized for generations, different chapters of the same story.

We’re college students, but right now we don’t know how to listen to music or ask a friend how they’re doing while we’re in a state of collective shock and grief for our loved ones and our futures. We don’t know which friends we can ask to help process our grief because maybe they’ve experienced a more profound loss than we have.

With time, we hope to find space for healing and togetherness. Our hearts are with every person suffering the consequences of this war.

We ask for empathy as we try to gather the energy to get out of bed and go to classes with this grim weight on our shoulders. Please give us the space to process this tragedy on our own terms. Before you speak on it, we ask you to take time to learn about Jewish history and trauma. We ask you to hold space for us. We can’t pretend like everything is fine.

Nira Dayanim is a senior journalism major and the editor-in-chief of Mitzpeh, this university’s independent Jewish publication. She can be reached at ndayanim@umd.edu. 

Ruthie Vogel is a junior physics major. They can be reached at vogelruthie@gmail.com.

This guest column represents the opinion of Jewish organizations on campus including: 

3 Strands, Alpha Epsilon Phi, Alpha Epsilon Pi, Avirah Israeli Dance Company, Beta Theta Pi, First Year Students of Hillel, Gift of Life, Hamsa, Israeli Folk Dancing at UMD, Jewish Student Union, Kedma, Kol Sasson, Maryland Beit Midrash, Maryland Eruv, Maryland Hillel, MEOR Maryland, Mezumenet A Cappella, UMD Mishelanu, National Hillel Basketball Tournament, National Hillel Torah Bowl, Neshama, Phi Sigma Sigma, Rak Shalom, Ruach, Service Engagement Interns [Tikkun Olam], Sigma Alpha Mu, Sigma Delta Tau, Tamid at Maryland, Tau Epsilon Phi, Terps for Israel, UMD Chabad, UMD Sephardic Jewish Community, and Zeta Beta Tau

Three years ago, I came to the realization that I’d spent half of my life in a cult. 

I was recruited into the International Church of Christ in 2000, at the tail end of my freshman year at the University of Maryland. When I joined the group, I was in a particularly vulnerable stage of my life and the church provided me with exactly what I thought I was looking for: Community, family, purpose.

Alpha Omega Maryland is a student non-denominational Christian club that currently operates on the campus. AO Maryland and similar organizations at other local colleges are overseen by the Capital Rivers Church, which appears on the ICOC’s church locator. AO Maryland’s TerpLink claims affiliation with the Montgomery County Church of Christ, which is the business name for the Capital Rivers Church. 

The ICOC has been labeled by many as a dangerous cult and has been banned by several college campuses across the United States. This university needs to join these other schools in banning the ICOC from having any affiliated student group operating on the campus.

The ICOC currently has several lawsuits pending against the body, its former leader Kip McKean and its benevolence arm, HOPE Worldwide. The lawsuits detail how several former female members of the church were sexually assaulted — many of them as minors. When these women reported their assaults to church leaders, the leaders allegedly never reported to the police, shamed the women for enduring abuse, or both. 

The lawsuits also detail how the ICOC created a culture of manipulation, pressure and spiritual abuse to extract money from members and force them to recruit more people into the church, under fear of going to hell if they did not comply.

When I was a member of the church, other members and I were required to recruit other students. If we were not actively recruiting, we were considered “spiritually weak,” “uncommitted” and “struggling in our faith.” When I studied the Bible with potential recruits, I explained to them that members of the ICOC were the only “true” Christians and anyone not part of our church was headed toward hell. 

Being a member of this church really screwed up how I viewed the world. I couldn’t interact with any non-ICOC member who claimed to be a Christian, including members of my own family, without doubting the veracity of their faith. I couldn’t read any non-ICOC Christian author without wondering if they were “really” saved. I couldn’t listen to any non-ICOC Christian music without thinking, “How could a non-Christian write such beautiful Christian songs?”

I lived with this inner turmoil up until three years ago, when my wife, my children and I finally left.

I could no longer live my life doubting the faith of every Christian who didn’t go to the same church I did. I constantly classified every non-ICOC member I met as hell-bound. I became a Christian to love others, not to judge them. It was destroying me mentally, and I couldn’t take it anymore.

This university has faced controversy over the ICOC and other groups labeled as cults in the past. I cannot speak about any other organization alleged to be a cult, but there is significant evidence that former ICOC members have suffered serious mental, emotional and spiritual trauma. 

