Arlington, TX – July 10, marked the culmination of the Progressive Student Union’s call-in campaigns, email-ins, and callouts against Teik C. Lim’s administration for not doing enough for Black students at the University of Texas-Arlington. Through both private email and public statements, UTA had conceded to several demands made by PSU in regards to doing specific actions to make “Black lives matter” truly mean something at UTA as opposed to simply being a simple statement made by the administration at the height of the movement calling for justice for George Floyd.

In response to these recent victories, PSU has issued the following statement.

“The UTA Progressive Student Union has been carrying a campaign for change at the UTA campus from those in charge. Our campaign was based on the Black lives matter policies we wanted UTA to adopt into their system, as well as providing and expanding scholarships for minorities, and following through with the idea of investing in our diversity school. UTA has one of the highest percentages when it comes to diversity, but yet there were no services for their diverse population.”

The statement continued, “In our campaign we did call-ins and mass emailed now interim-President Teik Lim asking for support, action, and change for UTA. The Administration has now upheld our demands and will do the following: UTA will create a Vice President level office focusing on matters of diversity; The Diversity and Inclusion Committee will be reconstituted this fall; there will be more recruitment of underrepresented faculty and staff; adding $5 million dollars every year for the next 5 years for scholarships specifically for students with low incomes and 1st generation college students, as well as conceding on issues we did not put forward specifically but the movement to confront police brutality has brought to light such as doing internal reviews and investigations of UTAPD. We the UTA Progressive Student Union see this as a victory but it is only the first step in truly making sure that Black Lives Matter at UTA.”

This is a victory that will be repeated throughout all campus, as students around the country will not accept anything less than actual change in our time. We dared to struggle, and we dared to win – and the people are going to keep winning.

#ArlingtonTX #InJusticeSystem #PeoplesStruggles #PoliceBrutality #Antiracism #ProgressiveStudentUnion