Dear Chancellor Félix V. Matos Rodríguez:

During the Spring 2018 semester the Kingsborough Community College (KCC) administration announced that it would be defunding its Women’s and Gender Studies (WGS) Concentration. Then in the Fall 2018 semester, it announced that it was taking away the office space of the program's staff members. The WGS concentration at Kingsborough had been in existence since 1994. It was the first WGS program at the community college level within the City University of New York (CUNY) system. At the time the defunding was announced, Dr. Red Washburn was serving as the program’s director.

A few months prior to the defunding announcement, Dr. Washburn came out as transgender and non-binary to the KCC administration. Since that time, they have been experiencing harassment from the KCC administration, including a refusal to update Dr. Washburn’s name in their directory and course offerings, and the seizing of their course materials and belongings.

For more detail, read Dr. Washburn’s June 13 op ed in the NY Daily News: Transgender, and ostracized on campus: Kingsborough Community College is mistreating me

In addition, students rallying in support of the WGS program and Dr. Washburn have been put on academic probation, called in for investigations by KCC security, and some have been removed from the campus newspaper for writing about WGS issues. And some students who were working to complete their WGS concentration have not been able to graduate with that concentration because of the cancelling, undesignating, or not offering of WGS courses, with no faculty director of Liberal Arts in place to offer waivers. 

As members of the Board of the Center for LGBTQ Studies (CLAGS) at CUNY, we are writing to express our support for both Dr. Washburn and for Kingsborough’s WGS Program. We are also deeply concerned for those students in WGS program who have not only been unable to graduate with the concentration in which they initially enrolled, but are also witnessing the institutional erasure of a longstanding program focused on studying those who society has sought to erase and malign at the same time that KCC is enacting similar forms of erasure of a prominent trans faculty member.

We ask the following:

• Ensure that KCC students with a WGS concentration can graduate. By cancelling, undesignating, or not offering WGS courses, the KCC administration has made it extremely difficult for students to graduate with the concentration. These courses must be offered, so these students can finish their AA degrees and move forward with their education. These interdisciplinary, curricular, and course-related issues should be determined by the WGS Director and the WGS advisory board to honor faculty expertise and governance.
• Reinstate KCC’s funding for the Women’s and Gender Studies Program. WGS and other diversity studies must have a stable budget to function at KCC. We ask that funding for the program be reinstated. KCC must also re-establish the WGS office so that students can get the academic support and guidance they need and faculty can foster a vigorous intellectual community building on its decades-long history.
• End the harrassment of WGS and LGBTQ faculty and students. In addition to ending the harassment of Dr. Washburn, any harassment of students acting in support of the WGS program or Dr. Washburn must stop immediately. Not only does this harassment violate CUNY’s policies, it creates a hostile and unsafe learning environment for students, where they are not free to express or explore their full identities. This harassment must stop and work must be done to ensure that LGBTQ students and faculty are welcome and supported on the KCC campus.

Signed,

The Board of Directors, The Center for LGBTQ Studies (CLAGS)

The Executive Director & Staff, The Center for LGBTQ Studies (CLAGS)

Founded in 1991, the Center for LGBTQ Studies provides a platform for intellectual leadership in addressing issues that affect lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer individuals and other sexual and gender minorities. As the first university-based LGBTQ research center in the United States, CLAGS nurtures cutting-edge scholarship, organizes events for examining and affirming LGBTQ lives, and fosters network-building among academics, artists, activists, policy makers, and community members. CLAGS stands committed to maintaining a broad program of public events, online projects, and fellowships that promote reflection on queer pasts, presents, and futures. CLAGS is housed in CUNY's Graduate Center.