By: Elizabeth Guldimann
The President of Tufts University, Anthony Monaco, has announced that the university will spend $25 million to funding new “anti-racism” initiatives over the next five years.
Though Monaco mentions that the school “will develop transparent accountability and reporting measures” to reveal how funds are allocated, he makes no mention of where this money–used to fund such projects as replacing current art displays with more racially diverse content, mandating training for students, and implementing diversity hiring quotas– is coming from.
Tufts has also made proposals that threaten student safety by increasing the number of “non-sworn personnel” to avoid reliance on armed police officers. According to the Campus Safety and Policing report, armed police “often cause apprehension and concern for members of our community.” The school’s solution is the police department’s transition to “a multi-pronged resource model on all our campuses,” where non-sworn and unarmed employees will be used for “routine service calls.”
The university is also reconsidering disarming what few campus police officers are left. The report states that “recent events have led many universities and their communities to reconsider the need and appropriateness of armed officers.” This provides a frightening prospect for Tufts students–if students themselves can’t be armed, who will protect them against intruders?
Monaco detailed the efforts that have been made over the past several months, “through feedback sessions, focus groups, and small discussions,” while specifically singling out “Black and Brown students and colleagues, underrepresented minority members of our community, and all people of color at Tufts who contributed so much to these recommendations.” The final workstream reports of these five groups, Institutional Audit and Targeted Action, Campus Safety and Policing, Public Art, Compositional Diversity, and Equity and Inclusion, were included in the update.
Monaco’s allocation of $25+ million for absurd proposals like removing art and compromising student safety is a poor use of university resources. This does not reflect the resources and programs students applied to the university for the use of in the first place–students came to Tufts to build a platform for their futures, not to be inundated with leftist orthodoxy.
Elizabeth Guldimann is a National Journalism Center intern at YAF’s New Guard.
