Dear members of the CU Boulder community:
On Sunday, an act of racism occurred at our Engineering Center. This incident, in which bigoted language was directed at our students, was absolutely unacceptable.
I cannot state this strongly enough—racist behavior is offensive to our campus values and will not be tolerated. The CU Police Department is investigating and searching for the person who committed this racist act, who will be held accountable to the fullest extent possible. While we don’t believe she is affiliated with our campus, her actions are just as insulting to our values.
This incident reminds us of who we are as a campus community and the need for us to be vigilant in defending our values—and each other—on a daily basis. We are committed to an increasingly inclusive campus culture built upon the values of our Colorado Creed, and incidents like yesterday’s reinforce the difficult work we have yet to do.
We are working with campus and student leaders to prioritize next steps to address yesterday’s incident and improve upon our policies, trainings and resources for our campus community to reject intolerance and racism wherever they exist.
We must always be ready to look out for and care for ourselves and each other. A wealth of campus resources are available to support our students and other members of our campus community who are feeling the effects of yesterday’s incident, and I hope you will use them.
Updates will be published in CU Boulder Today as soon as they are available, and we look forward to demonstrating to the world what CU Boulder stands for and how we stand together as a community.
Sincerely,
Philip P. DiStefano
Chancellor