The ESL Department at Palomar College supports and stands in solidarity with our BILPOC (Black, Indigenous, Latinx, and People of Color) students and colleagues and Palomar College’s Call to Action, as well as contemporary movements fighting systemic racism, discrimination, and injustice.

In the ESL Department at Palomar, our students, teachers, and staff come from all parts of the world including the US and have had their own diverse experiences with injustice, whether racial, religious, political, class, gender, sexual-preference, accent, or language based. As a department, we seek to celebrate diversity and promote equity and inclusion through intercultural exchange and respect, creating an environment in which all our students and colleagues who face or have faced discrimination feel welcome, valued, and safe.

Our individual and collective work towards the goal of antiracism includes developing, sharing, and incorporating antiracist practices and frameworks into our courses through culturally responsive and relevant texts, materials, assignments, and tasks in order to give voice to our diverse students’ perspectives and experiences. We also commit to embedding antiracist practices into our institutional and departmental support services and practices.

We continue to strive to combat systemic racism and prevent marginalization, oppression, and injustice by actively reflecting upon, acknowledging, and addressing our own biases and engaging in continued equity work in our classrooms, our college, our communities, and our world.

ESL Department Statement of Solidarity College ESL Department November 2020

Pride Center Solidarity Statement with BLM

“In a racist society, it is not enough not to be racist. It is necessary to be anti-racist.” – Angela Davis

Palomar College’s Pride Center has been a source of support and community for marginalized people since its inception in 2010. The Center was born out of a community need to address bigotry and to work towards a safer, more accepting campus here at Palomar. We dedicate ourselves not only to empowering LGBTQ+ students and faculty but to better understanding our own privileges and forming solidarity with our queer and non-queer BIPOC community.

We recognize that even in our differences, queer issues cannot be separated from those of the Black Lives Matter movement. We mourn the loss of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, and Trayvon Martin and equally so that of Tony McDade, Bree Black, Draya McCarty, and countless other queer, black, and brown people lost to violence. This issue is intersectional and is personal to us.

Even as we recognize external examples of racism, transphobia, and homophobic violence, we also want to commit to constantly bettering ourselves and our Pride Center. Black Lives Matter is not just about stopping the violence, but empowering the community, so that our students can live and live well. As we continue to educate ourselves and advocate for you, we hope our faculty and students will come to us both for resources and with ways we can better serve you.

Black Lives Matter.

PC Pride Centerhttps://www.palomar.edu/pridecenter/