The following letter was sent today to the University President, Provost, and Faculty Senate President, along with a copy of A Call to Justice: An Open Letter to the Loyola Marymount University Community in support of Budget Equity and Transparency:
Dear Colleagues,
We write to you at the far edge of the third wave, after the dark days of January, in the midst of a tentative but growing sense of confidence as educators are cleared for vaccination in LA County. We have weathered a year of crisis, from spring break to spring break. We have learned quickly, we have adapted, we have rallied. We have worried for our families, worried for our colleagues, and worried for our jobs. We have supported our students and encouraged them on when we thought we had nothing left. And we have rallied to carry LMU through.
Our efforts have not always been perfect, but our efforts have brought stable enrollments.
As we discern together in the coming weeks about the future of our university, we encourage you to adopt an equity budget and commit to budget transparency in the months and years ahead. There has been some confusion in the past year about what, exactly, an equity budget means; we hope that the enclosed open letter—signed by over 100 individual faculty and staff members and endorsed by the membership of the LMU-AAUP, Faculty Senate Committee on the Economic Standing of the Faculty, and the Latinx Faculty Association—provides some guidance in understanding what an equity budget is and why it is a necessary reflection of our values as a university in the Jesuit and Marymount traditions.
We have made enormous sacrifices to get here. We must make good on those sacrifices now by taking care of each other.
Cordially,
LMU-AAUP