CUSG Legislative Council Executive Committee on Strike

On Monday, Oct. 11 the University of Colorado Boulder Student Government’s Legislative Council issued a statement that the committee would be on strike until further notice. 

The executive committee, which is composed of the president, vice-president and representative speaker, parliamentarian, legislative whip, treasurer, press secretary and council of colleges and schools chair, in addition to the entire legislative council, announced their strike as a call to action for other CUSG members and the CU Boulder administration to address the issues of systematic racism within the administrative process.

The committee cites “multiple attempts to call out incidences of racism within the organization through public and private requests for acknowledgment and support” and that the CU Student Body Presidents signed a revised chancellor agreement with Chancellor Phill DiStefano without the public discussion or legislative review of the council. 

The revisions made in the chancellor agreement—signed earlier this month by the current student body presidents and in November 2020 by the previous executive administration—would allow CU administration to fire elected members of CUSG and have the potential to overturn the impeachment decisions of the council. 

“The committee wants to ensure that students who are Black, Indigenous and Peoples of Color (BIPOC) are heard, acknowledged, and supported within CUSG and by the elected leaders of the organization,” the committee stated in their press release. 

CUSG’s Legislative Council’s leadership has partnered with diversifyCUnow, an advocacy coalition, in an effort to hold itself and other involved parties accountable. 

“Our role here is to ask everyone involved to be sensitive to what our BIPOC colleagues have been through and are going through,” said diversifyCUnow organizer Holly Olivarez, in a press statement. 

The group is advocating for campus-wide attention on the issues addressed in the CUSG statement. 

“The structure of the system is to blame and change has proven to be difficult with minimal support from the CU Boulder administrators,” the council stated in their press release. “We call upon every student at CU Boulder, every CU administrator, and every person reading this to listen to better understand how systemic racism has escalated the tension and division within CUSG.”

The committee has called for honest public conversation to create an environment that allows for the discussion of the biases carried by everyone in order to hold themselves and their organization accountable.

A section of the committee’s demands includes that the CU Antiracist Creed be read, discussed and considered by CUSG members. The adoption of the CU Antiracist Creed has been presented as a way to understand interbranch conflicts within CUSG. 

The committee has demanded that the revisions to the chancellor’s agreement be opened to all involved parties in a public deliberative process. If granted, the council would ratify a new final draft to be signed by the Tri-Executives and submitted to the chancellor by the end of the academic year.

This article will continue to be updated as more information is released from Khan, the CUSG Council and the University.