[Editor’s note: Open letters published in the Bi-College News do not reflect the views of the publication, its staff, or its editorial board. This letter represent only the views of the author. The Bi-Co News continues to strive to reflect the perspectives and experiences of all community members across the Consortium.]
Bryn Mawr—On Tuesday, parents of Bryn Mawr College students and members of the Bryn Mawr College Parents Support for Student Protestors Facebook group sent an open letter President Kim Cassidy and Deans Burrell-McRae and Jenkins expressing their support for the student protestors currently being targeted by administration for their participation in the Merion Green encampment.
Bryn Mawr parent and member of the Facebook group Dara Rossman Regaignon told the Bi-Co News: “For me it’s two fold, for one I support student protest writ large… I support our right as Americans to [protest] and I specifically support students’ right to do that on campus.” She continued: “For me, as a Quaker and as a Jew, it feels particularly important to support [student] efforts to educate their community and ask the institution with which they have the most leverage to speak out about the genocide going on in Gaza.”
Currently, the letter boasts over 130 signatures from members of the group. In the interest of keeping students protestor identity confidential to avoid discipline from administration, parents have asked that their signatures be omitted from the publication of letter.
President Kim Cassidy has not responded publicly as of Wednesday evening.
Read their full statement below:
Dear President Cassidy, Dean Burrell-McRae, and Dean Jenkins,
We write as parents of current Bryn Mawr students to express our strong, ongoing support for the student protesters and to request that you refrain from all disciplinary action against them.
The Bryn Mawr Mission Statement reads that “emerging from their Bryn Mawr experience equipped with powerful tools and with a deeper understanding of the world and each other, our graduates define success on their terms and lift others as they make a meaningful difference in the world.” As we understand the statement, student protesters at Bryn Mawr are currently enacting its goal, drawing on their learning and experience at Bryn Mawr to work together to make a meaningful difference in the world. From the plenary earlier this semester, in which students overwhelmingly voted for an Ethical Spending Committee to observe and evaluate Student Government spending, to the current encampment at the People’s College for the Liberation of Palestine on Merion Green, we see principled, thoughtful, collaborative, nonviolent activism. They are—as the college invites them to be —agents of change.
The students currently at Bryn Mawr were in elementary school in 2012, when Adam Lanza killed 20 first graders at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut. They were in middle school for the election of 2016 and the Women’s March. While they were in high school, Nikolas Cruz killed 17 people at the Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida; Greta Thunberg inspired a youth climate movement; they lived through and organized mutual aid during a global pandemic; and they took to the streets and to social media to protest the treatment of Black lives as disposable, especially by law enforcement.
These are passionate, compassionate students whose entire lives have been shaped by the injustices they have witnessed and by the failure of not only the state but also educational institutions to keep them physically safe. Do not be part of that legacy of violence by bringing police to campus, forcibly dismantling or relocating the People’s College, or subjecting student protesters to punitive disciplinary measures. For the sake of the students who have organized the protest, and also for the entire Bi-Co community of students, faculty, and staff, allow the encampment to continue its peaceful, educational, art-filled work. Honor the organizers’ demands by negotiating with them with respect and in good faith, as administrators have done on some other campuses such as Brown and Northwestern. Bryn Mawr has taught these students that they are part of a long tradition of feminist activism — and feminist activism has never only been about women’s rights; it has always been about changing the world to make it a more just, equitable, and safe place for all.
The administration’s letters to the campus community have expressed concerns that the protests represent a threat to some students’ sense of safety. We are aware that some parents and students perceive advocacy on behalf of Palestinians and chants associated with the decades-long history of advocacy for Palestinian liberation are inherently antisemitic. Many of the student protesters are themselves Jewish yet refuse to equate criticism of Israel with antisemitism; in this, they follow the guidelines of the Jerusalem Declaration on Antisemitism. The critical thinking skills they have developed at Bryn Mawr have helped them to grasp nuanced arguments about international affairs, resist misinformation, and take principled stances. If some of their peers disagree with the stances of protesters, they should recognize that such disagreements are inevitable in a democratic society and in a community of learners. Frederick Lawrence, former president of Brandeis University and CEO of the Phi Beta Kappa Society, said Thursday in an interview with Democracy Now, “Many people feel that when they hear views that they deeply disagree with, that’s threatening to them. That’s not how universities operate. You are not entitled to be intellectually safe. You are entitled to be physically safe.”
What is happening on the Bryn Mawr campus now and at campuses across the country is part of a learning process, and we are proud to see how courageous students have been in following their convictions and working together to make a difference.
Sincerely,
Bryn Mawr College Parents Support for Student Protestors
Sign of the times — parents weighing in. Never would have happened 20 years ago.