Community Care Gathering

“While love is not a word used often in professional spaces, we believe that radical love & belonging is the driving force behind equity, inclusion, and social justice both in our UMBC community and beyond.” We wrote this statement on February 10, 2021, when we decided to commit to Radical Love and Belonging as a foundational value and commitment for our work in i3b. Being grounded in this commitment and value gives us the capacity to pull together in moments of crisis to overcome hatred of any kind.

As a UMBC community, we know that hate has no place here. What does have a place here is love, justice, equity, and belonging. We, the i3b professional, graduate, and student staff team, stand in solidarity with our full community of Muslim students, staff, faculty, and alumni. We remain committed to cultivating spaces where you, and all others with closely held religious identities, can live and pray freely across our campus. Removing someone’s hijab is a deep violation of one’s personhood and their connection to their religious identity, and undoubtedly impacts the sense of safety for so many on our campus. We honor the courage and bravery required to report something so deeply violating and are greatly appreciative of our campus community for reacting so quickly. We respond to this act of hatred by re-grounding ourselves in who we are as a campus community and our commitment to remain in solidarity with one another.

We invite our campus community to join the Muslim Student Association, Student Government Association, Graduate Student Association, and i3b for a community care gathering on Monday, November 22, 2021 at 12:00 p.m. We will meet in The Gathering Space for Spiritual Well-Being, which is located in room 103 of the Center for Well-Being. The Center for Well-Being is located on Center Road across from Erickson Field. Imam Yaseen Shaikh from The Islamic Society of Baltimore, Rabbi Jeremy Fierstein, Chair of the UMBC Religious Council, and counselors from Retriever Integrated Health (RIH) will be on-site to provide additional support as needed. *The front patio of the Center for Well-Being will be used as a back-up location if needed to accommodate COVID capacity restrictions.*

Students in need of support can contact us at i3b@umbc.edu. Community members, including students, faculty, staff, and alumni, can always report concerns using this confidential reporting form.

We offer the following quote for ongoing reflection as we all recommit to radical love and belonging for all in our campus community:

"It's a radical love...That love drives the dream of a world where black lives matter and therefore all lives matter. Asian lives matter, Latino lives matter, Muslim lives matter, gay lives matter, poor lives matter, and old lives matter. It is a world in which we value the woman in a hijab, and the man in a kippah, and the atheist. Where we realize we are a human family and we cannot function without each other." - Rev. Dr. Jacqui Lewis.

-On behalf of the i3b professional, graduate, and undergraduate student staff