Entire podcasts, websites and documentaries have spelled out the dangers of the ICOC. Former members of the group have even contemplated suicide. Learning about the plethora of ways the ICOC has damaged people’s lives should inspire anyone to want nothing to do with it — especially the university officials charged with keeping students safe. 

College is a time when students learn new things and expand their minds. They should never have to worry about joining an organization that will make them believe anyone not part of the group is headed toward hell, discourage them from spending time with non-members and make them feel like a failure for not recruiting new believers. 

No one attends college with the intention of joining a cult. Banning alleged cults and organizations related to them from operating on the campus is a big step toward making that intention a reality.

This university has a responsibility to protect its students from groups that will likely hurt them. Yet a student organization related to the ICOC is still permitted on this campus. How much evidence is enough before this university bans this harmful organization? 

If this university can spare any students from going through what I and others went through, it must do so. Ban organizations such as the ICOC from having a student group on the campus.

Russell Miles is an alum who graduated in 2003 with a B.A. in Sociology. He can be reached at rmiles03@gmail.com.

Views expressed in opinion columns are the author’s own.

The hunt for a new dean for the journalism college is on. Lucy Dalglish, the current dean, will step down from her position in June 2023 after 11 years of deanship. Jennifer Rice, the University of Maryland’s senior vice president who wrote the announcement letter, formed a search committee as a result of the departure.

One of the commitments I noticed in the announcement letter is that the new dean must be committed to “supporting an environment of diversity and inclusive excellence in teaching and learning.” As the search for the next dean heats up, this is the part I want to stress to this committee, and to the journalism college community as a whole: The new dean of the journalism college must make diversity a priority.

The hunt for a new journalism college dean is incredibly fresh, and I acknowledge that fact. The goal of this op-ed isn’t to call out any person, but rather to raise awareness of the exigence of this search. The benefits of a diverse student population is an established fact, so bringing that to the journalism college should be prioritized. 

As a journalism student, I would often be one of very few Black student journalists in all of the classes I took. I chalked this up to the woes of attending a predominantly white institution until fellow journalist Joel Lev-Tov emailed me last December for an interview on the demographics of the journalism college.

During this interview, they showed me a particularly damning website: reports.umd.edu. The journalism college, despite its statements on diversity and inclusion, is the school or college with the greatest percentage of white people at this university since fall 2010.

As of fall 2021, 71 percent of the undergraduate population at journalism college is white. For comparison, 45 percent of the undergraduate population for all of this university at the same time.

Another interesting tidbit is over time, undergrad enrollment numbers at the journalism college have been on a steady decline. From Fall 2013 to Fall 2021, journalism college has seen a near 20 percent drop in enrollment numbers.

Why does this matter?

First, it’s only been about a year since journalism college dropped its status as a Limited Enrollment Program. In the past, its designation as an LEP caused the journalism college to cap its enrollment, require certain classes and a GPA before applying, If you failed to get in, you couldn’t reapply. 

As a result, prospective students who may have wanted to get into the program were filtered out due to these exclusionary restrictions. If more people find out about this change, maybe more students of color and those from marginalized groups would be willing to apply.

Second, it’s no secret that trust in the news/media is close to being at an all time low. According to a 2022 Gallup poll, 38 percent of Americans say they “don’t trust the news at all.” For marginalized groups, that mistrust in the media has been proven true many times over, so why get into a field people find untrustworthy?

Finally, and most important is the role mass media has played and continues to play in demonizing, dehumanizing and perpetuating violence against people of color and marginalized communities both on this campus and across the United States.

All of these factors and more can make getting into the field of journalism difficult — if not outright hostile — for journalists who aren’t able-bodied straight white men.

I haven’t experienced any microaggressions or racism in my time at the journalism college, but the amount of whiteness in some of my classes made my initial journey in journalism a very isolating one. When I joined The Black Explosion as a staff writer, I found a sense of community and friendship with journalists who looked like me, were on the same educational journey and shared some of my life experiences.

My frame of reality isn’t the only one, as I’ve talked with many of my friends in the journalism college about our different realities. Stories of racism, microaggressions and a non-diverse curriculum are what happens when the university is more diverse than the journalism college.

To whomever the new journalism college dean may be, I hope they thoroughly analyzed and understood the data from these reports. Now more than ever, this country needs more journalists that come from all races, genders, sexuality, ethnicity, economic classes, religion and more. 

With the diverse perspectives and experiences these identities have, bring a more comprehensive and complete approach to reporting that journalists who aren’t a part of these groups could never come close to understanding. When it comes to issues that pertain to any minority group or marginalized community, who better to report on them than us?

