Letter to the editor: A letter to Kington from the No Limits Project

March 12th, 2010 | By Contributed | Section: Opinion

Dear Raynard,
Congratulations and welcome to the Grinnell Community! We are very excited to have you as our new president and look forward to the positive presence and energy we are sure you will bring to our campus. As the new president, you are inheriting an institutional legacy of activism, global consciousness and critical engagement.

As a group of students deeply committed to upholding the professed mission and values of our institution, we would like to take this opportunity to tell you about the No Limits Project, a student group founded in the spring of 2009. We hope this letter will be the start of a healthy and productive relationship that will continue into the future.

The No Limits Project is a non-hierarchical coalition of student activists who came together in the spring of 2009 to reclaim our institution in the name of what we believe are the administration’s unmet commitments to social responsibility and justice. We are a group comprised of a diverse array of students from various campus activism groups who care deeply about issues including environmentalism, religious and student life, mental health, and responsible investment, to name a few. Together, we compiled a list of fourteen demands highlighting unresolved dialogues with the administration about long standing campus issues. Each of these demands reflects longstanding campus issues. Despite numerous attempts by students to engage with the administration over the past decade, these concerns have been largely neglected and student efforts to work with the administration considerably undervalued.
Despite initial resistance from the institution, since our formation as a group this past year, administrators have begun to engage with our demands. We worked closely with administrators as they presented a comprehensive Hate Crimes/Bias-Motivated Incident Response Protocol.

Additionally, we secured partial funding for AJust Grinnell, a peer-to-peer education program that seeks to facilitate workshops and discussions around issues of oppression and privilege. Most recently, our work with the Student Government Association, Vice President for Development Mickey Munley and the student group Free the Planet has resulted in a new way for seniors to give money towards building wind turbines to power the campus. In the future, we hope to work with the admissions office, the Office of the President, and the Trustees of the college to reinstate need-blind admissions for International Students.

We believe that you have the unique opportunity to reorient the college in both word and deed to its stated core values of social justice, diversity, and excellence in liberal arts education. As you mentioned in your introductory address, these principles have informed your work and beliefs and we look forward to seeing the ways in which these values manifest themselves in your work on campus.

If you would like to read more about our group’s history and demands, please visit our website: http://nolimitsgrinnell.wordpress.com/ or email our group at nolimitsgrinnell@gmail.com.

Best wishes,
No Limits Grinnell