Dear TCU Community,
The time is now to act.
As a group of concerned faculty, we are deeply disturbed at the recent allegations of
unchecked racial and gender discrimination and open hostility at TCU. We stand in solidarity with
current and former marginalized undergraduate and graduate students, faculty, and staff who are
speaking out and demanding an immediate change. We want to affirm our students, who have
clearly laid out the changes that they need to see. We know all too well that, in times like these,
institutional racism quells students’ progressive visions for their education rather than uplifts them.
We also recognize that trauma begets trauma; the unaddressed transgressions of TCU’s past have
led to this painful present. We speak out today in hopes of preventing future trauma, knowing that
our many Black, Indigenous, and other People of Color (BIPOC) faculty are uniquely qualified
and ready to lead dynamic and difficult discussions about race. Fort Worth needs healing. TCU
needs healing. Let us help.
To students, we stand in solidarity with you and Jane Doe #1. While we refrain from
commenting on her lawsuit as it moves through its own due process, we want to affirm that students
of color and students of other marginalized backgrounds HAVE and ARE being underserved and
undervalued at TCU. It is not just in your head. We, too, are devastated by your isolation, lack of
social and literal physical space, and the infuriating stories you have shared with us during our
office hours and in passing about what you experience in the dorms, in class, and while trying to
obtain services on campus. We are in awe of your resilience that we wish you did not have to have
in the face of routine micro- and macroaggressions on campus; reinforced white supremacist
frameworks that you experience daily at the hands of your professors and peers. As faculty, we are
invested in helping you navigate processes for improving the conditions in the classroom and
across this campus. In addition to bringing to bear our knowledge, we extend our collective and
individual support to you in whatever form that may take.
To our fellow faculty members, we must all stand up and be agents of progressive change
at TCU for the betterment of our students, staff, and one another. As other recent lawsuits have
laid bare, faculty, too, are harmed professionally and personally by long-standing ideologies of
white supremacy, fascism, patriarchy, queerphobia, xenophobia, and ableism. As BIPOC faculty,
we are confronted daily with the gross realities of TCU’s deep-seated history of systemic racism
— from unchecked racial terror and hate speech espoused in our own classrooms and on-campus
by students and visitors, to being saddled with higher teaching loads than our white or male faculty
counterparts that stifles promotion, to unrecognized and uncompensated service work that we are
tasked with by administrators to hold TCU together. And, it is apparent that this culture of
exploitation and negligence has made it grossly difficult for TCU to not only recruit and retain
students of color, but faculty of color, too. We must stop with the band-aids, and be brave enough

 to put forth and implement bold, holistic and transformative prescriptions for eradicating the
systems of oppression that have a grip on our workplace.
To the administration, we continue to be committed to eradicating the various obstacles
that students of color, especially Black and Brown students, face at this institution, but we need
your expeditious and explicit support. In order to advance equity and justice on-campus in the best
interest of our students, strengthen the university’s academic profile and reputation (a stated goal
in the Vision in Action Strategic Plan), and ensure the recruitment and retention of BIPOC faculty,
we call for:
•

joint hires, cluster hires in the research areas of Ethnic Studies (i.e. Asian American,
Black, Native American, and Chicanx-Latinx Studies) and Gender and Sexuality
Studies,

•

immediate investigations into salary gaps in and across departments and colleges,
and a public commitment to closing those gaps and ensuring pay equity across all
units,

•

more transparency about salaries and start-up packages across the
university, including digitally published and regularly updated classifications and
pay scales,

•

better workload standards across departments and colleges (i.e..2-2 standardized
teaching load for all faculty, 1-2 for new faculty)

•

clearly defined and quantifiable criteria for tenure & promotion across departments,

•

the recognition and compensation of invisible labor—i.e., mentorship of historically
marginalized students, departmental service work, and other duties that often go
unaccounted for in faculty annual reviews and tenure & promotion,

•

the creation of a university ombudsperson’s office and the development of fair and
transparent processes for filing and resolving complaints (i.e. Title IX, EEO, Dispute
Resolutions, etc.), including the annual reporting of received Title IX complaints
and greater compliance with other civil rights and anti-discrimination laws,

•

the hiring of much more student affairs and academic affairs staff to meet the
personal and professional needs of our students so that faculty, in particular BIPOC
faculty, who are not trained to provide those types of professional services, are not
left shouldering the weight of student growth and development,

•

an end to the ongoing slashing of faculty benefits, which disproportionately
harms junior and BIPOC faculty; we need comprehensive medical care (including

 mental health care) that is culturally responsive, accessible and affordable and more
medical health providers on campus who reflect our state’s demographics, and
•

daycare services and after school programs provided on campus to support faculty,
staff, and students with children.

You have heard from an abundance of students (as well as BIPOC faculty that have left
TCU after having similar experiences), who have offered accounts of their experiences of systemic
racism on this campus. Do know that these stories are not surprising to us and many of them we
have personally supported students through. Our students’ trauma directly affects faculty
productivity and well-being, both of which can lead to burnout. If TCU is truly committed to being
among one of the best places to work in the nation, as often touted, we feel strongly that
mechanisms to address structural racism operating on campus need to be implemented and/or
enhanced without delay. The cultural deficit discourse that frames marginalized students goes
regularly unchecked at both graduate and undergraduate levels. Diversity is not an obstacle to be
navigated in our academic and professional careers. It must, instead, be a transformative core value
of this institution.
We see, affirm, and offer our support to the vision of the students, faculty, and staff who
are working towards a truly transformative education here at TCU.

Signed,
Carmen Kynard, Ph.D. – English

Brandon Manning, Ph.D. – English

Jeanelle Hope, Ph.D. – CRES

Rima Abunasser, Ph.D. – English

Jane Mantey, Ph.D. – CRES

Melanie Harris, Ph.D. – Religion

Brian J Dixon, MD – TCU/UNTHSC School of Medicine

Hanan Hamad, Ph.D. – History

Stacie McCormick, Ph.D. – English

Santiago Piñón, Ph.D. – Religion

Adam McKinney, MA – Dance/College of Fine Arts