Message to our TSCT Community on Behalf of President Betty Tompos
Dear Thaddeus Stevens College of Technology Family,
As I reflect on the unraveling of the academic year and the uncertainties that the COVID-19 pandemic brings to our future, it is clear to me that we are living in a world in turmoil. In the midst of this uncertainty, we again stand face to face with the blatant racism that continues in our country with the recent video of the murder of George Floyd and the subsequent demonstrations and protests that have erupted across our country and in our community. I wonder, “How can we endure this? And how can we change this?”
We cannot hide from events in the world. We endure by doing what we can in our schools and our communities to understand, to teach, to inspire, to listen, and to do better.
It’s important to note that this institution was founded by Thaddeus Stevens, an individual who was dedicated to the proposition that education was the vehicle to improve lives, as well as dedicated to abolishing inequities of the oppressed. From the day we opened our College, we have been an institution that has been engaged in the struggle to improve our community and our nation. We need to continue this fight.
It is our responsibility as a College and a community to try to help students address the tragic deaths of George Floyd and other African Americans and people of color, the effect of a global pandemic and the fear and dislocation of economic uncertainty. As educators, and as a College community, we need to call upon our reserves of love, wisdom and compassion to create a learning environment where students have both the opportunity to improve their communities and to understand that true justice begins with how we listen to, and treat one another.
The best of the Thaddeus Stevens College community, working together, can address inequity with understanding, hatred with love, violence with peace and injustice with a commitment to talk and reason together.