Welcome to the Graduate and Professional Student Council (GPSC)!

A Letter of Support from the GPSC Executive Board

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