Aaron Wright is a senior multimedia journalism major who is also pursuing a certificate in African-American Studies. He can be reached at awrigh13@umd.edu.

CORRECTION: A previous version of this column misgendered a journalist mentioned. The journalist’s pronouns are they/them. The column has been updated.

The University of Maryland leadership’s decision to drop classroom mask protections has raised deep concerns among many instructors. It did so without meaningful consultation with the instructors going into classrooms every day and without providing any applicable remedies or alternatives. 

The policy is not in sync with the science and is out of step with other respected institutions nationally and in the Washington metro area, including American University, Georgetown University, George Washington University and University of Maryland–Baltimore County. 

We, the University of Maryland chapter of the American Association of University Professors, urge university leadership to reinstate classroom mask protections while a more nuanced, democratically determined and data-driven COVID-19 protection plan is developed in genuine consultation with faculty and students. Above all, this plan must center this university’s equity and inclusion values. 

Timing of the Decisions

Despite an Aug. 1 promise to issue mask guidance for the fall semester “in the weeks leading up to the first day of class,” the administration waited until less than three full business days before the start of classes to announce a significant departure from past practice. Instructors and students with concerns about their own health or the health of household members had almost no time to change classroom setups, adjust caregiving arrangements or seek alternative teaching formats. Likewise, university leadership prohibited normal requests for classroom changes just as the term began.

Who Makes These Decisions

Decisions that affect the physical and mental health of instructors should be made in close consultation with them. Instead, this decision provides yet another example of this university’s opaque, top-down management style. 

If this university’s leadership had taken time to survey instructors’ views, they would have found this decision wildly unpopular. Some measure of that concern is revealed by the fact that our survey of this university’s instructors collected 382 responses in a matter of days, with nearly 84 percent of the respondents favoring some mask protections in the classroom — 67.8 percent favoring masks always and 16 percent favoring them at least at instructors’ or students’ request. 

Who Counts at Our University

The decision to lift the mask requirement without communicating with instructors and students flies in the face of this university’s self-proclaimed principles of diversity, equity and inclusion. 

We understand many healthy adults now feel protections are unnecessary for themselves, but many in our campus community have heightened risk of severe complications from COVID-19 or care for household members who do. This also includes parents of infants. 

The available accommodations described in university communications do not account for caregiving responsibilities. They fulfill the university’s legal obligation but require community members to undergo complicated administrative processes that only account for individuals, not family members. 

Equity requires all instructors with concerns for their own health or that of household members be able to teach safely in person. Likewise, students should be able to learn in person. Neither should be forced into an online format if they have concerns for their own safety or that of their family.

Local COVID-19 Rates

Based on the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s community level metric, this university’s leadership claims COVID-19 community levels are currently low in our region. 

This is questionable. 

The CDC’s metric is based on the case rate per 100,000 people, hospital admissions and bed availability — not community transmission. The CDC’s community transmission map currently notes high transmission in Prince George’s County. Even so, the CDC transmission rates are likely a substantial underestimate due to an increasing proportion of testing done at home. The risk of encountering an infectious individual in Maryland is about as high today, if not higher, than it was in fall 2021. 

Furthermore, this university has limited testing options and has quietly discontinued its COVID-19 data portal. This leaves the university’s community members unable to gauge their actual risk of COVID-19 infection while on the campus. 

A More Just, More Nuanced Approach

This university’s leadership needs to consult with the campus community before instituting such policies. Period. 

It should temporarily reinstate the classroom mask protections while it works with instructors and students to develop a more refined in-class mask protection policy. For instance, masking might be required only in classes where a student or instructor has concerns. Class size and air filtration in specific classrooms should also guide decisions. 

Reinstating mask protections in classrooms while this more comprehensive plan is developed would also allow time for most people on the campus to get the bivalent COVID-19 boosters. It might also mitigate the surges we have typically experienced when students return to the campus. It would signal an administration that goes beyond the rhetoric of equity and inclusion and recognizes that the well-being of faculty and students requires more than platitudes about self care.

We need a more compassionate and just plan for protecting all of this university’s community members, especially those who are most vulnerable. We need transparency about conditions on our campus and about the administration’s decision-making processes. Above all, we need a meaningful voice in decisions affecting our health and our very lives. 

University leadership must fulfill its responsibility to protect the health and safety of all university members and the surrounding community with new holistic protections. 

Holly Brewer is the Burke chair of American Cultural and Intellectual History and president of the University of Maryland chapter of the American Association of University Professors. She can be reached at hbrewer@umd.edu.

