Love Letters to Black Students

We want you here, and we need you here. Thank you for all you contribute to SLCC.

As a faculty member, I want you to know that I care about each of you and want you to feel welcome and valued on at our College.

My heart goes out to the Black community and the Black Student Union. Black Lives Matter! You are loved!

You are very loved and seen for the abundance of strength, beauty, and resilience you bring to our campus community and world.

I will spend more time talking about racism in my classrooms than I have in the past.

I will have meaningful conversations with my non-Black friends and family members about justice, equity, and respect for humanity—especially for those who are traditionally marginalized, obscured, or minimized.

You are all amazing young Black scholars. I have truly enjoyed meeting many of you throughout my years at the college. You are the leaders who will make change in our world. This is just the beginning.

I love the passion and the strength the BSU represents to me and so many others on campus. There is no one more amazing than the members of BSU for their ability to push forward past historical and present discrimination.

I hope that the crucial changes to eliminate the deliberately placed struggles on Black individuals on this campus, this state, nations and this Earth is accelerated tenfold. I stand with you forever.

I promise you that I will learn from them and commit to holding myself (and others) accountable.

Your strength to come together in troubling times is inspirational and I look up to all of you. I'll repeat myself one more time for emphasis, you are beautiful, you are perfect, you belong here, and you matter.

You deserve to be safe and comfortable. You deserve to have every opportunity. I'm writing this love letter to let all of you know I support and love you.

You are examples of Black excellence to me, my sister, my other Black family in NJ, and to my white family members, and I thank you personally for that. Your perseverance and strength inspire me.

I LOVE YOU!!! I am so grateful for you and for all the light you bring to the world.

Thank you for the many ways in which you enrich our lives and our institution. We celebrate your everyday successes as well as your long-term accomplishments. You've got this!

Thank you for creating, speaking, studying, striving, and standing in solidarity with one another. As those who are standing with you, may we each do our part, moment by moment, to co-create a just, diverse, and equitable world.

Thank you for modeling for Black and non-Black people what it means to be about, for, and with community.

I am committed to being more of an ally and will help make changes within my sphere of influence.

You belong here. You are wanted. You are loved. You are welcome. You matter. Your voice matters. Your experience matters. Your knowledge matters. Your perspective matters. Your story matters. Your pain matters. Your love matters. Your culture matters. Your interpretation matters. Your safety matters. Everything about you matters.

This note is to say you are extraordinary and excellent in who you are and please know that all you offer to SLCC is valued. It's my wish that what you receive from our college community at least equals the excellence you share with SLCC.