Executive Board of the Graduate and Professional Student Council – February 24, 2025

We, the executive leadership for the Graduate and Professional student community at the University of Arizona, affirm our commitment to diversity, equity, and inclusion. We affirm our commitment to the rights of all students to freely express and participate in protest against our institution’s inability to publicly stand up to conservative pressure and to uphold the sovereignty of Tribal Nations. We elevate the same concerns as the Native and Indigenous Law Students Association (NILSA) regarding the recent changes to the University of Arizona’s official land acknowledgment and DEIA initiatives without student consent and Tribal consultation.

We publicly stand with NILSA and all Native students, staff, and faculty who have been both ignored and actively harmed by these unilateral actions. We are also dismayed by the recent actions of the University’s administration who physically restricted Native student leaders from speaking publicly about this issue at the UA’s Tribal Leader Summit on February 19, 2025.

We join the Native and Indigenous Law Student Association’s public call to urge the University of Arizona to take concrete actions to recommit to Native voices.

Therefore, we respectfully urge the University of Arizona to:

1. Reinstate the original land acknowledgment language, including “Committed to diversity and inclusion”;
2. Ensure accountability and review the actions taken to suppress Indigenous voices and hold those responsible accountable; and
3. Commit to transparent and sustained support for Native student programs and Indigenous communities.

We, the GPSC Council, acknowledge that the threat to DEIA initiatives at public universities will not stop with institutional compliance, but will result in the exacerbation of problems across the nation. Universities must call out the misuse of civil rights law to justify policies that actively harm students and must affirm an ethical responsibility to students at their institutions.

Sincerely,

The University of Arizona Graduate and Student Professional Council Executive Board

GPSC Presidential Officer's Statement, April 9th, 2024

GPSC's presidential officers condemn the Arizona Supreme Court ruling on April 9, 2024 regarding Arizona's access to reproductive healthcare. This ruling does not represent the needs or the best interests of our constituency. We want to make it clear that we are here for students and will connect anyone in need to the health and wellness resources they are entitled to. 

In a devastating and grotesque decision, the Arizona Supreme Court simultaneously attacked bodily autonomy, the rights of all historically marginalized groups, and our rights to make appropriate choices for our lives and families. Today, an antiquated law was reinstated, one that was initially enacted in 1864– before slavery was effectively ended, before women could vote, before Native people were allowed to vote or be considered legal citizens of their own land, before Arizona was even granted statehood, reinforcing that we live in a time when empowered white cis men are able to police our bodies and lives with limited restriction. As of today, individuals providing abortion care can be sentenced to prison for a minimum of two years.

We are all at a loss when asking how we got here, and we recognize that there are specific groups that will feel a greater impact. People that can give birth, people of color, and the queer community have consistently been under attack in all spaces, and this decision further aggravates those attacks. While GPSC represents all graduate and professional students, it has been the mission of this year's executive leadership to work towards equitable treatment for historically underrepresented groups. Accessible, quality, and comprehensive healthcare is one of our main objectives, and access to safe abortion services is healthcare. Healthcare is a human right, and we will support any and all students getting access to proper healthcare, regardless of what care they need.

We are planning to reach out to and partner with community organizations, but in the meantime want to connect students to resources available to them right now. 

The first suggestion we can make is that if you are in need of healthcare that requires travel or out of pocket expense, you can apply to any relevant GPSC grant that is open. If you need help configuring your request to meet the grant rubric, please reach out to one of us at GPSCtextline@gmail.com. Next, there are several local organizations that connect individuals in need of reproductive healthcare with resources. Some of those are Abortion Fund of Arizona, National Network of Abortion Funds, Tucson Abortion Support Collective, and National Abortion Federation. If you need help finding an abortion fund in another state, we are also happy to help locate other resources.

This decision is an embarrassment to our supposed democracy, as well as dangerous to the lives and liberties of all. It is critical that we take a firm stance to ensure that the lives, safety, and academic success of our students are as protected as possible.

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