PHOTOGRAPHY DEPARTMENT STATEMENT
To President Crystal Williams, the Board of Trustees, and fellow Departments at the Rhode Island School of Design:
We as the Photo Department - the undergraduate students, the graduate students, and the faculty members and staff - stand in solidarity with the groundskeepers, movers, and custodial staff in their right to a living wage at the Rhode Island School of Design. Our position is that a living wage, proper benefits, and annually occurring raises that are compensatory with inflation are fundamental to all paid employees in the RISD community, and we demand a fair living wage for those striking, starting at the requested $20/hour.
This commitment is fundamental to the core values that this school was founded on and purports to uphold in the present. If RISD truly believes in the power of art, visuality, creative practice, free speech, and institutional criticism, then it must also commit to putting these values into practice. As faculty, we simply cannot teach students about historical art movements that pursued equity, representation, anti-racism, and the value and dignity of every person while RISD's administration argues against $2 cost of living increases for staff. Doing so undercuts the necessity of the invisibilized labor of these positions and disregards the individuals responsible for this invaluable work. The unethical treatment of the lowest-paid staff members by the highest-paid administrative members also contributes to the exploitative power dynamic that RISD openly states we stand against. Is RISD, then, no different than a corporation prioritizing its bottom line? Or is it an institution truly committed to its espoused values of equity and inclusion, which includes supporting everyone enabling its existence? It is disheartening for our students to see an institution take actions that go directly against their supposed values. But in its actions thus far, the administration has signaled its willingness to abuse its power, even at the expense of its students' education and its reputation as an educational leader in art and design.
In an effort for our actions to reflect our support of those striking, we will not hold classes in RISD's buildings.
We are also calling on RISD administration to make responsive changes and improvements at the institution such as:
• Transparency on all institutional budgets including administration salaries. We call on the institution to engage in transparent and fair contract negotiations; and we ask that they refrain from closed-door communications with faculty in favor of collective action and empathetic non- hierarchical negotiations that incorporate all members of the functioning body that constitutes RISD as a whole.
• Ending the administrative practice of imposing coercive measures that prevent faculty and staff from fully exercising their autonomy in support of organized labor actions on campus, including the exploitation of no [sympathy] strike clauses in union contracts or using sick leave/vacation time in support of striking workers.
We acknowledge the students' need to continue pursuing their education and the complications that this dispute has created within departments to address the multitude of different learning styles, needs, and academic obligations. To rid our community of inequitable practices as such
should come as high priority. Let RISD uphold its claims of being an institution "that has always embraced art and design's capacity to stoke curiosity and spur progress" by setting an institutional standard of providing its backbone with fair and decent wages.
Signed RISD Photography Faculty, Students and Staff