Dear President Percy and the Portland State University Board of Trustees,
As members of the PSU School of Social Work, we were glad to see our University’s recent communication supporting Minnesota and Georgia, and the calls for racial justice following the police killing of George Floyd. While it is important to acknowledge these deaths, we must also be accountable for the ways that PSU has been and continues to be complicit with these same violent systems through the presence of armed police on campus. We believe PSU must go further by interrupting our role in perpetuating terror and state-sanctioned violence against Black people. Specifically, we are repeating our demand to #DisarmPSU.
Faculty, staff, and students of the SSW have been unwavering in our stance against arming campus officers, issuing our first statement in opposition in October 2014. Since the Board of Trustees’ decision in December 2014 to arm CPSO, we’ve worked alongside students, staff and faculty in the campus-wide #DisarmPSU movement. We repeated the call to #DisarmPSU following the killing of Jason Washington by CPSO in 2018.
Calls to divest from policing are mounting across the country as a result of the nationwide demonstrations following the killings of Ahmaud Arbery, Breonna Taylor, and George Floyd. Last week the University of Minnesota ended its contract with the Minneapolis Police Department. The ongoing violence against Black communities and the militarized response of the Portland Police Bureau to protests against police brutality prompts us to repeat our previous demands to #DisarmPSU. We repeat this demand echoing the Joint Statement from AAUP, PSUFA, and GEU. We stand in solidarity with #BlackLivesMatter Portland’s demand that we #DisarmPSU and in local calls to divest from policing in schools, including Commissioner JoAnn Hardesty’s demand to remove Security Resource Officers from Portland Public Schools.
To #DisarmPSU entails an immediate and permanent disarmament of CPSO. Arming CPSO has been costly. In the moment when workers across campus are furloughed, we echo our colleagues’ questions about why this furlough excluded CPSO. Maintaining armed officers is not the only solution to our challenges to public safety. We call on PSU Administration and the Board of Trustees to implement non-police alternatives to policing outlined in PSU Student Union’s counter proposal to the Margolis-Healy report, including bystander intervention workshops, and developing crisis intervention teams to respond to the needs of unhoused members of our campus. These models exist on campus (e.g. Illuminate, a sexual violence prevention program, and Students United for Nonviolence, in Conflict Resolution), and in our broader community (e.g. Eugene’s CAHOOTS program, which responds to unhoused people in crisis not with police, but teams of medics and crisis workers).
In this critical moment, when we are continuing to see the deep impacts of state-sanctioned violence and anti-Black racism, it is not enough to just state our values and intentions. We must act. #DisarmPSU #BlackLivesMatter
Sincerely,
Cimone Schwoeffermann, SSW Director of Student Affairs
gita mehrotra, assistant professor
Ben Anderson-Nathe, Professor | Child, Youth, & Family Studies
Stephanie Wahab, Professor
Miranda Mosier, assistant professor, Child, Youth, & Family Studies
Ericka Kimball, Assistant Professor
Antonia RG Alvarez, Assistant Professor
Alma M. Ouanesisouk Trinidad, Associate Professor
Mary Oschwald, Associate Research Professor
Eddie May, Assistant Professor of Practice
Marina Barcelo, SSW Student Inclusion Coordinator
Ana Hristić, Assistant Professor of Practice
Jessica Schmidt, Assistant Director of the Child Welfare Education Program
Christina Nicolaidis, Professor
Aysha Crain, Adjunct Professor
Lee Ann Phillips, Program Administrator, Regional Research Institute
Mandy Davis, Associate Professor of Practice, Regional Research Institute
Kate Normand, Senior Research Assistant, Child Welfare Partnership
Norma Cardenas, Assistant Professor of Practice
Sarah Bradley, Professor of Practice, MSW Program
Erin Elizabeth Flynn, Assistant Professor, Child, Youth & Family Studies
Lisa Hawash, Associate Professor of Practice
Danielle Phillips, Training Systems Specialist, Systems of Care Institute
Jessica Hayes, Field Program Assistant
Julie Kates, Assistant Professor of Practice
Gary W. Smith, Assistant Professor of Practice
Stephanie Bryson, BSW Program Director
Celeste Seibel, Assistant Professor of Practice, Systems of Care Institute
Jill Hoffman, Assistant Professor
Carrie Furrer, Research Associate Professor, Center for Improvement of Child & Family Services
Holly Hein, Administrative Coordinator, Regional Research Institute
