Concerns About Safety and Well-Being of Our Campus Community

Dear Cal State East Bay community,

We are writing this email to update our campus community about the many concerns that have been brought to our attention from across campus regarding the safety, well-being, and support for specific members of our community who may be targeted by future federal legal action, regulatory restrictions, or hate and exclusion speech simply because we are a member of a community.

 This message has three main points that we hope you can take away with you:

1. Cal State East Bay stands with ALL of our students and employees. We are here for you.
2. We have been coordinating and consulting with the Chancellor’s Office daily in each of our divisions to strengthen our support and build organizational capacity to address any exclusionary actions that may impact our campus.
3. As leaders we will be building organizational capacity on our campus to do all that we can to build community and needed work and responses that are specific and targeted to support our students and employees.

As such, the following workshops and opportunities for training as allies are being held between now and the last day of classes, which is 21 days away on December 8th. We will continue to have workshops in Spring 2025. Please note that working groups were pulled together from across campus based on employee expertise and work assignment to move quickly as the semester is in its final weeks. These groups will expand in the future. The workshops here reflect the most urgent issues brought to our attention in the last 10 days.

Separate from these ally workshops, we are supporting Employee Affinity Groups and are in communication with staff in our student affinity and resource centers as they have been working to hold information and healing spaces for our students and employees. Counseling services have been involved in all of the efforts. Current work funded by the CSU on Black Student Success, and AANHPI Student Success continues. We also have an active HSI grant and the work of the Seal of Excelencia. We will continue to develop work and working groups as issues arise for our campus.

Dates and events [Some of these events require registration, please click on links]:

We would like to ask that you reach out to others, and be supportive of others in our campus community. We know from being in dialogue sessions and listening sessions that many students and employees have expressed deep concern and fear, especially for our students on our campus, many of whom are LGBTQ+ or are undocumented or TPS. We have employees who have similar identities. And many of us have families and friends who are fearful of being targeted. 30% of our students are fully online. If you are teaching an online class, please check-in with your students. Please use and refer your students and employees to resources on campus for mental health support. Counseling services also has a guide to managing election stress. 

If you or someone you know from campus experiences or witnesses biasplease use our Bias Incident Form. We have staff and administrators who will monitor, review, and determine support.

Lastly, please download, print, and post the “Our Campus. Our Home. Cal State East Bay Stands with our Students and Employees” flier that you can print out and post to communicate to others that you stand in support of our students and employees. You can print and fill out your commitments. An example may be, “I commit to listen and take action.” Or “I plan on supporting a student success center” “I commit to check in on my students in class.” The general posting one has a QR code to a web resource page we are building. We will be printing and laminating the quarter page signs and will post in Mass Mail to announce when they are available for pick up. For students who are only on campus a few days a week and may not participate in our programs, we want them to know that they belong and that we are here for them. This campaign is the result of requests from employees across campus.

Please reach out to us if you have any concerns or need resources or consultation.

We are committed to all of our students and employees.

And thank you for all that you do for each other.

Sincerely,

Cathy Sandeen           Kathleen Wong(Lau)
President                     University Diversity Officer