UMass Boston's Supreme Leaders Announce UMBeVICTIMAS and UMBLACS

A guest post by Peter

Note: This post is intended to be satirical

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The following press release was found in the drafts mailbox of UMass Boston’s communications team. 

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE:

In honor of Black Lives Matter Day at UMass Boston, which is in no way meant to inject race into politics despite always being the day before Election Day, our noble Chancellor of Color and steel-backboned Provost are introducing fresh, bold initiatives that will shape the future of our University as it seeks to become a College of Higher Order Diversity and Equity (CHODE). For some reason, our local institutions have not been as eager as we have to hold the future of being a CHODE in their hands. We know that they are all far right bigots who think we’re past peak woke, which leaves only us at the helm.

To kick off the day, our prestigious Chancellor of Color spoke about his newest initiative: A new online platform to report any action and thought crime directly to our trusted Leaders: UMass Boston’s Electronic Voluntary Identification of Cruel Treatment, Inequity, Meanness, and Aggressive Statements (UMBeVICTIMAS). This represents a major step forward in UMass Boston's mission to promote the well-being of all victims students on campus. Since DEI requires all hands on deck, this is a necessary step to ensure everyone else’s compliance. An excerpt from his tear-jerking speech follows:

I am honored to be here with our illustrious Provost this morning to share the great initiatives we are pushing forward that will help the marginalized communities here at our beautiful escuela. My administration will work tirelessly to become the biggest CHODE in Boston, and that begins with UMBeVICTIMAS. ¡Dios mio! Of course I support freedom of speech and exploration of new ideas, especially the works of luminaries who truly love our beautiful Estados Unidos. Now, some of the pesimistas out there will try to say that the whole idea of us creating a way for anyone to report any kind of thought or action that might even remotely harm them is orwellian, even kafkaesque. I don't know what those words mean, but I do know that both Orwell and Kafka were white, so I can only assume that my beautiful idea is being called evil and racist. Rest assured, other than the tracking software we installed on the campus wifi network and a few pesky soon-to-be-former employees who will be receiving an email shortly, we have no intention of giving anonymous people free reign to jeopardize our beloved employees' careers by shouting their victimhood from the rooftops every time someone misgenders them. Trust us. Look what great job we did with the UMass Boston website! Thank you, and del rio al mar!

Given the importance of academics to UMass Boston's culture, Provost Borg was excited to unveil a new initiative of his own: UMass Boston's Lowering of Academic Standards (UMBLACS). Just in time for Black Lives Matter Day, UMBLACS represents UMass Boston's commitment to remaining a top-tier CHODE for decades to come. Rather than trying to figure out why students of color might be succeeding or failing at different rates than their white counterparts, the guiding principle will be to simply acknowledge that anything that could possibly present a barrier for even one student who may or may not be a student of color, or indigenous and traumatized by being forced to come to school on a stolen dump plot of land, is racist white supremacy mixed with implicit anti-indigenous, anti-vegan, and pro-genocide beliefs. After all, our Provost knows all about whiteness. Wiping back tears from the Chancellor's speech, the illustrious Provost had a few words to say about UMBLACS:

Thank you, everyone. Wow, Mx. Chancellor, what a beautiful, charismatic speech. Anyway, for a long time, we've had mixed emotions trying to define success. Some people might define it by the graduation rate, but....em, well, you only have a 50-50 shot of graduating in six years, right? So what we thought is this: what if the issue is how we define success? Through our innovative, antiracist, and health-promoting UMBLACS initiative, we are going to leverage our status at Boston's premier CHODE to combat the disparities between white students and students of color (Asians don’t count!) by simply redefining what the word "success" means. It’s so much easier than combating the root causes at the K-12 level. For example, do you not want to take a proctored placement test? Proctoring is probably racist anyway and we can always blame the faculty for the high failure rates, right? Now, with UMBLACS as our new guiding principle, it'll be a cold day in my cube hell before it ever happens here. Nothing like the soft bigotry of low expectations to support our students on this amazing BLM Day at UMass Boston. Thank you for coming to my Ted Talk.

We are still reeling from the Provost’s newfound ability to speak coherently. Someone must have finally updated his software.

In the coming days, community members should be on the lookout for more information, including a list of precisely which types of victims students are allowed to use the UMBeVICTIMAS platform.