Welcome to the DARAC site. We are a group of faculty, staff, students, and alums, who are concerned with the problems of racism, bias, and policing on campus. We have created this site as a tool for our communications and activism, to share information and publish critical, timely information.

Please Call Upon Drexel's Leadership to Reconsider it's Staff Return to Campus Policy. Please feel free to forward the letter below:

Dear President Fry, Vice President Bowman, Provost Jensen,

We write to ask you to reconsider your decision to bring our administrative staff back to campus as we do a phased opening. Many universities across the country, including the University of Pennsylvania have followed public health guidelines and decided to offer remote instructions for AY2020-21, to safeguard the health of their students, staff, faculty and their neighboring communities. Over the past four months our staff has worked efficiently from home to keep the university running under extraordinary circumstances, addressing the needs of our students, researchers and faculty. They have gone out of their way, working extra-long hours to ease both faculty and student transition online through the spring and summer quarters. We ask you to recognize the immense burden they have shouldered and to please make a University-wide decision to mandate that they continue to work from home until all of us are able to safely return to campus.

The effort to consider staff voices in the reopening plans has varied across campus. In many cases, despite suggestions to do so, staff have not been consulted on the fall return process and the protocols to be followed and enforced to assure their health and safety. In light of this, we ask you to respond to the following questions:

1. What are the University’s safety protocols and how will they be enforced?

2. Our staff and faculty who offer courses were not necessarily consulted on their preferred mode of course delivery or if they were, a power dynamic was in place making it challenging to say “no.” Can staff teaching courses be given the same considerations as faculty?

3. Staff concerns were pushed to the HR department, only offering a template email in response to requests to work remotely, giving options of speaking to supervisor, disability resource accommodation, or FMLA. This has eliminated the staff members’ choice and inadvertently created a situation where another staff member could be asked to take their place on campus. Additionally, staff who are caring for children cannot take FMLA or file for disability, and may be required to come to campus though they have no outside options for childcare. How do you propose to address the real need some staff have to work remotely either for their own health or to care for children or other family?

4. Staff situations are being treated on a case to case basis making the outcomes inequitable and dependent on unit/leadership culture and HR Business Rep quality. Can you offer a uniform policy for remote work?

If we are all in this pandemic together, as you have stressed repeatedly, then the university policies should be applied equally to the university workers, regardless whether they are faculty or staff.

The well-being of our staff, without whom the university would completely stop functioning is a critical public health issue. It is additionally an issue of gender equity, and racial justice issue. As you already know, women make up the majority of Drexel’s professional staff with women of color often holding frontline administrative roles. This pandemic has taught us that black and brown people are affected by COVID-19 in disproportionate numbers. As recent conversations have revealed, our black and brown staff already have suffered considerable systemic racism on campus, and now they are being asked to risk their lives and return to campus as frontline workers – without any regard to their age or race, which make them further vulnerable to contracting the diseases were there to be a spread of COVID-19 on campus. As our staff has communicated to us, while they keep the university’s administration, compliance, finances, advising and basic day-to-day functions operating at full capacity, they feel like Drexel’s leadership has put a price tag on their lives. At this moment of critical reckoning about equity in our country, we hope Drexel will be a leader in the area of racial justice and recognize that asking our staff to return to campus during the pandemic not only unsafe in terms of health, but unjust in terms of race.

There was a Community Speak Out on August 8, 2020 in Clark Park of West Philly -- against Drexel and Penn opening up. More than 150 people from West Philadelphia came to the speak out. As Drexel addresses it’s legacy as an institution located in West Philadelphia, it should make a good faith effort to address community concerns about students returning to our campuses, which could become a hotspot were there to be an outbreak of COVID-19. University of Pennsylvania has already reversed its decision to bring students, faculty and staff to campus. We are concerned faculty, student and staff at Drexel and we ask you to recognize that, by asking staff to return to campus, you are asking them to choose between paying their bills and risking their lives. We believe Drexel can do better than this.

Thank you,

Drexel Anti-Racist Action Coalition