Letters to the Editor

To The Trail, Below is the statement the MENA Student Association sent to the Office of the Dean of Students in response to our invitation to this year’s Leadership Awards Ceremony. The MENA Student Association will not be accepting the awards offered to us at this year’s Leadership Awards Ceremony. We feel that awarding the MENA Student Association these accolades allows UPS administration to paint a certain image of itself as supportive of our group’s work. This image is inconsistent with our experience, and we will not legitimize this disingenuousness...

 To The Trail,  On October 20, 2023, it was brought to my attention by another Black colleague that the second-highest ranking Black administrator (second only to the president) at the University would not be returning to her position as an associate vice president. Apparently, I had missed the announcement in a university-wide email disseminated on Monday, October 16, the Monday of Fall Break, with a very nondescript subject heading: “Division of University Relations Staffing Update.” I assumed, like many people perhaps, that the email didn’t seem like something of importance....

To The Trail and the Board of Trustees of the University of Puget Sound,    The climate crisis poses an unprecedented threat to our planet, and it is our moral responsibility as global citizens to do what is within our collective power as a University to combat climate change. While the magnitude of this issue is broader than any one individual or institution could tackle on its own, it is imperative that our institution addresses the various ways in which it is currently contributing to the problem. The purpose of this...

Dear Editor, In her article in the last issue of The Trail, Grace Farrell asserted that “he ASUPS budgeting process appears thorough and helpful, but the logistics of reimbursements … remain burdensome.” I write as a co-president of the Jewish Student Union and former ASUPS president to attest to this burden (and its disproportionate weight on students who are economically disadvantaged) and suggest a policy to help alleviate it. When I served as ASUPS president during the 2022–2023 academic year, my administration issued purchasing cards to ASUPS clubs with budgets over...

Dear Editors, We are writing in response to your editorial, "University of Puget Sound Campus Must Respond to War in Gaza," in your November 10th issue. We need to continue to address the Israel-Hamas war on campus with care and thoughtfulness as to the suffering of Palestinians and Israelis alike. To that end, we would like to announce that Dr. Liora Halperin, Professor of International Studies and History, and Distinguished Endowed Professor of Jewish Studies, at the University of Washington-Seattle, will be giving a talk entitled, "Israel, Palestine, Gaza: Histories...

Dear members of the Trail Editorial Board,   The divisions of Academic Affairs, Student Affairs, and Institutional Equity and Diversity acknowledge the call the editorial board of the Trail made to the campus community last week to engage in learning and conversation about the Israel and Hamas war, antisemitism, andIslamophobia.  We would like to share with the campus community some of the collaborations currently underway among our three divisions, as well as our continuing efforts to address the topics listed above. As plans are finalized, we will inform the community...

An Introduction: At the beginning of the semester, our professor asked us to think about something we were discouraged by and were also eager to change. We mentioned various topics, but the area that we all continued to return to and focus on was one related to our own campus community. Despite being from varying backgrounds, we all were concerned about how race and class operated on our campus. We had been learning about the complexity and compoundedness of race and class in our African American Studies (AFAM) courses, but...

Letter to the Editor: Dear readers, I read with consternation the recent email from VPs Lorna Hernandez Jarvis and Sarah Comstock in regards to the Nov. 16 Town Hall incident. Rather than a resolution to this painful situation, their message highlights the failure of our leadership and community to deal with and learn from this event.  The email indicates that following the incident “an individual promptly and voluntarily came forward to clarify that the sound that was made is their natural laugh.” Notwithstanding, the individual is now required to “participate...

It is hard to believe that we are nearly at the end of the semester, and this message is appearing in the final issue of The Trail for this calendar year! I appreciate having this opportunity to share a few thoughts with the readers of The Trail, and I would like to offer a message that has been adapted from my December report to the faculty. As classes come to a close and the winter break approaches, let’s take a deep breath and acknowledge the emotional journey we have been...

The following note was delivered anonymously to The Trail’s campus mailbox and received on Nov. 11, 2022. You and the student paper are about to be besieged with the results of an effort coordinated by a large and militant group of faculty who cannot abide by the recent decision of the Board of Trustees to accept only a portion of the recommendations put forward by those same faculty. This group is organizing its messaging to the student newspaper. As you begin to receive enquiries and guidance from this portion of...

University of Puget Sound is not immune to the financial and enrollment realities facing higher education nationally, and as campus leaders we have a responsibility to maintain the academic and financial health of the university. For this reason, I charged the AAAPR Committee with providing their recommendations for how best to balance the academic priorities and financial reality of the institution given the current $10 million structural budget deficit. I thoughtfully considered their recommendations in light of our strategic plan goals, shared their report with the campus community for additional...

At the October 2022 meeting of the Board of Trustees, the Board voted on the President’s recommendations to move the university towards financial equilibrium by the end of Fiscal Year 2026. General bullet points were shared with the university community. The plan was not. Faculty requested to see the full report and supporting documents that were provided by the President and ultimately approved by the Board. To date, the President has not shared those documents with the faculty. This is a departure from the transparency and collaborative process the president...