To the Editors:

I am writing in regards to the misinformed and alarmingly reactionary pieces in last week’s Review regarding SAST and the closing of the SAST hotline. Those of us who have been working for years to challenge the racism of SAST are not suprised to be categorized as “hostile” or alienating.

That is a tactic that has long been used against us to mask and obfuscate the real operations of power in oppressive spaces. I am alarmed at this sentiment that has become so apparent in this exchange: “you hurt our feelings, so it doesn’t matter if we are supporting and enacting racist violence.”

Even the editorial, which I would hope could do better than that, suggests that “allegations of hostility and disrespect” toward white people is vastly more urgent and upsetting that “seemingly unintentional racial insensitivity.”

Let’s ask ourselves, who is really being hostile here? Who has the power to make that hostility matter? Clearly, since there were three pieces in the Review last week because some white women felt disrespected (when we tried to call them on their white privilege and racism), we can see whose voices are heard, whose experiences are valued and for whom hostility is upsetting.

Violence, hostility and disrespect have long been directed at people of color, specifically women and trans people of color, on this campus.

When SAST as an organization, and the individuals in SAST, are implicated in that violence, it is seen as mean, or hostile or not allowing people to share how they feel. This is not hostility, this is self-defense — if how you feel is that the survival of white women is more important than the survival of women of color, then frankly, I’m not overly concerned with hurting your feelings.

The real violence occurs when people of color are denied services and resources, and forced out of the spaces, which control and provide those resources.

Such is the case with SAST. It is so disrespectful to the labor of the women of color and their allies who have worked so hard to try and challenge SASTs racism, to suggest that racism is “perceived” or “alleged’’ (read: a figment of your hysterical imagination).

We take this seriously, and we have been working for years to provide all of the prevention education, provide all survivor-advocacy, coordinate all the events like Take Back the Night, as well as challenge SAST to transform as an organization.

We can’t do it forever, as you can see. We have been saying for years that the College needs to make a real commitment to sexual assault advocacy and prevention education.

It’s nice that you’ve decided this was important now that white women are also being denied a service. Why are the Review and the hotline counselors not troubled by services that are only accessible to white women and are controlled by white women? Why doesn’t the intentional denial of services to women of color merit an editorial?

I would also like to provide some basic information here: the hotline stopped operating in January due to disorganization and lack of trained counselors. It would be great if we could say that the hotline took racism seriously enough to “stop operating until [we] could come to an understanding.” Instead, the hotline (which wasn’t functioning to begin with) refused to attend meetings, refused to attend meetings which they were invited to schedule at their convenience, all because SAST began to clue them in to the long standing and continuing structural racism of SAST and its services.

That wasn’t hostile, that was simply the situation they were involved with. I don’t like SAST’s racism either, and I’m deeply invested in confronting it. SAST’s meetings aren’t held in secret, folks. It’s the SAST hotline, SAST provides the training, SAST funds the service, SAST is accountable for the racism.

If the hotline counselors refuse to attend meetings because they don’t want to deal with hearing about that racism, then they need to not be hotline counselors. Simply hijacking the hotline and re-chartering it to escape having to commit to doing the uncomfortable work of challenging our own white privilege, is not going to change anything.

Once again, we will be accountable as a campus community to the racism of offering services controlled by white women and offered by and for white people.

We need to ask ourselves, whose survival matters? If we believe all survivors of sexualized violence deserve services and resources, then we need to challenge each other to confront the racism that makes those services only accessible to some.

–Myrl Beam
College junior