Rhen Miles, Adjunct Faculty
Colleen Ryan, Administrative Program Assistant, RRI
Matt Chorpenning, Instructor
Ann Curry-Stevens, Adjunct Instructor
Thet Mar Win, Program Administration Specialist
Amelia Drake, Student Office Assistant
Maya Novakoski, Student Office Assistant
Katie Cagle, Behavioral Health Integration Program Project Assistant
Laura Rodriguez, PhD student School of Social Work
Amie Thurber, Assistant Professor
Karen Moorhead, Associate Professor of Practice
Mollie Janssen, Associate Professor of Practice, alum
Jana Meinhold, Associate Professor, Child, Youth, & Family Studies
Adrienne Graf, Field Placement Development Specialist, School of Social Work
Crystallee Crain, Assistant Professor of Practice, Human Rights Scholar
Jared I. Best; Instructor, PhD Student; School of Social Work
Leah Brookner, Assistant Professor of Practice
Susanne Klawetter, Assistant Professor School of Social Work
Lisa Cordova, Assistant Professor of Practice
Kyndra Kappesser, Research Assistant, Center for Improvement of Child & Family Services
Michele Morales, Assistant Professor of Practice
Monica Parmley, Adjunct Instructor
Callie Lambarth, Research Associate, Center for Improvement of Child & Family Services, School of Social Work
John Waddingham, MSW Student Affairs Assistant
Anita R. Gooding, Phd Student and Adjunct Instructor, School of Social Work
Karen Cellarius, Sr Research Associate, Regional Research Institute for Human Services. External evaluator for OHA’s federal Garret Lee Smith Youth Suicide Prevention grant
Dora M. Raymaker, Research Assistant Professor, Regional Research Institute for Human Services
Nicole Lauzus, PhD student, Adjunct Instructor, and Graduate Research Assistant, School of Social Work
Hillary Hyde, MSW, CFLE, Assistant Professor of Practice
Kelly Hunter, Senior Research Assistant II, Regional Research Institute for Human Services
Heather Laurie, LCSW, Adjunct Faculty
Eileen M. Brennan, Research Professor of Social Work
Emilie Lamson-Siu, Program Administrator, Regional Research Institute
Denise Grant, MSW, Assistant Professor of Practice/Field Education Specialist
Dan Harold, LCSW Adjunct Professor
Crystal Deffenbaugh, Project Manager of Adoptive and Foster Family Therapy Certificate Program, Child Welfare Partnership
Stephanie Brockett, MSW Adjunct Instructor Child, Youth, and Family Studies
Malika Edden Hill, MSW Adjunct Instructor, School of Social Work
Jennifer Blakeslee, Research Assistant Professor, Regional Research Institute for Human Services, School of Social Work
Mathew Uretsky, Assistant Professor, School of Social Work
Sam Harrell, Adjunct Instructor and PhD Student, School of Social Work
Heather Rowlett, MSW Adjunct Instructor, School of Social Work
Marin Henderson-Posther, PhD Student, Adjunct Instructor, School of Social Work
Roberta Hunte, Assistant Professor, School of Social Work
Dawn Williamson, LCSW, Adjunct Faculty Lindsay Merritt, PhD, MSW, BSW, Senior Research Associate II, Regional Research Institute for Human Services
Elliott Hinkle, BS, Program Administrator,, Regional Research Institute for Human Services
Michele Martinez Thompson, Assistant Professor of Practice-Salem DO Coordinator
Rebecca Love, Assistant Director of Field Education, School of Social Work
Moira Smith, Administrative Support, Trauma Informed Oregon, Regional Research Institute
Katherine Kneupper, Adjunct Faculty, SSW
Sky Lockhart, Trauma Informed Oregon Field Student, BSW Student
Kelly Myers, PhD Student and Adjunct Instructor, School of Social Work
Bobbi Ali Zaman, PhD Student and Adjunct Instructor, School of Social Work
Olivia Wood, Coordinator, Social Determinants of Health Initiative, Regional Research Institute.
Laura Nissen, Professor, School of Social Work
Rebecca A. Miller, Senior Research Assistant, Regional Research Institute
Anna Rockhill, RRI
John Barnett, Operations and Administrative Services Manager, School of Social Work
Jessica Rodriguez-JenKins, Assistant Professor, SSW
Junghee Lee, Professor, SSW Ted Donlan, Associate Professor, SSW
Stephanie Sundborg, Trauma Informed Oregon, SSW
Mirah Scharer, Research Assistant, Regional Research Institute
Molly Oberweiser Kennedy, Assistant Professor of Practice, Systems of Care Institute-CCF-SSW, alum
Vania Coates, System of Care Institute-CCF-SSW
Brooke Rizor, CCF – System of Care Institute
Camilla Pettle, RRI – Trauma Informed Oregon
Julia Bryson, Adjunct Instructor, SSW
Keela Johnson, PhD student and Adjunct Instructor, School of Social Work and UNST
Lorelei Mitchell, Research Associate, CCF-SSW
Sasha Verbillis-Kolp, MSW, LCSW, Adjunct Faculty School of Social Work and Lecturer, Non-Profit Institute, Hatfield School of Government
Martha McCormack, Adjunct Instructor, School of Social Work
