In response to the situation in America, we want to express our commitment to provide support for our BAME community and to emphasise that we stand in solidarity with you. We acknowledge that the RVC and RVCSU could do more to support our current BAME community at the RVC. As a consequence of this RVCSU have reached out to Animal Aspirations to understand how we can best support these students and ensure we are maintaining and strengthening our communications with the organisation. We commend and fully support the ethos of Animal Aspirations in their mission to increase diversity in our professions. We want to take this moment to encourage all our students to better acquaint themselves with the work Animal Aspirations are doing within our community.
We want to take meaningful and ongoing action to ensure we continuously improve our infrastructure and actively support our underrepresented BAME community, now and for the future. We will be strengthening the role of the Equality and Diversity Officer within our new Constitution. We do not tolerate racism in any form and therefore will commit to improving our own facilities for reporting any form of prejudice either within the College environment or in external working / study environments and encourage the College to improve theirs. We also acknowledge the lack of ethnic diversity within our University and will be having meaningful discussions with the College about what we are currently doing to change this, in addition to where we as an institution could do more.
We endeavour to provide and encourage a supportive environment for our ethnic minority groups and hope to make long term and impactful changes for current and future BAME students.
- Jade Urquhart-Gilmore, SU President
- Stephanie-Rae Flicker, SU VP Representation and Communications
- Hasita Dodhia, SU Equality and Diversity Officer
on behalf of the Students' Union