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About a year ago, Stephen Kuusisto said “hello” to a professor in an elevator in a Syracuse University building. The professor didn’t acknowledge Kuusisto’s greeting.
Kuusisto, who is blind, said “hello” a second time, and the professor still didn’t respond. But when some students stepped onto the elevator, the professor went on to talk to them. Kuusisto confronted the professor outside the elevator, where the professor said they didn’t have to talk to people they didn’t want to.
“From my perspective, that was outright ableism,” said Kuusisto, director of interdisciplinary programs and outreach at the Burton Blatt Institute.
SU receives grants to digitize Oakwood Cemetery, Latinx community records
Micaela Warren | Staff Photographer
The grants come as SU Libraries faces its own battle to preserve rare materials in its Special Collections Research Center.
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A pair of state grants will enable Syracuse University professors and staff to digitize valuable records pertaining to Oakwood Cemetery and Syracuse’s Latino community.
The grants, awarded by the Central New York Libraries Resource Council, will support two projects: converting decades-old death and burial records for Oakwood Cemetery into a searchable database and expanding digital access to cultural artifacts in the La Casita Cultural Center’s archives.
SU, SUNY-ESF students discuss history of anti-Asian racism at forum
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Roughly 3,800 incidents of racial violence against Asian Americans have been reported during the pandemic, according to Stop AAPI Hate.
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Syracuse University and SUNY-ESF experts and students discussed the history of anti-Asian racism in the U.S. and how to combat it during a public forum on Monday.
The forum included remarks from Asian students, staff and faculty concerning their experiences with anti-Asian racism, especially as hate crimes against Asian Americans have continued to increase throughout the coronavirus pandemic. SUNY-ESF’s Office of Inclusion, Diversity and Equity and SU’s Office of Diversity and Inclusion hosted the event.
Artifacts in the libraries are deteriorating. SU delayed a plan to save them.
Courtesy of SU Libraries
The vast archive on the sixth floor of Bird Library holds priceless materials, such as published work of SU graduates from over 100 years ago.
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Syracuse University football reels from the 1930s. Pulp science fiction magazines. Portraits of Albert Einstein, W.E.B. Du Bois and Langston Hughes. The original writings, letters and manuscripts of activists, abolitionists and anti-fascists.
All of these one-of-a-kind artifacts are entrusted to the care of SU’s Special Collections Research Center, the vast archive of valuable materials the university stores largely on the sixth floor of Bird Library. And without immediate intervention, faculty familiar with the collections say many of these items will soon deteriorate to the point that their original content and the history they preserve will be lost.