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@marquetteu Can we talk, for a second, about the really appalling community response to the presentation on changes to Marquette's seal received? A thread. 1/?
On Monday, the MU community was presented with research on a new seal from a committee set up after the amazing activism, including an occupation of Zilber Hall, by the Native American Student Association this summer and into the fall. Overall, they were met with hostility. 2/?
A little background: For those who have never seen the MU seal, it is a cropped image of the 1869 Wilhelm Lamprecht painting, âFather Marquette and the Indians.â It also includes the crest of Marquetteâs familial crests and MUâs motto âNumen Flumenqueâ (God and the river). 3/?
The painting depicts Marquette being directed by an Indigenous leader. The Indigenous people in the painting are a representation of the amalgamation of the Peoples he met during his colonial journey. 4/?
The part of the image that is cropped in the seal shows Marquette seeming to direct one Indigenous man--the man in the canoe. It is cropped to remove the context of him being guided and presents him as the guide. 5/?
The Mississippi River (the river in question in the motto), it seems to say, couldnât have been âdiscoveredâ without a white man there to find it. 6/?
There have been complaints about the seal for about a decade, likely longer. However, this summer the Native American Student Association began advocating and organizing. 7/?
They wrote a petition asking, among other things, to change the seal. The petition had over 600 signatories. NASA attempted to hand-deliver this to @PresLovell. When he would not accept the petition and an invitation to talk, the students lead an occupation Zilber Hall 8/?
Through the pressure of direct action, which we also saw with the Black Student Council and the Marquette Academic Workers Union, Lovell did finally agree to a meeting. 9/?
Lovell did not allow key mentors to attend and deliberately scheduled it during another occupation of Zilber in defence of faculty staff jobs on the block because of austerity measures. This was a deliberate attempt to fracture solidarity across campus. 10/?
But back to the University Academic Senate meeting! When the topic was introduced, the amazing student activism was sanitized and there was no mention of their petition, community support for changing the seal, nor of their occupation. 11/?
Student activism is always sanitized in this manner--we saw this same thing during the President's address where all mention of the Black Student Council's direct action got them the wins they had. Instead, both were framed as the magnanimous work of the University 12/?
A committee, comprised of MUâs only Indigenous professor, one student activist, and other appropriate folk had been formed in the fall and they presented nuanced, thoughtful, respectful and exciting research on new directions for a more equitable seal. 13/?
To be clear, at the stage of the presentation, no new seal had been designed or decided on. Several themes had been selected: water, rice, rivers, etc. Another was replacing the motto on the seal with Water is Life or Water is Sacred, perhaps in Latin. 14/?
This presentation was met with derision, even from "allied" professors. One complained it was too long, others said they felt they hadn't been asked how they felt about the seal, some were mocking about the ideas the committee had come up with. 15/?
The presentation of research drew ire and complaints that this seal hadnât consulted theologians and was a significant theological departure from our identity and mission. 16/?
The claims that people had not been consulted was rich given the lack of consultation with Indigenous peoples, including the Potawatomi, Ho-Chunk, and Menominee were given in the construction of this University in their territory. 17/?
None of this is to say that community members should not be voicing concerns with the proposed changesâclearly, this should be an inclusive process. 18/?
However, the general spirit and attitude from almost every single person who spoke was dismissive, uncharitable, and betrayed a lack of sensitivity to the hard work, time, and thought put into this by the committee, especially the student activists who were a part of it. 19/?
Marquette, do fucking better. 20/20
It was just such a display of colonial arrogance and white (womenâs) fragility. 
