The New York state Conference of the United Church of Christ has called on Syracuse University to further denounce the Theta Tau fraternity in a resolution they passed and in a personal letter to Chancellor Kent Syverud.

The United Church of Christ, a Protestant Christian denomination, said in the resolution that racism and anti-Semitism are sins.

The resolution was passed at the church’s June annual meeting in Syracuse, said New York state Conference Minister David Gaewski in a personal letter to Syverud. The resolution also said the university should address issues such as a lack of diversity in faculty hiring, underfunded programs for minority communities and campus accessibility issues.

The United Church of Christ, a self-declared “anti-racism conference,” has about 40,000 members in New York. It called on the university to conduct a “white audit” alongside minority faculty and students to identify barriers to inclusivity.

The United Church of Christ in New York has a program called New and Right Spirit which conducts anti-racism training. Facilitators who have completed this training helped in drafting the church’s resolution.

The resolution mandates that the 280 congregations in New York also conduct “white audits” and participate in the New & Right Spirit anti-racism training program. The resolution also mandates that local churches continue multiracial conversations to eliminate racism within its systems.

In the letter to Syverud, Gaewski said that the conference was dismayed by the Theta Tau videos. He said the church hopes that there will be workshops and training for students, staff and faculty at SU.

Theta Tau, a professional engineering fraternity, was permanently expelled from SU in April 2018 after videos surfaced showing actions Syverud has called “extremely racist, anti-Semitic, homophobic, sexist, and hostile to people with disabilities.”

SU has rolled out several initiatives to try to improve diversity and inclusion since the Theta Tau controversy. As part of SU’s new first-year experience, all students beginning at SU in fall 2018 are required to read comedian and political commentator Trevor Noah’s memoir, “Born a Crime.”

There was also increased diversity and inclusion training this summer for some faculty. In the College of Engineering and Computer Science, Dean Teresa Dahlberg has started to implement an inclusive excellence council.

At various public meetings in the week following the release of the Theta Tau videos, several colleges promised to promote inclusion, including the Martin J. Whitman School of Management, the College of Arts and Sciences, the School of Architecture and the S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications.

The United Church of Christ resolution said that “students of color have testified that the actions of Theta Tau are ‘a mere manifestation of the roots of systemic white supremacy,’ within the institution.”

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Published on October 17, 2018 at 9:57 pm

Contact Catherine: ccleffer@syr.edu | @ccleffert