RISD Sculpture
Attachments
Wed, Apr 12, 11:49 AM
to sculpture-students, Sculpture
To President Crystal Williams and the Board of Trustees of the Rhode Island School of Design:
The Sculpture Department stands with the custodial staff, groundskeepers, and movers in their struggle for a true living wage at RISD. We align ourselves with our colleagues in Architecture and other departments, as well as with the Providence City Council, in calls for urgent and moral action in response to the unethical treatment of RISD’s lowest paid staff. We recognize and respect that facilities staff keep us safe and operational through an ongoing pandemic. The maintenance of our facilities, technologies, and physical spaces cannot be separated from the care we show our community and must be valued as such.
The administration's intransigence, lack of transparency, sophistry, and refusal to negotiate in genuine good faith has compromised our ability to teach effectively and threatens the wellbeing of our students. This is profoundly out of touch and fundamentally counter to the values espoused in RISD Next – Strategic Plan. As ten Providence City Counselors have emphasized, “...insisting on a living wage is not an excessive demand.” However, the administration's expectation that we cross picket lines to occupy classrooms is egregiously so.
We demand the administration engage in honest and transparent negotiations
We recognize the inequity in the lowest paid employees on campus negotiating with the highest paid employees
We support the union’s demands for a true living wage starting at $20/hour
We support our students’ need to continue making art
The curriculum, classes, and running of the College is in turmoil
We support part time and pre critical review faculty in their desires to demonstrate their support of the strike in ways that are safe for them
As the strike continues we will adjust our actions to support the students, faculty and staff in steadfast solidarity with the Teamsters 251 and union demands
Signed,
RISD Sculpture
Sculpture Seniors Statement:
Dear President Williams, the Administration, and the Board of Trustees,
We are a collective of seniors from the sculpture department demanding RISD's immediate response to the union's proposal to be paid with living wage and benefits as defined in the union's terms. The tireless labor and care of our groundskeepers, movers, and custodial staff is crucial to the safety and base functionality of our department, and without them our education would not be possible.
We are disappointed and enraged to see that the administration is neglecting the union's demand for a respectful wage. We feel betrayed by RISD's hypocrisy, supposedly adopting values of social equity, justice, and progressiveness. Even more so, we are enraged to see that our institution's daily functions depend on oppressing people in our lives. To continue the current form of operation that dismisses even the basic needs of our community members is morally intolerable.
Please recognize that it is not only the students who are in support of the groundskeepers, movers, and custodial staff. We are fully aware of the administration's increased surveillance, censorship, and suppression of student and faculty voices and actions. We continually witness our professors' frustration when they are deterred from supporting what they believe in.
In summary, we demand:
1. The union's demand to be met. If that requires a redistribution of wealth within the institution, do it;
2. Transparency on union negotiations and RISD's fiscal spendings;
3. Lifting faculty restrictions to allow them to strike in solidarity without
compromising their positions.
As one of the top art institutions, it is RISD's responsibility to set examples for progressive, equitable, and sustainable practices. The sculpture student body stands in solidarity with the workers.
Sincerely,
RISD sculpture seniors