Karin Rosemblatt is a history professor and vice president of the University of Maryland chapter of the American Association of University Professors. She can be reached at karosemb@umd.edu.

Louiqa Raschid is the dean’s professor of information systems in this university’s business school and treasurer of the University of Maryland chapter of the American Association of University Professors. She can be reached at lraschid@umd.edu.

Luka Arsenjuk is an associate professor in this university’s languages, literatures and cultures school and secretary of the University of Maryland chapter of the American Association of University Professors. He can be reached at arsenjuk@umd.edu.

Solomon Comissiong is the president of the Black Faculty and Staff Association and executive committee member at-large of the University of Maryland chapter of the American Association of University Professors. He can be reached at solomon@umd.edu.

Nate Beard is a doctoral student in this university’s information studies college and executive committee member at-large of the University of Maryland chapter of the American Association of University Professors. He can be reached at nbeard@umd.edu.

I am proud of the University of Maryland and university President Darryll Pines’ commitments to address anti-Black racism and to be carbon neutral by 2025. However, I’ve been deeply disappointed by other decisions made by his administration that run counter these goals.

The NextGen Energy Program is the university’s current initiative to make campus energy more “reliable, efficient and affordable.” However, this program lacks the ability to truly achieve this goal, particularly in the context of sustainability. This is clearly illustrated through the existence of the Central Energy Plant. 

The plant powers nearly all of the university’s heating and cooling, provides 30 percent of the university’s electricity generation and produces 125,000 metric tons of carbon dioxide per year. A transformation of our energy system should ideally include actions to get rid of such a significant piece of infrastructure, but NextGen would cement our reliance on fossil fuels for another 15 to 30 years. The administration’s continued pursuit of the NextGen program is a letdown to campus sustainability efforts and a step backward when it comes to transparency, justice and the financial security of our university. 

Clearly, NextGen is flawed in its failure to adhere to the racial, environmental and climate justice goals set out by the university. This university must adopt a more aggressive, less contradictory approach to energy generation and management. 

At a university of this size, it’s crucial that large projects include input from all stakeholders. The administration’s attempts at public involvement have proved contrary, and are at best a negligent oversight — if not a deliberate attempt to exclude dissent. While a NextGen advisory committee has been formed, it has been ineffective at involving the student community, particularly through only having a single undergraduate student member in decisions. The NextGen group only had a single briefing for the campus community, and it was held in the middle of a weekday, which is not conducive for gaining students and professionals’ opinions, who are likely busy during this time.

It’s also notable that while touting this program as a historic investment in the school, the administration has ignored our faculty. Many of our esteemed faculty work in university institutes, such as the Center for Global Sustainability or the Center for Community Engagement, Environmental Justice and Health, proving all could potentially be engaged so that NextGen better reflects the latest academic research. 

The NextGen project goes against the university’s expressed commitment to anti-racism and social justice. Prince George’s County, which is the largest and wealthiest Black-majority county in the U.S., has the third highest rate of power plants per square mile in Maryland. This concentration of power plants — and the many toxic and hazardous waste sites in the county — contribute to negative health outcomes for its majority minority residents. These disparities are brought on and exacerbated by air pollutants from burning fossil fuels, which can affect minority communities and low-income residents and those with preexisting health conditions. Through supporting the NextGen program, the administration has disappointingly turned a blind eye to these disparities and inequities.

The previous iteration of a campuswide energy system, whose problems led to the need for NextGen in the first place, was a public-private partnership agreed to by the university in the 1990s. However, the administration claims it can somehow avoid these problems when entering into another P3. After putting out a request for proposals from private companies and reviewing their responses, the administration claims that renewal of the natural gas plant is the cheapest and simplest option. This is far from the truth; in fact, increased demand and its limited supply led to increasing prices for natural gas.

Ideally, the program would be put on hold and students, faculty and community members would be involved in coming up with an inclusive vision for providing campus’ energy needs. This could involve solutions that support full decarbonization and renewable energy efforts, which could save the school money in the long run and actually help eliminate the health and climate risks the university is trying to remove.

Through reevaluating the NextGen program in the context of its issues, the program is viewed as flawed and misguided. Most importantly, when taken in the context of the university’s commitments to anti-racism and carbon neutrality — and its inability to address either particularly well — the program and its future at the university are rendered unconscionable. It’s time we move on from NextGen and toward more aggressive emissions reduction programs.

Sushanth Gupta is a senior agricultural and resource economics major. He can be reached at sugupta@umd.edu.