Hello UMBC Community,

My name is Doha. I am a PhD student in Public Policy. I am also an undergraduate alumna and have worked at UMBC as a staff for over 6 years. I am a clinical social worker by training. I have experienced our community under many lights. 

In the past couple of weeks I got involved in a statewide antiracist social welfare action alliance task force to work on regulation proposals for the next legislative session. 

A few of us are from local universities and will be meeting to brainstorm on an action plan for higher education. 

I am currently interested in connecting faculty, Staff, Graduate and Undergraduate Students to form collaborative task forces that will move UMBC towards a truly anti-racist/ antioppressive university. 

We must acknowledge that far too often our marginalized UMBC community members have voiced concerns about oppressive trauma that have gone unanswered. 

I have heard our Black/Brown, POC and non-dominant identities colleagues say that they do not trust this will be a sustained effort. So I am calling on our community to develop a long term action plan. 

In her very popular article from June 8th, Professor Jasmine Roberts summarized the call to action beautifully:

Develop a task force or committee (without placing most of the labor on people of color) and create a corrective action plan that strategically shows how your unit will address systemic racism over the next year, 5 years, and 10 years.

We at UMBC have done this before, leaning in to have the difficult conversations about sexual violence to create lasting impact. We can do the same about racism/ oppression and all marginalization abuse. 

So if you are interested in connecting please collaborate in this google document that will be shared with the Office of Equity and Inclusion. 

Please feel free to invite other members of our community you believe would be interested. 

In Solidarity,

Doha

Doha Chibani, MSW, LCSW-C

Pronouns: she /her /hers

PhD Student, Health Policy

School of Public Policy